Mum's 'disgusting' find while eating McDonald's fries: 'Spat it out'
A concerned mother has spoken out about a "dangerous" find in her McDonalds fries, which were purchased at a children’s hospital branch.
The mother, who asked not to be identified, reached out to Yahoo News earlier this week, saying that she purchased the meal at the McDonalds at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.
“My child is on oxygen, I just wanted to get something to eat that night,” she said.
The mother said she purchased a meal from the restaurant about 15 minutes before closing time, and went back into her daughter’s hospital room and began eating her fries.
“I got to the bottom of my chips and I felt something hard in my mouth, which I immediately spat out, and I saw that it was a fingernail,” she said.
The woman found an entire fake nail, which did not belong to her, sitting at the bottom of her packet of fries.
“I was dry retching for ages, it’s absolutely disgusting that it was there in the first place, and I spoke to some nurses who were also disgusted,” she said.
The mother became concerned that her immunocompromised child may have been seriously injured if she had consumed the meal.
“I actually put in an incident report with the hospital because if my child had eaten this she could have choked - it’s extremely dangerous,” she said.
“This is a McDonald's at a children’s hospital, this is not ok.”
McDonald's has previously come under fire for a similar incident in a NSW store, where a mother noticed a team member’s identification badge sitting in the bottom of her drink upon finishing it.
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Mum frustrated with McDonald's complaint process: ‘trying to shoosh me’
The frustrated mother has slammed McDonald's complaints process, after a stressful two week ordeal with the fast food chain.
“The next morning I spoke to a manager who collected the fingernail and said sorry - I was never asked if I wanted a refund,” she said.
“I wasn’t satisfied with this, because I asked how it could have happened and no one would answer me.”
The mother requested a manager’s contact details from the store, placed a complaint through the McDonald's app, and made multiple calls to the McDonald's customer service number.
“Two weeks passed and I did nothing but chase them,” she said.
“Eventually I had a manager call me and ask me what I wanted from them, and I said I don’t want anything, just an apology and an explanation on how this could happen.”
In response to the phone call, the woman said she was not offered an explanation, but was instead told that she’d be receiving some vouchers.
“I don’t want vouchers, this is disgusting - over two weeks of messing around and I got 2 $10 vouchers and no explanation,” she said.
“I don’t feel like they took this seriously and I feel like they’re trying to shoosh me up.”
Since the incident, which occurred on October 13, Yahoo News Australia understands that the mother has since been offered a refund.
McDonald's responds to fingernail incident
A McDonald's representative has told Yahoo News that McDonald's has since launched an investigation into the fingernail incident.
“McDonald’s takes food and drink safety extremely seriously and we are disappointed to hear of the customer’s experience,” the representative said.
“Our employees follow strict cleaning, sanitisation, quality control and hygiene procedures to ensure our restaurants remain safe for our staff and customers.
“We have apologised to the customer and provided a full refund and additional gift vouchers to compensate. We are conducting an investigation into how this occurred.”
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