McDonald’s and me

This is McDonald’s in Belgrade on a rainy day in winter 1988. Quite a bright structure set in a drab city. At that time McDonald’s was a good safety net to a young backpacker. Cheap food, predictable food, and best of all, free clean toilets.

I would eat McDonald’s far too often as my main meal of the day. Typically I would visit a store in the morning, buy bread and cheese, and this would serve as breakfast and lunch. This would keep me going until the early evening when I would indulge in culinary extravegance at the local McDonald’s. I even collected the place settings on one trip: Greek, Turkish, Serbo-Croat, Italian among others – they are still in a draw somewhere. Yet now, I haven’t touched McDonald’s food for over 7 years, and the smell of it turns my stomach, such is the association with fat and poor quality in my mind.

My most memorable McDonald’s experience was in Warsaw in 1992, when the first one in Poland was opening. It was such a grand occasion that my cousin, who I was visiting at the time, suggested we go and check it out. We went on day 2, and the queue to enter stretched around the block! They even had bouncers at the door (we inquired, and were told it was to keep the gypsies out, as a major influx from Romania had led to a wave of street crime at that time). People had even dressed up for the event – can you imagine??

My love affair with fast food came to a rapid halt when my job took me up and down the motorways of England. 40,000 miles a year and no time to stop anywhere other than the burger joints on the motorway. Two years and 15kgs later I could take no more, and have never been tempted back. Except for one function.

Toilets. McDonald’s serves an excellent role to the traveller who is passing through a city and doesn’t want to shell out a dollar for a pee. In almost every city you can still wander into a McD’s and innocently drift into the restrooms without attracting the staff’s attention. You not only enjoy a free toilet break, but they are generally clean, and certainly compared to most municipal toilets. Some stores have taken great lengths to prevent this violation of their business, with Parisian outlets known to have a lock on the door and the need to obtain a security code from the cashier to visit the loo. This falls apart however when tourists club together and tell the whole line of waiting people the elusive numbers. It’s hardly surprising that McDonald’s go to this length when people have been known to have a body wash using the McWash.

I don’t have many good things to say about this chain of fast food vendors (I can’t bring myself to use the term restaurant – come on…), but their toliets have saved my discomfort on many occasions. Do I feel bad for misusing them? Only a little. I did, after all, build up a bank of goodwill through my excessive custom at their “restaurants” for many many years. So on behalf of all those who find themselves in a strange part of the world and needing the loo, “Keep the free toilet folks – we’re loving it!”