"I'm lovin' it!" Disgusting.

mah bukkit!

I personally like soiled-flavored milkshakes

They sanitized the bucket to capture milk...

I DO NOT CARE.

There is a reason the bucket is labled "Soiled Towels Only". Why should anyone believe it was even possible to sanitize the bucket so it would be safe to hold milk in it? Hell, the milk probably went bad sitting out in a bucket during the repairs anyway.

They're insane.

I have far far FAR less fear of a population carrying cameras everywhere than the government putting them in place.

And just let me say, ewwwwww.

And let me also say, call the local health inspectors on any restaurant that pulls this kind of crap. Restaurants take the inspectors very seriously because they can cause BIG financial pain, but the inspectors need tips to help them.

Oh, and has anyone considered: perhaps McDonald's milkshakes are MADE FROM soiled towels only? See, perfectly innocent action -- they were just topping it off with raw materials.

oh thats just naaaaasty

@newlywed: NOOO they be stealin mah milkshake

A good reminder to get milkshakes at places that know how they're made; i.e., by scooping ice cream and pouring cold milk into a blender. Not by releasing a tap.

@CumaeanSibyl: I don't remember if it was blue or if it was red. And that scares me.

Note: Everyone in the picture is overweight.

On topic: Yeah, even if the bucket was boiled in hot water its still YUK!

Walrus: MkkyDeez haz mah bukket?

@Rectilinear Propagation:

Since when did McDonald's use milk in the shakes? I'm thinking someone made a mistake in the letter to the customer.

I highly doubt that the non-dairy milkshake mix went bad while sitting out.

I'm also sure that the bucket *WAS* sanitized. Properly cleaned, it would be safe enough for a baby to drink out of.

That said, using the "soiled towels only" bucket, even if properly sanitized, is poor procedure, and the store manager (present in the photo) should be fired.

I'm sure someone will come along and say that the employees should be sacked, but their job doesn't include questioning the management. Sad, but true.

All the crud in the bucket made it easier to make oreo mc'fluries. Mmmmmm....

Since owning a McD franchise is almost a license to print money in most locations where they operate, I can not understand how the owner could lower his/her standards to allow any level of violation.

We have a McD in the next town, and the owner has 2 franchise shops (the other about 15 miles away), and his family and crew works their butts off to keep it ship-shape 24 hours a day.

If I were the McD exec, I'd pull their franchise on the spot. But again, that's just me....

Am I the only one who read that as WTFTV??? As in WTF????

Actually after googling WTF TV, (sounded like a good name for a video site) turns out there is a WTF-TV in Las Vegas... do you want to tell them or should I?

@CumaeanSibyl: I can has soiled milkshake?

@axiomatic:

You can't necessarily tell if someone is overweight by looking at them. If raw size was all that mattered, Vin Diesel in loose clothing would be obese.

Yuck.
At one of my bars we used orange home depot buckets to refill the ice bins. They were cleaned and sanitized nightly. One time a customer stopped me and told me it was disgusting that we were using a construction bucket to refill the ice.
So I replaced the orange home depot buckets with plain white ones that I subsequently labeled in large letter - ICE ONLY.
Perception is reality. This is gross.

This is not surprising to me.

Many of the franchise-owned McDonald's locations in Orlando are host to some shockingly filthy conditions. I'm not sure who owns these franchises, but they need to get nailed and nailed hard. No amount of complaints over the course of two years to McDonald's corporate complaint line ever resolved the chronic ailments I noticed.

Why the hell would they reuse the milk anyway? they should've thrown out the milk that was in the machine esp if the machine was in need of cleaning. Wouldn't you be putting dirty milk back into a clean machine?

Actually WTF-TV is a fake website that was setup for a prank over at zug.com.

When eating fastfood, I silently hope that there were no dangerous bacteria in my meal.
McDonalds feels like russian roulette these days :(

How soiled was the towels that once were in that bucket? Soiled with grease or the juice from a few hundred pimples as they wipe their faces.

Big difference!!! Not worth taking the risk.

"This was an isolated incident."

Yea, /normally/ they don't sanitize the bucket.

@RvLeshrac: I'm sure someone will come along and say that the employees should be sacked, but their job doesn't include questioning the management. Sad, but true.

Yes it does, when they receive orders to do something that blatantly violates code or procedure. Don't tell me if management had their employees harm employees you'd stand by that too...obviously not. And it's not a questionable line that needs to be drawn, the line is already drawn.

Management, I assume the one watching the entire process to "make sure it gets done correctly" should be fired, and the employee should be reprimanded as well. There is no excuse for that, they didn't have another bucket to use that wasn't in unsanitary conditions 99% of the time?

That said, a properly sanitized bucket would be completely fine to eat out of, but that doesn't excuse their actions, nor does "this was an isolated incident." You can make firing the manager in the picture an isolated incident as well...

"just put it all in a bucket"

Can I be concerned about the chemicals here?

Honestly, this is really fowl not to mention dangerous. The nasties that could be on a soiled towel at McD's have to be the worst. Just think of how soiled the towel must be before it is placed in the soiled towel bucket.

