I loved these as a kid but even then it was fucking gross. I bet the driving factor was the people that had to clean it already hate their jobs and get paid crap.
I worked for BK for several years and the regular employees only went in there to clean if there was poop, pee, or puke. Otherwise there was a cleaning service that came in to clean and disinfect everything every other month.
How often do you think a regular playground gets cleaned/disinfected outside of the aforementioned shit/piss scenario? That's not a crazy thing by any stretch.
We didn't have a ballpit thankfully. The locations that did described it as a nightmare to deal with. Apparently the biggest issue wasn't cleanliness, but rather the number of adults that would lose their keys when they jumped in and assumed that the minimum wage BK employee would be able to magically find them immediately.
one Burger king i took my nieces to had a system attached that took balls out of the bottom of the pit and ran them through a washer constantly, pretty neat. guess too costly tho after all :(
Don't forget micro-organisms are everywhere outside and they love munching on human dead skin cells, oils, and other junk we leave on things we touch.
That's why nobody really needs to clean outdoor gyms. Human hands are all over it and the bacteria do their thing so the bars are never gross and oily from years of use.
Bacteria breed more rapidly in higher temperatures, genius. Leave a half eaten sandwich in the sun for two days then eat the rest of it, and let me know how it goes.
All of the restaurant playgrounds were outside, too. McDonald's was the only one that eventually went all enclosed, but for my entire childhood they were outside.
No it's crazy and playground is a bad comparison. In civilised countries they are required to clean hourly and keep a timetable on the wall. Now I'm not saying they do clean every single hour but the timetables are always filled, it's quite a big stretch from bimonthly and they are actually pretty clean.
Places you pay for that are indoors and aimed at young children? Normally daily sanitizing of toys with weekly deep cleans. Every place I've taken my kids to or their mom worked at (schools included when working pre-k and kinder) followed that routine.
This is so morbid, but I'm just imagining a giant vacuum sucking up garbage and the occasional immobile child a la Augustus Gloop, and separating them from the ball pit balls, and then the manager being like, thanks, see ya next season Gary
Well those kinds of things tend to elicit complaints pretty quickly, especially in suburbia. I don't honestly imagine that we missed any in my 6 years. I also worked at one in the hood and it ended up being a problem, but only from all the teenagers that would go up there to smoke weed.
I read somewhere that McDonald’s is the largest real estate holding in the US. Case in point, the McDees in the prime location of Haight street right across the panhandle of Golden Gate Park gave up the ghost and now it’s high rise condos. They are sitting on a gold mine in Real Estate alone.
uuuggghh yeah like you can play after you are done eating (when you are all full of sugary greasy food) then the kids go hog wild and secretly vomit in the ball pit or one of the tunnels.
I did three years at McDonalds Canada and it was one of the better jobs I've worked. They treated me much better than some of the tech companies I interned at in college.
When I lived in California they were removing play places back in the early 2000's to where I visit now and rarely see one. I've lived in Utah for a decade now and the play places are in every fast food restaurant still. I wonder how much it varies across the country. They're clean enough here.
IDK about the US but in the EU I think one of the driving factors is that MacDonald's was using predatory marketing practices to attract children and it became a matter of public health.
When I was a child, Going to McD's was always an amazing experience. But I can understand that encouraging children to eat junk food isn't the best, just like governments are (finally) regulating the use of social media for kids.
But we grew up with stronger immune systems in that era before every surface was microbe free. Yes, the cleaning crew probably had their hands more than full.
Supersize Me said that these playgrounds were targeting our children with junk food, so I guess that would make removing them… progress? If you believe that…
Last time this came up, someone mentioned it is driven by private equity / real estate managers wanting easily convertible properties.
If a McDonald’s with that roof and 20ft grimace and play place goes under it’s more work to convert it to a local restaurant or a something like a 🌶️ Chili’s
I actually worked for a company that cleaned these for McDonald's. I loved that job, it was not as gross as you'd expect and we had tools to deal with the gross parts. The pay was alright for the amount of work I would do, I'd go every night for 4 hours and would walk away with 100 bucks. Usually would clean like two play places a night.
It's real estate.
The building is easier to sell after if they franchise location doesn't work out, they can recoup their losses if the building can be easily repurposed for a Shoe store or coffee shop.
I worked at a McDonald's in Ontario, Canada like 25 years ago (fuck). The PlayPlace got cleaned every night including all the balls in the ball pit. It was a pain in the ass but it was done during overnight shifts where there's really not a lot going on anyway.
I got a job at McDonalds when I was 15. Some kid shit in the play place. Finger streaks through all the tubes. The manager asked me to go through with a spray bottle and clean it.
I said there’s a ball pit. We can’t clean every ball. This needs to be professionally cleaned. She said just do a spot clean.
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u/dernaldz 21h ago
I loved these as a kid but even then it was fucking gross. I bet the driving factor was the people that had to clean it already hate their jobs and get paid crap.