9 things customers should know about McDonald's, according to a former cashier going viral on TikTok

Regular McDonald's customers — and McFlurry fans, in particular — may be familiar with the disappointment of a broken ice cream machine. However, according to Joseph, you can't always trust claims about the state of the equipment.

In her first TikTok video, she said at her franchise location, employees would sometimes tell customers that the ice cream machines were broken in order to avoid re-filling the shake mix.

"When you're switching the mix, it takes these five-pound bags and you have to climb up on a ladder — it's super cumbersome. And it takes 15 to 20 minutes for the machine to freeze it," Joseph told Insider. " So what happens is, [employees] will just say they're broken."

In all fairness, Joseph says, this may not be true of all workers.

"Maybe some employees weren't lazy and they'd go back and get more shake mix and fill up the machine, but that wasn't me," she joked. "Absolutely not."

McDonald's patrons, Joseph quickly learned, get creative with their orders — and employees were happy to indulge their customizations.

"Customers would do stuff like ask for a Sprite with cherry syrup, or McDoubles with mac sauce," she told Insider. "We would make any substitutions they asked for."

In her video on the subject, Joseph recommended adding bacon to a McChicken and adding Oreos to a Mocha Frappé, among other things.

Another claim Joseph made in her first TikTok video has proven to be one of the most controversial. According to Joseph, the franchise's sweet tea was "made in a mop bucket" and stored on the floor in a way that made it easy for employees to confuse the "tea bucket" with an actual utility bucket.

During her training, she told Insider, she was asked to grab a mop bucket for her supervisor. When she returned with the plastic bin, she said she was told that she had mistakenly grabbed the container used to hold iced tea.

"She pointed to a little masking tape label that had 'iced tea' written on it," Joseph told Insider. "And I was like, 'Oh hell no, there is no way that somebody didn't mix that up one day.'"

Her claims about the "tea buckets" stirred up an impassioned response on TikTok, as some commenters insisted that their local McDonald's restaurants did not use such buckets and others insisted they'd seen the containers before.

In a follow-up video, Joseph posted photos of "iced tea buckets" she'd discovered on Twitter.

Caramel may be a popular addition on McDonald's ice cream products, but Joseph claims that the topping was often stored in moldy dispensers.

On her first day of training, she told Insider, a fellow employee advised her against ordering a caramel shake.

When Joseph asked why, the employee opened the caramel dispenser at the bottom of the shake machine to reveal the condition of the packaging.

"You could see, like, little spores of mold growing all over this caramel. And I was like, 'What? Nasty!'" she said. "And then when the manager was training me to refill the dispensers, she opened it up and I see the mold again. So then I asked how we were going to get the mold out to clean it and she looked at me, rolled her eyes, and dumped the new caramel right on top of that moldy caramel."

In her TikTok video on the subject, Joseph told followers she "didn't eat that s---" and hoped her viewers didn't either.

The caramel used in the Caramel Frappé, Joseph claims, was stored differently and safe to order.

In one video, Joseph claimed to have witnessed customers doing "disgusting things" with their trays.

"I'm straight-up talking blowing boogers into the trays," she said.

The cleaning process, she added, was not particularly thorough: Joseph says she saw employees wipe down trays with the same bucket and rag throughout the day.

For those looking to get a freshly-made entrée, Joseph suggests taking out an ingredient in a standard order.

The food at her restaurant, she said in two TikTok videos, was pre-made and kept on a heated conveyor belt. Those making no customizations or adding on ingredients (say, an extra slice of cheese) would receive the items stored on the belt, she said.

Those who made customizations where an ingredient was removed (for example, ordering a sandwich without mayonnaise) would get a freshly-made order excluding the particular ingredient, according to Joseph.

In one video, Joseph said that the ways customers customize orders may rack up unnecessary costs.

Usually, she said, customers will start by requesting to take off an ingredient and then adding a different ingredient. When the cashier enters the order this way, they are likely to charge for the extra ingredient, according to Joseph.

Instead, she says customers should ask to "sub" (substitute) one ingredient for the other, which won't add any cost.

As you place your order, Joseph said in one video, the cashier enters your items which are immediately sent to a screen in the kitchen, where employees begin preparing your order. As a result, your food is in the works before you've even opened your wallet.

Chances are, she says, if you remove an item from a particularly long order, it has already been made.

In situations where the kitchen appears to have forgotten your order, there's actually a pretty simple explanation, Joseph says.

When orders are placed, the computer system times how long the kitchen staff takes to prepare food from the minute when the cashier enters the items, she explained in a video. In order to avoid reprimand for slow preparation times, she claimed, employees would mark the order as 'completed' in the system before actually preparing the food.

They would then go back and try to catch up — but in the process, some orders would get lost.

Despite her concerns about cleanliness at her franchise location, Joseph says she still eats at McDonald's — and she's not trying to stop anyone from patronizing the chain.

"I really don't want to tell people what to do," she told Insider. "I just want them to have the information."

McDonald's declined to comment for this story.

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