McDonald's — Restaurant in Denver

In the year that I've lived in Denver, this McDonald's has the absolute worst level of service out of every McDonald's in every state I've been to.

Orders are incorrect every single time. Missing items, lack of condiments, etc. Even on a slow day. The parking lot is often filled with people waiting for their orders. Something is always broken, as if no one maintains the equipment. Staff delivering food at the window often doesn't understand English. Staff delivering to vehicles in the parking lot often do not know who the orders they are carrying belong to, nor even have the complete order in hand. This is the first time I've ever witnessed genuinely rude staff at McDonald's. It's not just a bad day, either, it's every day. Coffee is never delivered with the correct quantities of sugar and cream. How much sugar and cream you get on a given day depends entirely on the mood of the employee preparing the order. Soft drink machines are often unmaintained, and thus you will end up with seltzer water quite frequently (which confuses the staff when you tell them that your drink is seltzer water). Fries are often under-cooked, or over-cooked, and loaded with an inane amount of salt. There's a reason why the Denver area has an epidemic of blood pressure and heart failure. Everyone uses too much damn salt in everything here. Hash browns suffer from the same fate as fries, though are extra greasy. Usually has a burnt taste, as though they've been using old oil that burned a good number of fires and hash browns in its past. Finally, somehow the prices are higher here than in the DC area.

I have a running theory that this is caused by the overabundance of staff at the location. Many more people are working at this location than I've ever seen in any other, despite the fact that the location is never really that busy. It could also be lack of care for the business by the manager, or the general lack of care by staff. These kinds of issues usually start at the top.

In comparison to the average McDonald's in the DC metropolitan area, DC locations are staffed with a fraction of the number of employees, but yet manage to deliver a perfect order every single time. No one is ever told to wait in the parking lot for their order. Meanwhile here in Denver, this location handles a fraction of the number of customers, with significantly higher number of staff, getting every order incorrect.

Someone obviously hasn't read, "The Mythical Man-Month". This is a book about common sense for managers who don't understand efficiency. Assigning more people to a task does not increase the quality or speed of the task completion. In fact, in most cases, quality and speed exponentially decreases as more people are added to an assignment, until you reach the point where all you're doing is creating work, rather than doing work.

Each person on a task creates an additional communication requirement. The amount of communication required exponentially increases as more people are added to an assignment. At some point, the amount of communication required far exceeds the amount of work required. A single person will most certainly be faster than two, and two people will always be faster than three.

What happens here is that people forgo communication, orders aren't received, staff stops caring to ensure correctness of orders, and just shoves orders out the window with no questions asked. After all, you didn't really want sugar or cream in your coffee, right? I like coffee black, so you might like it too, right? You don't really want that third cheese burger, and you probably won't come back to ask for it.

Ask your managers this: if one woman takes nine months to deliver a baby, how long would it take nine women to deliver a baby? If their answer is that nine women can deliver one baby per month, it's time to either become management, or submit your resignation letter and start over...

Update : 2023

Downgrading my rating from 5⭐ to 2-⭐.

Ordered via kiosk Quarter Pounder with everything as it is offered EXCEPT for NO ONIONS.

Got these 2 pitiful Quarter Pounders w/med fries for $15++ rounded up to $16. (see pictures posted)

Just the bun, patties and pickle.

In my previous review, I was so happy with the changes in-store BUT (!), am now revising my rating also due to the fact that order #s are shouted out by staff AND (!), one can hardly hear what order number is being called out due to the LOUD noise of customers.

I would think that McDonald's would have the foresight of having a sound system/microphone to use especially during peak hours.

Totally disappointed .

Update Aug 2022

Giving credit to the changes done to this branch.

So, from 3-stars to 5-stars.

First, overall area have been expanded, easing the very problematic parking and drive-thru specially peak times.

Second, though (inside) counter/front decreased in size, self-ordering kiosks/stands were added. These for me also contributed to faster in-out speed for customers. Just my take, based on my recent visits.

Also, the old McDonald's decor/feel was revamped. Not a lot of red/orange/yellow but, more muted/sombre colors. This I am on the fence about .... maybe, it's just the nostalgia of kinda losing the old McDonald's feeling.

All in all, I give it my thumbs up.

Update February 2019

Will premise this review by saying my husband brought home a Swiss Mushroom Burger and I loved it.

So, dropped by for takeout and ordered 2 of the Swiss Mushroom Burger.

Was thrown off the loop when I was asked for my choice of either beef or crispy (was there another menu item of the Swiss Mushroom?).

Here's the reason for the low rating, order taken was for only 1 and when I went back to order another, the same staff told me I didn't say 2 (Not a great way to make a customer feel good about themselves.).

And here is a picture of the Swiss Mushroom Burger. Where are the mushrooms?

2018 review: Only drawback from making it 5 star is parking. Otherwise this branch is above most McDonald's in...

I can't recommend you stay away from this location enough. I have had nothing but horrible experiences at this McDonalds and I'm finally done trying to give them a chance to recover. The last 4/4 orders have been wrong and I have a relatively simple order (plain cheeseburger) and it ALWAYS comes with onions somehow among the other toppings. The first time I came here after moving, I received a literal RAW burger that was bleeding. It wasn't just 'pink' or anything, it was literally bleeding through the box. The next time my fries were obviously 'double-fried' which turned them into cardboard. My order today had a tiny hair in the fries. Granted that can happen anywhere and it's not always controllable but added to all my other experiences here, it seems about par for course. The cheeseburger today had enough mayo to be considered it's own patty, like how do keep messing up a PLAIN cheeseburger order? You're literally doing more work to mess the order up than to just send it out.

McDonalds team, I don't think it's hard to look up my previous orders and see I've been to McDonalds at least 200-300 times at other locations in the past year since I order through the app. This store was enough to turn me off permanently. Bad service, absolutely terrible food, and just not worth the hassle anymore. Avoid at all costs or risk wasting your money. Go to Wendys, Sonic, Burger King nearby as I've had better experiences at all of those compared to...