The McDonald's at Parry Sound is so slow that people order drive-thru (which is much faster) and eat in their cars.
Dan and I drove from Sault Ste. Marie to Brampton yesterday with much trepidation in our hearts. We’d heard about “snowmageddon” hitting Southern Ontario and weren’t looking forward to driving 8 hours in any kind of storm. Fortunately for us the worst of it hit on Friday, and the roads were in great condition as we made our way down.
Given that the trip is 8 hours we generally stop and get fast food so we can eat quickly, stretch our legs for a bit and continue along our merry way. The “halfway” point for us has been Parry Sound and we’ve been stopping at what is possibly the worst McDonald’s in Canada. It is right off of highway 69, so obviously it is busy, and every single time we have stopped there they have been ridiculously slow and gotten our order wrong.
This time was no different. We suspect they put their most skilled workers on the drive-thru, because this time there
Our McDonald's bill showing our screwed up order. Check out the pickle on the picture in the background (not our doing).
were a crowd of people in McDonald’s, all who had ordered and were standing waiting for food. The McDonald’s employees kept asking “Can I help someone here?” and finally somebody said “we’ve all ordered!” They were letting the drive thru people take all of our food! It was the last straw for Dan (who ordered us a McNugget Meal and a Big Mac Meal with iced tea) when they screwed up our order and gave us 1 small fries, 1 medium fries and McNuggets and 2 iced tea (no big mac). We’re still not sure how they got “small fry” from “meal”. Last time they did the same thing, only they didn’t punch it in as a meal and gave us the fries for free because they didn’t have time to argue. We weren’t the only disgruntled customers. There was a lot of yelling as people waited for 15-20 minutes for their food and watched in horror as it got snatched away for drive-thru customers. On top of it all, our fries were also cold and overly salty. So in essence we waited a long time with poor service for bad food. That’s the last time we’re going there. It shouldn’t take 30 minutes to order your food and get it. If we wanted to do that, we would stop in a restaurant (which may even be faster in some cases!). Next time we’ll stop at Wendys.
No wonder people go through the drive thru and eat in their cars there. It’s actually faster, at this McDonald’s anyway!
Plain Can Be Lovely 
I agree that our fast food establishments are a bit on the slow side. A lack of staffing has been a huge problem for establishments like McDonalds for years. To make matters even worse, they’re staff by high school studends on weekend who lack any semblance of training in the hospitality field.
My suggestion is that you follow Bowes Street for a couple hundred feet past MickeyDee and turn left into Richards Coffee. Fresh food, homemade soups, quick service and healthier for you to boot! 🙂
Ah yes, THAT McDonald’s! Every time I go up to my cottage in Parry Sound we stop off at that one and every time we regret it!