KaiDecember 1, 2017

McFury: the terrible and quite funny history of misbehaviour at McDonald’s

Contributing writer

A New Zealand man was charged this week with drink driving after a chicken nugget-inspired rampage in a Sydney McDonald’s. As a quick Google reveals, he wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last to lose his shit at the Golden Arches.

McDonald’s is truly the great equaliser: no matter what car you take through the drivethru, you’re still in a McDonald’s drivethru. There is no elitism at Maccy Ds – special sauce will stain overalls and suit jacket alike. Empty calories care nothing for your income or net worth.

McDonald’s is also where we reveal our truly horrid nature, our inner urges boiling forth and frothing over as the outward manifestations of our malicious and animalistic id. Gluttony is encouraged – nay, celebrated – and inside those greasy walls we reduce ourselves to primal beasts with nary a concern for decorum. Some of us, however, take it a little further than others.

We present to you a brief summary of McDonald’s related misbehaviours from just the past 18 months, starting with a case settled as recently as lunchtime today.

Wainuiomata man Rei Enoka was in the market for 40 chicken nuggets, and swung past a local McDonald’s to get the goods. After leaving the drivethru he realised however he’d been shortchanged by 20 nuggies, fully half of his order, and returned in a fury twenty minutes later. After refusing a refund he pelted a staff member with a nugget and proceeded to abuse bystanders. He was originally charged with threatening to kill and common assault, but today plead guilty to a reduced charge of intimdating behaviour.

In other chicken-related news, Kiwi vegan Kane Olsen, now a local Sydney battler, was charged this week for going on a nugget-fueled rampage at the Thornleigh McDonald’s on Sydney’s north shore. After learning there were no nuggets available on the breakfast menu he is reported to have circled the drivethru abusing people and sitting on the horn before ordering 200 hash browns and parking his car in a tiff.

Before the manager could deliver the payload however, Olsen hopped out, made a break for the store and started screaming at staff atrocious things like “you are fucking gay” and “I am going to fuck you all up,” which is pretty tough talk for a drunk vegan.

The Daily Telegraph said Olsen would not comment on whether he would be eating at McDonald’s again, or if he would apologise to the McDonald’s staff he abused.

Magistrate Daniel Reiss blamed it all on the drugs, saying police reported Olsen as having bloodshot eyes and dilated pupils, but that sounds like a standard case of chicken nuggy fever to me.

And Olsen isn’t the only nuggy fiend causing trouble at McDs. Back in January, Jacob Martin Geels, 22, was fined for disorderly behaviour in the Greymouth District Court, after a rampage in a Hokitika McDonald’s. When his nuggets didn’t materialise in a timely fashion, Geels jumped on the counter with duel-wielded nerf guns, shot foamy projectiles at staff and screamed obscenities at everyone within earshot.

Judge Murfitt said while the guns may have been toys for four-year-olds, “that was the level of maturity [Geels] displayed”.

Judge Murfitt said he accepted there was no malice intended and that it was a prank and fined Geels $100.

It’s not all fun and games though. Chills frontman Martin Phillipps was convicted of drink driving earlier this year after getting nabbed by the fuzz on a drunken Maccas run. In Phillipps defence there’s no Uber in Dunedin, and when that nuggy fever strikes…

Unlike Phillipps, South Canterbury shepherd Daniel Charles Greenwood made it all the way to the restaurant, only to fall asleep at the wheel, blocking the drivethru for at least 20 minutes.

“Greenwood told police he had “mixed brews”, but had only drunk three standard drinks,” reported Stuff.

The coma and the maccas would indicate otherwise. Oh and his blood alcohol level was almost twice the limit.

In March the Lincoln Road McDonald’s was robbed. Then in August three men armed with axes and a shotgun stormed McDonald’s Kaikohe, forcing employees to hand over bags of cash. The same month, axe-wielding assailants stormed the Rototuna McDonald’s in Hamilton. In October a man pulled into the Mount Roskill McDonald’s drivethru and threatened to shoot employees if they didn’t hand over free food.

Perhaps none of that is as egregious however as these wowsers from June last year, who foisted guilt and shame on the customers of a Hamilton McDonald’s for an entire weekend, sleeping in boxes and starving themselves while customers gorged on grease and empty calories.

“Students from Waikato Diocesan School for Girls and St Paul’s Collegiate School last night slept in boxes at the fast-food restaurant in Hamilton and will stay again tonight while they continue the famine,” reported the Herald.

What a pack of shits. McDonald’s truly brings out the worst in us all.

Keep going!

