In a now-viral TikTok video that questions the concept of “taking pride in your work,” a creator catches a McDonald’s worker in an apparent lie about whether a McFlurry machine works by using it himself.
The TikTok video was posted by Shady Shortz on Dec. 23, racking up 1.1 million views as of Saturday morning.
In the video, the creator approaches a woman working at a McDonald’s about the unmixed state of his McFlurry. He asks skeptically, noting the state of his dessert, “The mixer doesn’t work?”
She responds, “Ehhh, it’s not working.”
Though he appears to first take that explanation at face value, the video then cuts to him boldly going behind the counter, holding the dessert under the McFlurry machine, and then pushing the button to activate what is clearly a working machine.
Over the next 12 seconds, the video shows the machine blending the McFlurry, resulting in a perfectly mixed dessert. The creator, who the Daily Dot has reached out to for more details, dubbed his bold action as a “life hack [for] when the machine is broken.”
@shady.shortz Life hack when the machine is broken @McDonald’s Corporate #mcdonalds #icecreamday #oreo #shady #comedy #funny #cool #crazy #wow #fyp #what ♬ She Share Story (for Vlog) – 山口夕依
According to commenters who weighed in on the video, there just might be a bit of an “epidemic” involving broken ice cream machines at the fast food franchise — or it might just be a dip in enthusiasm among some McDonald’s workers.
“Literally went through a McDonald’s drive-through for ice cream and the dude literally said, ‘We’ve been having non-stop orders of ice cream for three hours now; I’m finna gonna ask my manager if we can just lie and say it’s broken ’cause we did that yesterday,’” one commenter claimed. “I was flabbergasted.”
Another theorized, “They just didn’t want to have to clean it again.”
That led the creator to quip, “Now they have to.”
A number of other commenters co-signed the theory that cleaning the machine is a hassle. One commenter offered that her husband worked at a McDonald’s some years ago, and even then, the “broken” excuse emerged as a way to get that crew out of a little bit of extra work.
Several commenters also took the opportunity to mention a lawsuit involving McDonald’s ice cream machine repairs.
According to a March article by CNET, “Kytch, a startup company that creates AI-powered devices to monitor ice cream machines, filed a [$900 million] lawsuit earlier this month claiming that McDonald’s and the company that manufactures the chain’s ice cream machines ‘joined forces to drive Kytch out of the marketplace.’” In the court filing, Kytch accused McDonald’s “of stealing confidential information and misleading its customers about safety issues.”
Finally, one commenter complimented the creator for his McFlurry-mixing skills, noting, “You definitely work there with that amount of McFlurry mixer skill for sure.”
The Daily Dot reached out to McDonald’s via email.
