McDonald’s Just Made A Big Change And Customers Are Furious

A couple of months ago, we brought you the news that things were changing at McDonald’s. The change in question? Its stores were being redesigned. In addition to announcing that it was bringing back the Playplace, McDonald’s stated that it would be revamping the overall design of its restaurants as part of its NEXT initiative, which will see it introducing the next generation of its locations in the very near future, complete with new seating areas and collection windows. 

Videos by Sporked

Well, it looks as though McDonald’s has started to execute some of these changes – and people really aren’t happy. Let’s talk about it. 

Comfy Seating? Never Heard Of Her

Last week, a McDonald’s customer jumped on Reddit to point out that their local restaurant had changed some of its seating, and things were now more uncomfortable than ever. In the Reddit post, the customer provided a picture of the new seats in their restaurant: Hard, gray plastic chairs with metal legs. These, the customer said, replaced the cushioned benches that used to sit there. 

If you compare the picture provided to the images we previously saw when McDonald’s announced its NEXT initiative, they’re slightly different. The real-life chairs look markedly more unwelcoming and dystopian, with no padding whatsoever. As yet, it’s unclear whether these are temporary replacements or whether McDonald’s is now leading with this design across all of its restaurants – and while it’s not unreasonable to expect there to be some minor variation across some of its stores, the picture of these chairs provoked a lot of discussion. 

What Kind Of Discussion?

Well, discussion which mainly revolved around how it increasingly feels that McDonald’s is trying to make its restaurants places you want to spend as little time in as possible. “That’s because they don’t want you eating there, or at the very least getting comfortable and sticking around,” said one highly-rated comment, while another simply and bluntly said, “McDonald’s hates its customers.” There was also much talk about the prison-esque vibe of the chairs.

Other people did counsel giving the restaurant chain the benefit of the doubt, and pointing out that these could be stand-ins until the previous bench was repaired. And that may well be true. But given how much criticism the chain has received in recent years for making its stores feel corporate and characterless, for a lot of people, this is yet another example of it.