This McDonald's Food Is Actually Free, According To A Former Worker

After the rise of COVID-19, the fast food industry saw a surge in prices on account of several factors such as labor costs and an increase in the prices of ingredients including eggs, meat, fish, poultry, and more. According to Business Insider, several fast food chains were affected such as Chipotle, McDonald's, Taco Bell, and The Cheesecake Factory among others. McDonald's saw an 8% increase in its prices and customers took to social media to complain about the fact that fast food eateries are a lot more pricey than they used to be.

One Redditor noted, "The price of a burger (à la carte) at McDonald's now, was the price of a whole value meal a few years ago" while another commentator opined, "I've noticed the only way around this is to order off value menus or on the restaurant apps."

Well, according to a TikTok user who claims to have previously worked at McDonald's, there's at least one menu item that's supposed to be offered for free at every outlet.

She says that pickles are supposed to be free

A TikToker called @halalfoodsydney from Australia posted a video in January, claiming that she worked for McDonald's as a teenager and there were some things that many customers weren't aware of. She gave an example and said that her team occasionally claimed that the ice cream machine had broken down but this wasn't the case and "someone accidentally put shake mix into the ice cream mix." 

Also, she claimed that pickles are a free item at McDonald's and stated, "...Pickles are free, so you can actually go and ask for like a whole tub of it. We used to get pregnant women coming in all the time."

However, other TikTok users weren't convinced. Someone wrote, "Pickles are 50 cents each so now a cup can cost like quite a bit." 

Meanwhile, a Redditor was in for a surprise when they were given 25 pickles after asking for extra pickles on their burger (they admitted in a comment that they were overjoyed by the outcome). In another thread, a pregnant lady wondered whether she would be able to purchase pickles from McDonald's because she was craving them and was eventually able to get her hands on a medium-sized cup of pickles.