This McDonald's Ordering Hack Is A Quick Way To Get On Employees' Bad Side

Are you the type who sends your breakfast back if the toast is touching your eggs? Do you order your salad with the bacon extra crispy, hold the cheese, no avocado, sub romaine for the mixed greens, add tomato (slices, not wedges), gluten-free croutons, please, with the dressing on the side? That's okay. You're still not a restaurant worker's worst nightmare. In fact, there's a good chance no staffer will even bother to snot in your soup. But according to a Reddit page dedicated to McDonald's employees, one of the surest ways to be considered annoying is if you order your fries unsalted. The person taking your order might be salty about that.

Granted, if you have high blood pressure or are legitimately trying to lower your sodium intake, go ahead and ask for those fries salt-free. No one could blame you. But employees report that ordering fries without salt is a popular hack, used by many McDonald's regulars, to get the very freshest fries. Since fries that have been sitting there under the heat lamp are already salted, getting the no-salt variety means that someone will have to make you new ones on the spot, even if the restaurant is slammed. So don't be surprised if you get some major side-eye — especially if you then turn around and ask for salt packets to go with your freshly made, saltless fries, as some people allegedly do.

Some employees point out that McDonald's fries are usually pretty darn fresh anyway. The maximum allowed time for those perfectly cut french fries to sit unserved — if the restaurant follows protocol — is seven minutes, per self-proclaimed McDonald's workers on the Reddit post. But in the midst of lunch and dinner rushes, or perhaps when there's a sudden fry-craving crowd coming in, fries circulate more quickly. There's no time for them to get stale and mushy, and fresh fries are being made all the time to replace those going out to customers. So you're likely to get them hot and fresh from the frier (hopefully cooked in fresh frying oil as well) without having to be "that" customer and order them salt-free.

When in doubt, McDonald's employees on Reddit say you can order your fries — or anything else on the menu, for that matter — to be made cook-to-order, which, of course, means they'll make it right then, so it's guaranteed fresh. No need to make any waves by trying to be sneaky with an annoying ordering hack. Just be willing to wait the time needed for the food to be made without complaints — another pet peeve for some workers. And if the real reason you order your fries without salt (but with a side of salt packets) is that you prefer to have them lightly salted to your taste, not the mega-salty way they sometimes come out of the fry station, well then, be upfront about it. Salt or no salt, you'll ruffle fewer feathers if you're just honest. And patient. And nice. And that's a hack we could all use.