SocietyDecember 1, 2017

The Spinoff reviews New Zealand #50: LaCroix, the internet’s favourite drink

The Spinoff Board of Review

⚖️

We review the entire country and culture of New Zealand, one thing at a time. Today, Henry Oliver drinks a Crate Day’s worth of LaCroix, millennials’ favourite sparkling water, which has just arrived in New Zealand.

Napkins are dead: to begin with.

And crowdfunding is dead. McWraps are dead. Golf, holidays, the wine cork, they are all dead, and call centres are dead. The EU and the American Dream are both dead. Banks are dead. Focus groups are dead. The suit, fashion, and class are all dead. Retail, dead. Canadian tourism is dead. Democracy and movies are dead.

All killed, we’re told, by millennials’ sexless hedonism and relentless entitlement.

And you know what else millennials are apparently killing? Soda. Fizzy drink. Pop. Coke. Pepsi. Fanta even.

Why? Because sugar. Sugar is now the worst thing in the world. And even though, for decades, the sugar industry, Big Sugar, has been able to deflect any attention it didn’t want onto our old enemy fat (largely through smear campaigns and millions of dollars of conflicted-of-interest science).

But young people know as much as anyone how important hydration is and how terribly boring and off-personal-brand it is to drink the water that comes out of the tap, so they – or at least those in America – have started drinking LaCroix, an ever-so-lightly flavoured yet sugar-, calorie- and sodium-free sparkling water.

In the last two years, LaCroix, which was launched in the early ’90s and marketed at health-conscious midwestern housewives, has become the internet’s favourite drink. Its meme-ready, Solo Jazz-esque branding is all over Instagram. New flavours are tweeted about incessantly. YouTube is awash with videos arguing about how to pronounce the name (it’s ‘la-CROY’, rhyming with ‘enjoy’, not ‘la-qwah’, as in “LaCroix, sweetie”). There are more rankings of LaCroix flavours than my four-year-old can count. Unfunny late-night host Jimmy Fallon loves it. Habitual apologist Lena Dunham loves it (or maybe just Hannah Horvath does). And now, my fellow New Zealand-bound consumer, you can love it too.

Extra-keen local internetters have been buying cases off Fishpond for the last few months but a week or so ago, word spread that Countdown is selling a small selection of LaCroix’s 22 flavours by the case. So, in the interests of public service journalism, I bought a case of each of the flavours on offer (except Pure – we all know what “pure” sparkling water tastes like), lugging them up the many stairs to Spinoff HQ. And now, after much tasting, drinking, and mocking laughs from my colleagues every time I cracked one open, I report my findings from best to worst.

Lime

Lime is the most accessible flavour – the fruit we’re most used to just have a hint of, given their exorbitant price. And that’s all you get here. Lime LaCroix makes those yuck flavoured H2Go waters taste like flavour bombs. It’s refreshing with a noticeable-enough taste to make you feel like you’re modestly treating yourself but not so flavourful that you tire of it easily. I drunk three in an afternoon with ease. It was also the first flavour to disappear from the office fridge, so the wisdom of the crowd and all that…

Coconut

Coconut is the most flavoured of these not-very-flavoured drinks. Its flavour is somewhere in between sunscreen and those fancy coconut waters that tanned young people used to buy for $6. Which is to say, it’s pleasant but you don’t want to down multiple cans in a row. Perhaps that’s why it was the last to disappear from the fridge (though coconut tends to be divisive in any non-coconut form, see also: chocolate bars, biscuits, fancy jelly beans). Also, Coconut has the best can – the use of gold and copper is classy as fuck.

Peach-Pear

Peach-Pear – though definitely more peach than pear – is, with Berry, more artificial tasting than Lime or Coconut, though LaCroix insists that its flavours (or “essences”) are all natural despite the food regulations about what can be included in under the label “natural flavours” being pretty fucking loose. This kinda tastes like someone’s dropped some bubblegum into a bottle of San Pellegrino.

Berry

Berry, while still definitely drinkable, is the loser here. At first blush, it was my second favourite, but as I made my way through about half a case of each flavour over two days, Berry continued to slip down the list. It is just too sweet to be lightly flavoured. It’s a breath of berry. A sniff of berry. Someone remarked that it tastes like when someone refills a bottle of raspberry Raro without washing it out or adding more Raro. Lime gets away with its wateriness (it is after all water) through its citric acidity, but Berry LaCroix misses the tartness that could have made Berry the standout flavour. Maybe Pamplemousse will be better

Verdict: LaCroix is fine. I didn’t love any of the flavours but I happily drunk a lot of it. Too much, according to some. But I probably wouldn’t spend more money on it though. Oh, and cool cans.

Good or Bad: Good. Well, good enough.

– Henry Oliver

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