The Worst Day Of The Week To Order From A Fast Food Restaurant

Have you ever gotten an order from a fast-food restaurant and found that you got the wrong order? Instead of large fries, you got small; and, instead of a burger without onions, you got a burger with onions? Or maybe you found that your food wasn't as good as you thought it was because of your fries being soggy and cold or your chicken having a flavor you can't exactly place but instinctually know is not supposed to be in chicken?

While you could argue that fast food isn't exactly high cuisine, to begin with, there has to be a concrete reason as to why your order is messed up or your food tastes so strange. It may be because you ordered during a busy dinner rush and the overwhelmed workers made a mistake. After all, restaurants tend to make much more money between the hours of 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.; so, with such an enormous amount of customers coming in, it's likely someone could make an innocent mistake among all those orders. Besides, a 2019 study from QSR Magazine tells us that you may have an 84.4% chance of getting the right order at fast-food restaurants, so it's not just you who's dealing with getting the wrong order.

But is there a timeframe that you should avoid in order to escape the usual pitfalls of fast food, like crowded dining rooms, overworked employees, and unusual-tasting food? According to some fast-food employees, there just may be a select day of the week you should avoid grabbing a burger. 

Why don't some people like Mondays? Is it because it's the start of another long work week? Is it because it's something popularized by Garfield the cat? While these are all good reasons, one particular reason that you may not like Mondays is that it's the worst time to satisfy a craving for some McDonald's.

Monday is a bit of a rough spot when working in the fast-food industry. According to one employee, who explained via Quora, fast-food restaurants usually don't have their "A-Team," or top-performing employees, on the schedule that day. Those high-performing employees work over the weekends. This means that there's a chance that your order may not be prepared by people who are all that skilled, compared to the supposed A-Team the restaurant has. 

If a smaller, somewhat less experienced staff isn't enough to steer you away from fast food that day, the quality of the food might. Many fast-food restaurants don't receive their delivery of fresh food until Tuesday, which means that, for one day, they'll be serving week-old buns and fries instead of fresh ones. In fact, you might not even be sure if they change the oil on Mondays, which only adds to the questionable nature of the food.

This isn't to say, of course, that all fast-food restaurants should be avoided on Mondays. It's just something to consider if you want to start your week off with a cheeseburger and some fries.

If Tuesday is when fast-food restaurants get their deliveries, it would make sense to go on that day. Even if the staff isn't the restaurant's A-Team, you'll at least be eating fresh food instead of something that's been sitting around for a week. 

While this is a good train of thought, let's say that you want to go at a time when you know it won't be so busy, which means there's less of a chance you'll get your order wrong. Fortunately for you, Mondays and Tuesdays are reported to be the slowest days for fast-food restaurants. In comparison, the weekend, usually Saturday and Sunday, are said to be the two busiest days to visit a fast-food restaurant. Keep in mind, however, that the best employees are said to work on the weekend, so you may be getting better service than on a weekday.

Another good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that you should see if a restaurant at least has some customers throughout the week. If a restaurant seems to have very few customers or traffic on any day, that may be a sign that something isn't quite right with the restaurant and you should take your business elsewhere. Remember, you want to go when it's not too busy, but busy enough that you know the service and food will be good.