@vanilla-fro: foul

Wait...they use milk in their milkshakes?? I thought it was just water and some mix. Maybe its milk and some milkshake MIX! Ahhh its all becoming clear now.

Worse, the bucket was made in China.

While the thought is nasty, if it is properly cleaned and rinse I seriously doubt that bucket is worse for you than anything on the McD's menu. Some of you guys are so hypersensitive!

Man, those employees are out of shape...

@Nowin

A McDonalds franchise is a rather low-margin business, actually. Costs are *extremely* high, and company stores won't hesitate to run you out of business. You need runaway sales just to avoid closing.

I should say that the area where this McDonald's is located is very close to the airport. Visiting tourists, be careful!

@enm4r: Why do I doubt that a minimum wage employee is going to stand up to Ronald McManager and say "Sir, it would be a violation of health codes to do what you've just asked me to do!" I mean, there's a reason McDonald's relies heavily on icons and pictures for training their front-line employees.

If the bucket was sanitized before use, that doesn't change the fact that the restaurant clearly doesn't have separate food-safe containers for stuff like this, which suggests big problems. If it wasn't sanitized (or, if I had to guess, sanitized by rinsing it out with hot water), well, that's an even bigger problem.

I'm Disgusted

Just a thought. If they are making milk shakes in the soiled towel bucket, where are they putting the soiled towels?

hmmm

Just the way mom used to make it!

Although I certainly can't condone this behaviour, I'm always surprised by people's "eeeewww, gross" reactions.

Has anyone ever seen the inside of a chicken processing plant? I'll tell you, it makes a soiled-towel milkshake sound like two hours at Le Bernardin.

There is a new TV license in Arizona for KWTF.
There's also one in Hawaii for KUNT.

Both stations are owned by the same company. The owners claim to be shocked.

A real station with the call letters WTF would have to be east of the Mississippi River.

First of all, great call sign - WTFTV.

"Nothing is more important to us than the safety and quality of our food"

Really? Given the picture, that sounds like an empty statement.

really... if you're eating at Mickey D's, healthy eating is probably not high on your list of priorities.

@floofy: I worked at a McDonalds for about 5 years starting when I was 15, So maybe I can shed some light on this. Once a week, the ice cream machine will go into "lockout mode". When in this mode, the machine simply refuses to make ice cream until the machine is cleaned. All the parts that touch food are taken apart and cleaned. Temperature sensors inside detect that the machine has been drained of ice cream mix and filled with hot water a few times to sanitize it. Then the machine is put back together and refilled with ice cream mix. Since there's nothing wrong with the ice cream mix, there's no reason to waste it. In the store I worked at, we had stainless steel containers specifically for storing the mix in the cooler, we didn't use buckets though. Even though I'm sure it was cleaned, it still doesn't look very good.

That is nasty. I don't care if they were cleaning the machine OR using a clean bucket. Draining the machine, leaving it out in the open or otherwise carting it around or not keeping it at temp is gross. McDonalds is just that cheap they wouldn't throw a few gallons of milkshake mix away.

At the local fair this summer, the dairy board that serves milkshakes to promote their dairy products. They were using the fake milkshake mix in the cartons. Blech.

This is a true story. When I was in high school, I worked part time at a tamale factory. The factory mostly sold wholesale to supermarkets, but also had a small drive-through retail section that drew a considerable amount of customer traffic.

One day, a dog was hit on the nearby road, and I was asked to remove its carcass because it was right next to the drive-through entrance. The only thing I had with me to put the dog into was an empty "___'s Tamales" box, so that's what I used. Everyone who drove by just saw this guy putting a dead dog into a tamale-branded box and walking back to the tamale factory.

If only The Consumerist (and cell phone cameras) had been around then.

For the soft serve machines I use to operate, the mix would come in half gallon cartons and we would just pour it in. Why they are using a bucket for this machine is beyond me and even if it was sanitized the minute before, it is still NOT serve-safe.

The last few times that I went to Sick Mac's, the milkshakes (prominently advertised in the drive-thru) were unavailable because the shake machine was "broken". Lucky me.

@Chris Walters:
Two comments on that:
1) That is freakin' hilarious....
2) No way they paid you enough to pick up a dead dog.... Gross. I'd likely have quit over that.

@Chris Walters: Someday, my friend, I will tell you a dead dog story that involves the new york city subway and luggage theft.

@Beerad: I don't care how they're trained. It would have taken about 5 seconds to find another bucked if they really did normally follow procedure. Because no one around was willing to take 5 seconds, that suggests obvious flaws in their management, and that it was in no way an isolated incident. Workers should be reprimanded as a way to remind them that they are responsible for their actions, and management that supervised the entire operation should be fired. Improper training is not an excuse.

@erciesielski: It seems to me that putting the mix back into the machine after sanitizing it is self defeating.
- The machine needs to be cleaned / sanitized because too much bacteria is inside it
- The insides of the machine contain as much bacteria as the mix inside of it
- Putting the old mix back inside the machine after cleaning the machine just puts all of the bacteria back inside it.

Am I missing something? It's like taking a bath to put on the same dirty clothes you just took off (which then put some of the filth right back on you).