Recent reviews of the three McDonald’s locations in Altoona, Pennsylvania, are all one star.
“This place has rats in the kitchen that will make you sick and your insurance won’t cover it,” said a “local guide” who left a review on Google.
“Don’t stop here if you’re an American hero. They will sell you,” said another.
“More like Narc-donalds…. I hope obesity and heart disease are in-network in PA. Deny, defend, depose, diarrhea @ McDonald’s,” said a third.
One of these McDonald’s was the location where police arrested Luigi Mangione, a person of interest in the Dec. 4 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Everyone who has ever interacted with the American health insurance system hates it, and Mangione has become an Internet folk hero since last week’s murder.
The press, the police and experts analyze his life, but the public finds new reasons to love him and expresses their displeasure at his arrest by posting bad reviews. The Daily Beast reported that Google is removing negative reviews for McDonald’s, but many are still around and it is still possible to leave reviews for the restaurants. I’ve reached out to Google to find out how they’re handling the situation, but haven’t heard back.
Yelp is handling it one way different way. The site has completely closed reviews for Altoona locations, but all the old reviews are still there. If you try to check reviews for these McDonald’s on Yelp, you will receive an “Unusual Activity Alert.”
“This business has recently received increased public attention, which often means people come to this page to post their opinions on the news,” the pop-up says. “While we do not take one position or the other regarding this incident, we have temporarily disabled the posting of content on this page while we work to investigate whether the content you see here reflects actual consumer experiences rather than reality.” recent events. Please note that we apply this same policy regardless of the business and issues involved.”
To me, it’s really fun to see that Yelp doesn’t take a stance one way or the other on whether a murder is good or bad. Is this an automated message that is deployed every time something like this happens? Yes. But I think this was perhaps a moment that required the human touch.
Yelp hasn’t finished going through old reviews and there are pages of them. Some of them are funny, some are sad, but they all express anger at American health care and their support for Mangioni. “Avoid this McDonald’s, they are out of your network,” the first one-star review said. “This food will send you to an early death and no health insurance will cover that; they are in the denial business.”
“The staff were rude and they called the police on my friend Luigi,” said another. “There were rats everywhere.”
Some are long, epic, shitty posts that compete with the best green texts on 4chan. “I will never eat at this McDonald’s again. I went to buy a Big Mac and instead watched Officer Snitchy McSnitch (employee of the month) call the police on a HERO. “The guy was just enjoying his McNuggets after literally uniting Americans, but this cashier called 911 faster than he had ever called a McFlurry,” my favorite said.
The reviewer continued: “The fries were cold, like this employee’s heart. I heard he was promoted to assistant manager for his “exceptional citizenship,” probably with a hall monitor sash and a lifetime supply of McMoral Flexibility. And of course the ice cream machine was broken, although not as broken as my faith in humanity after witnessing this. At least Wendy’s is minding its business. PS: The Hamburglar would be ashamed of you, Officer McSnitch. At least he only stole hamburgers.”