Technology certainly helped McDonald's process orders faster, but as soon as a computer fault hit, the burger behemoth was shuttled right back to the 90s.

The fast food giant has become so dependent on its ordering system that following a tech meltdown, some restaurants simply gave up and shut their doors.

Visitors to the Golden Arches in the Far East were turned away due to what the chain described as a "computer system failure" on its Hong Kong website.

But it soon became clear that this was a global outage, with restaurants across China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Austria, Sweden, and the UK all rendered unable to process orders.

The Brit operation has since stumbled back to its feet. "We are aware of a technology outage which impacted our restaurants. The issue has now been resolved in the UK and Ireland," a McDonald's statement said.

But while the Hong Kong business advised customers to "order directly at the restaurant counter" like back in the good old days, this seemed to be a bridge too far in the UK.

One hungry punter up early and probably in search of a quick and dirty McMuffin questioned: "Why can I order through the app this morning but all of my local McDonald's are closed when they are meant to be 24 hours?!"

Another observed: "My local is turning everyone away saying there's a national outage on your ordering system?"

Likewise, McDonald's in Japan said: "There is currently a system failure. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and ask that you please wait for a while until the service is restored," though a customer in the country reported staff "calculating the totals on paper."

Because god forbid anyone would want to verbally place their order with another human in 2024.

If in the extremely unlikely scenario that you have never set foot inside a McDonald's, the burger empire has essentially done away with human interaction when it comes to ordering your cholesterol fix.

The first thing customers see as they enter are lines of touchscreen kiosks with menus. These systems also handle payments and once complete the diner is given an order number. They then go and wait approximately three months to receive their empty calories.

This means that a McDonald's restaurant can handle many more orders simultaneously than it could back in the dark ages. Let's take a moment to appreciate those times.

But none of those systems, front or back of house, were working this morning, and it appears that many branches are simply not equipped to go back to the quiet dignity of the last century. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/03/15/mcdonalds_ordering_system_outage/