McDonald's — Restaurant in City of Utica

Get a chair and some popcorn cause this is a long one...

What food? What service? What atmosphere? 0 Stars if I could.

I choose to get Mc Donald's today 11/1/2025. I parked my car for a few minutes put my order in online I ordered a Quarter Pounder Meal Medium with a Sprite. I was excited because by the time I was done placing my order the drive thru line had gone down. My order was placed at 5:33PM. I sat in drive thru for over 20 minutes waiting to get my food. I said hello into the speaker and I even subtly turned the music up a bit to indicate I was in drive thru. I am not sure if they have headsets that beep when someone moves over the drive thru pad, maybe the batteries died in the headset and they forgot, who knows maybe they had a CODE BROWN at an inconvenient time. If I would have had some kind of human interaction I could have understood better. I didn't get a "hey man we are really busy at the counter inside" or "we had a bunch of people call out we are short staffed tonight it's going to be a little bit of a wait." I pulled up to the drive thru first window to see if anyone was there I ordered online and didn't really care about getting a receipt I just wanted to know if everyone quit and I had to go inside to make my own food. I got the second window to see 3 workers inside 1 at the counter 1 making food 1 filling drinks and possibly working drive thru. I think the soda machines since they got removed from the dining room the only place to fill up drinks is now by drive thru. I know the person there saw me multiple times he probably thought I was some asshole but all of this review could have been avoided if they simply COMMUNICATED what was going on. Sucks that I paid online so I have to wait 7-10 days to get my money back. Sucks for the Golden Arches too because they lost my business tonight and I drove up the street to Taco Bell and gave them my money instead. I will attach some pictures one of them is quite hilarious because it shows how busy they are and it says "less busy" yeah I agree because they ignored everyone. I watched maybe 10 cars leave the drive thru during my 21 minute wait time.

Thanks for coming to...

To the daytime manager of this McDonald's restaurant,

Recently, we were passing through Utica on our way to the Adirondacks and found your restaurant to be a convenient location for us to stop for a quick lunch. The time of day was approximately 11:45 a.m. (lunchtime). We entered to find approximately six customers in your dining area and four employees working in the kitchen/prep area. We ordered two #6 fish filet meals, medium size, for a total cost of a few cents shy of $20.00. Here's what happened next:

Both fish sandwiches were cold, to the point where the cheese had not melted on either. Both containers of French fries were cold and rubbery, as if they had been reheated from the previous night's dinner hour. As we needed to wait a considerable amount of time to receive our lunch, we decided not to return any of it as we were in somewhat of a hurry to eat and run. The food was, in a descriptive term, disgusting. Finishing up as best we could, a trip to the rest room for each of us was necessary before leaving. Here, I found no hot water coming from the sink in the men's room, and no hot air coming from the hand dryer (the outside ambient temperature at the time was around 12° F at the time). I have never experienced a hand dryer that didn't produce warm air. As we returned to the car, we agreed that nothing about this lunchtime experience was worth pulling into your parking area.

A suggestion for you, daytime manager. Pay attention to the quality of your restaurant. You have competition in Utica, and if you want your local customers to leave you for that competition, do nothing about the incredibly awful experience we 'enjoyed' at your restaurant. We won't be back. Your competition has won us over for our next...

We came to this restaurant at 9:30 P.m. to grab some food we stood at the counter for five minutes and no one came so we yelled out. Can someone come take our order please only to be greeted by someone that could only be described as a zombie who looked at the cash register did not look up did not take our order and walked away, finally a young girl who had the manners of a snake, walked up and took our order. We asked if she could send someone out to clean a table because every table in the restaurant was filthy. There were no other people in the restaurant but us she told me she would give us tissue to clean the table as they were understaffed. We told her we don’t work here. Can you please send someone out and she told us no so we asked for a manager this man came out with a cloth rolled up in a ball and tried to clean the table pitifully so much so that my friend took the cloth from him to finish the job correctly we waited over 20 minutes and did not receive our food. The bathrooms were disgustingly dirty the garbage cans overflowing finally we decided we wanted a refund and yelled over-the-counter for someone to get the manager that same girl who was very ignorant said, you can’t come behind the counter and said the managers busy he’ll come when he can. We finally received our refund and left the restaurant without any food. A half an hour of wasted time this place should be condemned. It was the worst experience I have ever had in a hospitality environment , I cannot believe looking at all the reviews here that McDonald’s corporate office has not done something as this reflects on their name and their brand and I will be sure to let people know to avoid this restaurant...