McDonald’s Orders at Elias Mall Left Uncollected as Riders Allegedly Boycott the Outlet

As much as we want to ignore the impact that COVID-19 has wrought on the world and country by large, it has certainly changed a lot of things for us.

We have become more accustomed to delivery services. Shopping online for almost everything. Working from home. Not really blinking anymore when we’re told that our locations would be tracked through a mobile app.

Mostly the first though, especially when we’re lazy and we can just tap away on our phones to place an order and wait in the comforts of our home.

A Line of Uncollected Orders

Back when dining-in was limited or not allowed, many restaurants and eateries were forced to turn towards delivery services in order to draw in more patronage.

Everything is fine when orders are mostly coming in from one end, but when you have customers at the front counters and coming from the entire surrounding area?

Things might get a little busy as you try to juggle everything.

Last Friday (24 June), a Facebook post uploaded in the group GrabFood Delivery Rider Singapore by Rusuydi Didi showed a long train of uncollected bagged food, at what appears to be the McDonald’s outlet at Elias Mall.

It’s honestly impressive, how neat everything is, chilling in the air-conditioner.

Fries becoming wet and soggy and all.

Let’s hope there were no ice cream orders though.

From a visual count, there are about 13 bags in total.

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According to AsiaOne, there was also a TikTok video that was uploaded on Wednesday (29 June), with photos from the Facebook post, alleging that some annoyed GradFood riders have boycotted that McDonald’s outlet because they tended to prioritise dine-in orders first.

The video was deleted before the writing of this article.

The Public’s Response

One netizen claimed that the McDonald’s outlet at Elias Mall is “always slow in preparing” the food, which was why riders preferred not to go there earlier to pick up the food.

(Plus, it’s no secret that food delivery riders have multiple phones to pick up a few orders at once for expediency and efficiency.)

Other Facebook commenters, who identified themselves as delivery riders, also lamented about the problems they faced when picking up orders from other McDonald’s outlets.

Apparently, it isn’t an uncommon problem when it comes to McDonald’s. The fast-food chain purportedly places delivery orders at the least priority, which in turn leads to longer waiting times, and possible cancellation of orders.

Some even noted that it wasn’t rare to see food delivery riders lingering around McDonald’s, “waiting like fools” just for the sake of delivering one order.

Others sneered, saying that McDonald’s deserved this treatment since it’s the direct result of their priorities. One commenter even went as far as saying, “You waste your resources and see it rot before your eyes. No one will deliver for you.”

However, some blame was tossed at Grab as well, for making their riders travel long distances to collect the food.

That’s actually true. The island-wide option may sound genius, but if it takes 40 minutes for the delivery to arrive, there’s no chance in freezing hell it will still be warm by the time the food comes.

Then there’s the entire argument about whether people dining in or people ordering take-outs should be served first, and there’s honestly no right answer to that.

The best compromise, as written by one TikTok user, is to deal with the food orders as they come, because even “a customer at home is still a customer”.

McDonald’s Response

After AsiaOne made some inquiries, the news outlet learnt that McDonald’s Singapore was aware of the incident that happened last Friday.

They explained that the collection of the food orders was “delayed” because of wet weather conditions. They added that all the delivery orders were picked up within 20 minutes of the order being prepared and set aside.

Lastly, they stated that the delivery is a popular option among their customers, and that McDonald’s is committed to getting all food orders safely delivered.

The phrase “safely delivered” is a nice word choice.

It didn’t promise how fast or slow a delivery will take to arrive, but they covered the fact that it eventually will, intact and complete.

These PR statements are sneaky. 

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Featured Image: Facebook (Rusydi Didi)