McDonald’s Customer Who Ordered a Cheeseburger Notices a Foreign Object Inside It: 'Found A...'
Straight out of a scene from Hollywood’s spy universe, a man’s life changed when he stumbled upon a mysterious sticker. It was the evening of March 25. Nathan Wickstrum from California was craving a milkshake, and so, he stopped by the McDonald’s drive-thru outlet off Harbor Boulevard and bought the milkshake, also popping in two cheeseburgers. Everything was going well until he undressed one burger and removed its butter paper wrap. He pulled the burger closer to his mouth, and just then, it happened- an alien item stuck to the innards of the burger.
Clinging to the orange-ish cheese slice within the burger was a cryptic sticker. Instead of a moreish tastiness, the McDonald’s burger jolted him into a tailspin of emotional trauma. “Found a sticker in my McDonald's cheeseburger today,” Wickstrum whined in a post shared from his Reddit account, u/Actual-Addendum-6217. He also shared a screengrab of the mysterious sticker hanging around the cheese slice, perfectly neat and white. According to the picture Wickstrum shared on Reddit, the cryptic white sticker sticking out of the burger featured certain letters printed on it in black ink.
The letters read, “CHEESE TABLE Barra de Queso en Mesa. Use by 8:12 pm 3/25/24.” People who read his post were equally dumbfounded by the strange foreign object, but many of them humorized the entire episode by making jokes and lampooning McDonald’s. Many, for instance, bantered that the sticker is the most nutritious and the healthiest thing about a McDonald’s burger. Others called it with comments like “free fiber” and “golden ticket.” Several of them contemplated how the sticker was able to remain intact while sticking to the melted cheese, which is typically gooey and moist. Wickstrum grunted that the cheese seemed to be made of plastic due to its inability to smudge the sticker.
In an exclusive interview with Newsweek, Wickstrum revealed that this was one of the rare incidents when he visited the fast food joint to buy a burger, otherwise, he’s not a regular. After collecting the burger and the milkshake, he pulled up at a stoplight to eat. "I unwrapped it, took a bite, and when I looked down, something white caught my attention. That's when I realized there was a foreign object in my burger. I was very close to taking a bite out of it," he described. The other burger was, thankfully, sticklerless, but still, he got in touch with McDonald’s manager to register a complaint.
"She was very rude but offered to either have the burger remade or give me a refund. I declined both and asked that she simply talk to her staff and tell them to do better. Her response was defensive, and in a raised voice, she said, 'My staff is doing a great job!' I responded with, 'I don't know that they are. There's a sticker in my burger," Wickstrum shared. After “15 seconds of silence,” the manager asked him to end the call if he didn’t want a refund or a new burger.
Wickstrum, who has been working at a non-profit for almost 10 years, lamented that he barely makes more than McDonald’s employees' salary, and this burger was supposed to be an affordable quick bite on his way home. He asserted that McDonald’s should offer him a sincere apology by acknowledging their mistake and taking responsibility for it. As for the peculiar sticker and how it remained clung to the melty cheese, the mystery remains unsolved.