McDonald's Subtle TikTok Reference Has Twitter Confused
If you've never worked a fast food drive-thru, then you might not realize how challenging the job is. Workers need to match the right food with the right car, talk to people at their window, and listen to orders as they come through their headset. Plus, there's something about those headsets and outside microphones that actually make hearing the customer really difficult. HM Electronics even published a 10-page paper outlining the many ways a drive-thru conversation might be hard to hear (which results in incorrect orders and a loss of business).
While the fast food industry takes this problem seriously, TikTok just thinks its funny. A viral TikTok video from November 2020, viewed 3 million times now, shows a woman at a Wendy's drive thru asking, "Do you speak Spanish?" The employee replies, "Do we sell lettuce? Yes, we have lettuce." The customer laughs so hard, she has to drive away.
The same sort of wildly bad miscommunication happened at a McDonald's drive-thru recently, and McDonald's Twitter picked up on the joke — which just resulted in more miscommunication and mass confusion. Let's piece together how McDonald's posted a photo of a Sausage McMuffin on Twitter with the caption, "Try the new blue raspberry slushie!"
Hey, McDonald's Twitter, that's not a Slushie
A video posted to TikTok a month ago by @heyitssarahw has been watched more than 13 million times. It's a front seat passenger's-eye view of a drive-thru transaction at McDonald's. The driver refuses to add one more item to the order for the passenger, so the passenger has to yell it into the microphone for themselves, stumbling over their words a little bit: "Can I also have a small blues ra — blue raspberry slushie?" After a pause, the employee on the speaker responds, "a Sausage McMuffin?" Cue the laughter, but some commenters on TikTok sympathized with the employee. One said, "Go work headset for a day, so many things make it hard to hear."
McDonald's Twitter decided it would laugh along with the many fans of the viral TikTok video, posting a photo of a Sausage McMuffin but identifying it as a "blue raspberry slushie."
McDonald's Twitter followers, not getting the reference, lined up to point out the apparent mistake. "I guess you posted the wrong pic," Twitter user "Pree" replied. "Anyways keep struggling." Another Twitter user who goes by "Kyle" tried to help by grabbing an image of the Minute Maid Blue Raspberry Slushie McDonald's sells and tweeting, "I think you meant to post this?" McDonald's was ready for Kyle: "That's a Sausage McMuffin."