They can't even spell "fries" correctly.

Actually this happened to me. I ordered a cheeseburger happy meal as a late night snack and got home to find no cheeseburger or the apples I had gotten instead of fries.

I complained and the district manager wound up calling me. ALWAYS check your order before leaving.

That guy needs to get fired. I would have thought that an established chain like McDonalds would be above petty theft like this.

"We need to work out if there is a way of making this a procedure without making it documented."

oops, well back to the drawing board i suppose...

@Herbz: That's exposing McDonalds to a *LOT* of liability there.

Ths s why dn't t t McDnld's.

Seriously, though. First people were calling 911 about there not being anymore McNuggets. Now it's going to be about getting cheated out of their soggy, limp fries. They're doing you a favor. :P

Here's the memo documenting the procedure I don't want documented. Now, go an implement the procedure without implementing it.

WOW. This news can get really big, really fast.

I can't wait to see if this affects their stock price tomorrow morning.

I love Australans, but that is just shady and evil.

In my travels there I learned that I cannot make an Aussie McEmployee understand that I want a burger with bread, meat, and cheese ONLY. After trying multiple times at different McDonnalds, I realized that my husband just has to order it and that is that.

Wow. I thought it was just the drive-thru clerks that were stupid. Now I see stupid starts at the top!

@Herbz: This guy needs to get "fried."

@Blueskylaw:

There is a phone number listed, who wants to bet the number will be disconnected by tomorrow morning, New York time?

@Kimaroo - 20% More Kitty Added!: I wouldn't care about the way the burger was served in the land of Tim Tams!

TIM TAMS!

This 'undocumented' memo came from the managing director of McDonald's Australia, who I'm guessing is now the former managing director. This is huge! I wonder if any other large McDonalds service areas, like the US or Europe, have had this going on.

Im gonna have to go ahead and call this one fake.

If they skimped on the Vegemite, I'm sure they would notice immediately.

Always check your order before you leave. I detest mayo, so I've learned to check even my sandwich before pulling out of drive-thru.

@Herbz: umm its signed by the owner, I dont think he can be fired

Well, I personally appreciate it when they leave the fires out of my to-go order.

Insidious. Fries or a pie? Annoying when it happens (by accident) but it doesn't ruin your whole night.

Missing a whole burger from a "large order?" Do they really think the unlucky guy sitting there without a meal isn't going to complain?

I don't know what it's like at Australian McDonald's but managers here are pretty quick to give out more than just the missing item, just to save the customer. There's no way something like that wouldn't cost more than you're trying to steal - whether through comps or PO'd customers/lost business. Clearly not a business major, this nut.

@Bensky13: Who's they? It's just laura, she must be tired, we love her.

Presuming this is legit (although there is plenty of stupid to go around, this one is high enough to trigger the 'possible BS' trigger) -- McD's is gonna come down with the thunder on this dude.

@menty666: Always check your order whenever you leave any take out place (if feasable).

I was at a typlical NYC sandwich place yesterday night where the sandwiches are displayed. I ordered one and saw the guy pick it up and bring it to the toaster. I was the only one in the store. He then packs up the sandwich and handed it to me.... and it was the wrong sandwich.
It was like a crazy poltergeist switched my sandwich on me!

@bkdlays:
They could probably take away his franchise "license" (or whatever the hell they do to let him have their name) if he owns the actual establishment.

@Mr.DuckSauce: if you enlarge the image of the letter, the guy who wrote it spelled it 'fires'

Check the update at buzzfeed.com. It's fake.

this has already been called as fake on the originating site due to the signature's resemblance to that of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe (check wikipedia logged signature)

@Mr.DuckSauce: [sic] = spelled incorrectly, to further humiliate the original author!

scumbag bastards. I'm sure there are many franchise owners that do this very thing.

When reading the headline, I thought that it was an angry letter from a disgruntled customer who was not given his fries, who had been listening to too much Coast to Coast AM and thought that McDonald's was leaving small items out of orders as some sort of conspiracy.

Now I see it's not that farfetched and I'm sort of shocked, sort of not.

@ab12: About to post the same thing. I suspect this will be thoroughly debunked soon.

@B1663R: I came here to say this. It takes a special kind of stupid to put in writing that something shouldn't be in writing.

@Xerloq speaks Portuguese, too...: EXACTLY my thought.

@ab12: here Mugabe's signature, it looks identical. [en.wikipedia.org]

And besides, this was clearly done in Times New Roman in MS Word and everyone knows that Australia only has typewriters with Courier font still.

What do you expect of a country populated with the offspring of criminally evil white men?

@Herbz: @Xerloq speaks Portuguese, too...:dont worry... McD will take this "seriously".

How can intelligent people accept this brazen fake as if it were truth?

gonna call fake on this one. why would it even be on official letterhead for god's sake.

@B1663R: You stole my comment!

Robert Trugabe? Any relation to Robert Mugabe? I mean, I'm not trying to make a joke and compare lost burgers to lost lives, that's just a weirdly similar name to another evil person however.

@Several: If a "large order" constitutes 8+ burgers I'd say yea there's actually a good chance, from my experience, the one person without a cheeseburger may not complain.

@ab12: I thought it was pretty obvious this one HAD to be fake. Nobody is dumb enough to make a proposal such as this one in an official letter.

Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if this were already being implemnted stateside. I don't go to McDonalds often, but nearly every time I go, I have to go back in for something they mysteriously forgot. (It happened today when I stopped there for lunch and the time before a few weeks ago. And it is always something that is one of three or more, such as 1 burger or fries missing out of four.)

Not to be all soap box-y, but I have to share my favorite persoal story from a few months back. I ordered two of the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich bagels, minus the cheese, on my way to work one morning. I made the mistake of driving aay without checking and got about two miles away when I decided to check my order. Glad I did, because in the bag were two bagels wrapped in the breakfast sandwich wrappers and nothing else. I turned around and went back and, with receipt in hand stating the order, still had problems getting my order corrected. I ended up being late for work, but I wasn't about to pay almost $6 for two plain bagels.

Nearly every time I do stop there, they make me thankful I'm not big into fast food...

@chocobo: Well they do have the same signature.

@Shadowman615: Oh, LOL. So it is a fake... guess I fell for it.

Here's the link to the identical Mugabe signature btw: [en.wikipedia.org]

@CyGuy: Not to mention the McDonald's slogan which, in Australia is "I'm lovin it mate; go suck a kangaroo."

@seamer: Overlooking the details. That's what I did at first.

I call fake. Why would they be taking the time to send messages like that over snail mail rather than using email?

So some bright forger copied the scan of Robert Mugabe's signature off Wikipedia, edited it and is passing it off as the signature of poor fool "Robert Trugabe." This casts serious doubt on the veracity of the entire letter. Just go to [commons.wikimedia.org] to find Mugabe's signature and compare it for yourself.