McDonalds has deep pockets

My son loves McDonalds. He’s 5, so he has not developed acute culinary tastes, yet. He likes it for the Play Area. OK. I can suck it up and allow him to romp in an area made just for kids. He’ll have some fun.

Saturday, I take the young one to the Mickey-D’s on Belt Line near Plano Parkway. I pass it on a pretty regular basis and have always thought that the play area looked cool (kind of a central American jungle/Jurassic Park look to it). We get in there and the design is actually the worst in the world.

First off, the tables are tall with tall chairs. Kids that are shorter than 5 feet tall are going to have a problem getting into and out of these chairs. Shit, ADULTS were having trouble! My son was sitting on the edge, as he is 5 and excited to be in the play area, and slipped off the chair, pushing his arm (which was resting on the table) up at an awkward angle and height. Great crying ensued as he was in some noteworthy pain.

Along the back wall is a slide that is about 12 to 15 feet tall. Kids climb through the plastic maze to get to the slide and slide down. Great fun, as my son reported to me numerous times after sliding down. I watch and proceed to get pissed as several kids ranging in age from 3 to 12 start walking up the slide to get to the top instead of taking the ladder-maze thing! Kids are trying to slide DOWN the slide! At the base of the slide is a wall with a long bench on it. This is where the “parents” sit to “supervise” their children. NONE – NOT ONE – of these ….. these ….. BREEDERS (I now know what the CL poster meant by the difference in Parents and Breeders!) says anything to ANY of the children. So I do.

I get up, walk over to the bottom of the slide and yell up to all of the children that the slide is one way – DOWN! Walking up the slide is rude and dangerous to the children doing the walking as well as the children sliding down. I know the offending kids heard me; they all looked at me. I know the Breeders heard me; I wasn’t 2 feet in front of them and yelling over the din of laughing and screaming children. I walk away talking – very loudly to myself (in typical passive/aggressive style) about how I will have to step up and parent everyone’s children as none of them are doing it!

I get back to the table and look back and see that my son is now stuck in a traffic jam as another 10 year old looking fucker is walking up the slide and has stopped traffic 4-5 kids deep. I go get the manager and use key words like liability, safety violation, injury and lawsuit. The manager still says that there is nothing he can do, as the moment he walks away from the kids, they will just do it again.

This apathetic managerial style is unacceptable to me, so I pack up my son and we are out of there. I know that the loss of my patronage will do nothing to impact the profits of this internationally recognized and age-old institution of a fast food chain, but I urge ALL people to voice their disgust at poor to pathetic service.

Bad design, bad parenting and bad managing are making this great looking play area a lawsuit waiting to happen.