McDonald's — Restaurant in Ames

4th Update: I'm going to go online and make a direct donation to the Ronald McDonald house to compensate for the business I will not be giving this particular store. Don't dare ask for ketchup or you may get scolded and handed packets that are covered in ketchup on the outside. Fries were ice cold like day old cold. I love McDonald's and the Ronald McDonald house but you guys at this one restaurant are by far the worst I have ever been to. SMH

3rd Update: this seems to be a place that has employees who are running the business into the ground. I never used to eat McDonalds and the quality of their food is very much iffy. However, my stepbrother fell ill to cancer at a young age 40ish and the Ronald McDonald house aided him during his out of town chemo and they had nurses in house gave him lodging and food and attended to his medical needs while at the house. One er knew the amount of care they gave. I travel all over the country for work and eat McDondalds about 1 to 5 times a month and I donate whatever cash n change I have on me. I love you guys for loving my brother and taking such good care of him. It is a shame that the employees at this place care so little about their work because the bigger picture is people like my brother and not the laziness of the employees. You people at this restaurant should be embarrassed for how badly you make your place of business look to the community. People please don't avoid McDonalds all together just because this town has one filled with people who just trash the work they do, if you can call it, and trash the name of a place that has made a solid footprint in the care of people who are too sick to do anything but fight to stay alive. The employees here make me sick. Go grab a bag and start picking up the trash that litters your city it's filthy. Have some self respect

2nd Update: I called the place to tell them about my lack of fries and the call got "disconnected". So I called back and got no answer. I the tried calling from 4 different numbers and no answer...??? Now I wan some mfFries

Update: after getting back to my hotel room and look at my food the pictures below are my fries so I ordered a large fry and I got maybe maybe a medium probably not even a medium motorcycle in that container; and if you're going to give me a medium fry then charge me for a flipping medium fry but don't be a crappy business and just skin people over cuz your employees are lazy or you don't care it's just shity like somebody in this world that has to actually give what they say they're going to give if not just mark it down to something else but don't put less than a medium amount of fries and a large fry container and then expect your customer to be happy about it that sucks; that sucks that you have to have something so awesome like the Ronald McDonald house and then you have shity service like this

From Earlier: I'm so grateful for the Ronald McDonald House whenever you see McDonald's until the Ronald McDonald House help out a family member I love you guys I hear all the time and I donate thank you so much for existing...

So I got in line at roughly 2:20 Am. About 7 to 8 cars in front of me. One car leaves in the time it takes me to get to the speaker, which was roughly 30 minutes. It was at this point I learned that it was cash only for the night. I've had this issue before where during certain times of the month the computers are updating or are unuseable after a certain time of night, but it always seems random so I never know when I need to bring cash. I leave and get a 20 dollar bill and come back, less than 5 minutes spent because of them atm at Great Western across the street. I come back to wait behind 3 or 4 cars. I order my food. I wait until the guy gets to the window to take my money and he doesn't confirm the order, but the math checks out for the cost he tells me. He takes my money, comes back a few minutes later with my change (which he did say back to me), then 10 minutes later with my food. At this point, it's 3:30 and I've spent an hour at McDonald's and everything I've seen up to that point suggests that the location is severely understaffed, the workers are either moving to fast to recall basic customer service actions such as counting back change or they are undertrained, and that management has no idea how to keep people informed of what is happening at any given point as I watched nearly 30 people leave ahead of and behind me in all that time and no one seems to be able to figure out whats going on with the awful service even in...

I've been coming to this location a couple days a week for the last 3 weeks, always after 8 PM. Only once out of the 6 or 7 times I've been recently has the service been fast, efficient, and correct. Outside of this one time, it usually takes about 15-30 minutes to get up to the drive through ordering menu. This is regardless of how many people are in front of you. And then it takes another 15-20 minutes to pay and receive your order even when it's something simple and, knowing how fast food works, was something that should have been pre-prepared based on previous order volume and popularity. I understand that this location is hiring and during Covid things are just harder. So I haven't made a negative review until today. Funny how it's the fact that a very unhappy boy handed me a warm, flat drink cup only a little more than half filled that ruined the service. If you are very slow and very inefficient, the least you can do is make sure the food you give out to customers is fresh and the drinks are full and cold.

Edit: about 2 minutes after I posted, I dug into my food. The fries were old and colder than they should have been after a short drive home. They also heavily taste like old oil that hasn't been changed. I assume the cheeseburgers will be better, but these are...