McDonald's — Restaurant in Esquimalt

I wanted to share the experience I had with this location. I am a courier delivering food to customers. Before I had picked up from the location, I read their instructions: “Please proceed to drive through to collect your order, have your order # ready. Do not enter inside as our dining room is closed”. I drove through Drive-Thru and told employee that I wanted to pick up my order. I gave her order #. She started explaining me to go to the end of the driveway and collect order there. I told her that’s not the instructions they provided and since the order was ready and I was in the driveway could she hand over the order to me? She refused and continuing answering my questions with a question. I moved on to the end of the driveway as directed by her and parked there. I asked another employee where to pick up the order as it still was not clear for me if I was in the right spot to wait. He just pointed out to me to go around the corner. I went there and parked the vehicle at designated spot. Order suppose to be ready there however I continued waiting for another 15 minutes. Not seeing my order, I went inside the restaurant. Surprisingly the order was left at the door inside the restaurant. One of the employees who was dispensing orders by Drive-Thru window saw me waiting there and he did not come to me and did not tell me that I should go inside the restaurant to collect the order. The 2nd person who left the order in the bag inside did not bother to come out to hand it to me. While I was waiting for the orde rI saw employee coming out to hand over order for a customer or courier. After seeing the bag left inside, I approached an employee and let her know that they should have given better instructions to the couriers? I told her that I was waiting there for 15 minutes and no one came out to give me the order. She did not apologize nor acknowledged what I had to say. She mumbled something like: “I do not know what you are talking about”? Well I do not know why she was there in the first place. I had quite opposite experience with McDonalds in Uptown. I also went through Drive through. Employee agreed to give the order however she instructed me next time to go inside. Here is my conclusion to McDonalds at 1149 Esquimalt Rd. Couriers are not sort of inferior clients so please stop treating them like that. They are same like other customers. They come on behalf of the customers who paid for their order and expect to have it delivered ASAP. Lots of couriers are new and they rely on your instructions. They are not always clear. They are clear for you who work there and are familiar with the building. Poor staff reflects on poor management. I will avoid this location...

Update #2: During Pride Week, a young person of my acquaintance went to this location as a convenient and easy-to-find meeting point for friends who were busing in. This person sat down to wait and a 50-ish woman came out of a door within a minute or two and took a good look, went into another door, then came out again and told this young person to leave. Was it the coloured hair? Was it the fact that she wasn't immediately sure if the customer was male or female? I didn't think this location couldn't get any worse but I didn't allow for transphobia.

Update: my partner went in to this location this morning for a quick breakfast sandwich and there was a sock on the floor behind the counter in the food prep area! The staff were loudly joking about it but did nothing to clean it up. Gross!

I don't know what's going on with this location but their usual mediocre service has gone downhill. It used to be that I simply wouldn't order hashbrowns here because they would invariably be dripping so much grease the bag would soak through and rip. I only really like their coffee anyway.

McDonald's coffee is pretty good. Most of the time. For the last month at this location sadly the coffee I've been receiving has been bad. The brew itself seems fine, it's that the employees suddenly can't follow instructions! I ordered an extra large half coffee, half hot chocolate. He acted like he'd never heard of such a thing. I explained to the person taking my order that I did not like the Cafe Mocha as it was too sweet. Eventually he seemed to understand and I pulled up to the last window to be handed a large (not extra large) cafe mocha with whipped cream. I drank it but I didn't feel too good after. Today I ordered a medium double double. Simple, right? Not for this crew! I drove away unfortunately before tasting it otherwise I would have taken it back. One sip and the cloying sweetness of artificial sweetener filled my throat. It was absolutely gross. I had my partner taste it to make sure it wasn't just me but he was disgusted by the taste too. That coffee got dumped at the next stop. How do you screw up a...

Visit 3 (March 2022): The service has just gone downhill even more. Their management does not care about teaching the employees to properly make a burger. Can't even get a McDouble without the slice of cheese on the top of the 2 patties, mixed with the ketchup, pickles and mustard. I don't work there and never have, and even I know the cheese is SUPPOSED TO GO BETWEEN THE PATTIES. The staff constantly clears the monitor of orders, causing them to fall behind because they miss someone's order. Or they mix up people's orders because of this.

Don't eat here, it's horrible. They trick head office into thinking they're a fast location, yet they take longer than any other McDonalds that I've been to. They will mess up your order in some way or another, even if it's just a single item.

Visit 2: Another visit, another group of useless staff... Paid for a regular McFlurry and when I received my order it was only filled up 2/3 of the way to the top of the cup, not even the lid. Took 15 minutes for my order when there was a guy waiting for literally just a cheeseburger in front of me for 10 minutes as well.

Visit 1: The cooks apparently can't read because I've had so many problems at this location yet I keep giving it another chance. Ordered a burger with extra jalapenos (that had them in the freakin' name!) and it came with none. Then today I ordered the same burger with extra tomatoes and they only gave me the one tomato it comes with. Not to mention how many times they've messed up my coffee with two sugars and two creams by not adding the sugar, or serving me a cup of 4 hour old lukewarm coffee. Come on guys, this is basic...