The restaurant famous for its golden arches and items that all start with the prefix Mc- recently launched the McDonald's Pay with Lovin' campaign during a widely successful Super Bowl ad - but over the past week, as patrons have actually paid their meals with demonstrations of love, it seems that the whole thing has terribly backfired for the fast food giant.
Though the McDonald's Pay with Lovin' campaign was deemed among the sweetest to appear in a Super Bowl night that prominently featured depressing ads, it seems that, for all its good intentions, the Ronald McDonald company has failed to grasp how complex human relationships are.
According to Food Beast, the first real sign that there was something deeply wrong with the McDonald's Pay with Lovin' campaign appeared on Reddit recently, as a user recounted his terrible experience going to McDonald's.
When he went to one of the restaurants, he was chosen as one of the recipients of the McDonald's Pay with Lovin' promo, and so he was asked to tell his mother that he loved her for a free meal. However, things didn't go anywhere near as smoothly as they did in the Super Bowl ad.
"The start of the f--k up is calling my mother who knows that I had a brief history with depression and suicidal thoughts from high school bullies, the second f--k up is starting the call with I love you," the Redditor wrote, according to Fan Sided. "She immediately started to freak out (mostly because I'm over 1000 miles away from her and the closest family is about 300 miles away from me) and was pretty scared that I was about to commit suicide. Over the course of the next 15 minutes I was on the phone reassuring her that I indeed wasn't about to kill myself and make sure that she wasn't on the next plane to arrive and come to visit. (Afterwards she also mentioned that it had given her a small asthma attack, but nothing her inhaler couldn't handle.)"
Yikes!
Another testimony, from a Wall Street Journal editor, recounts another unpleasant experience with McDonald's Pay with' Lovin, as the guys at the fast food venue told her to ask someone to dance - a total stranger, making things insanely comfortable inside the walls of a fast food joint.
It seems like the entire McDonald's Pay with Lovin' campaign just looked better on paper - it may not be worth it to reach these states of "lovin'" with strangers over a $15 meal.
