Maccas — a modern watering hole

A late-night Maccas feed is an indispensable part of the uni experience, a rite of passage for all: stoned, sober, and everything else in-between.

Image Credit: Harry Gay

“What can I get for you today?”

McDonalds. Maccas. Mickey D’s. Ex-Honourable Scomo’s favourite public toilet. 

No matter what you call it, the essence ultimately remains the same, and the gleaming golden arches are a universal language in their own right. 

The notion of an empty McDonald’s seems just about as plausible as walking down Eastern Avenue unapproached during the dreaded election season. The crowd differs throughout the day: from 6am, a smattering of sleep-deprived shift workers doing the breakfast run, while 3pm brings along starved and feral high-schoolers. But it’s long after the sun has set that Maccas is most abuzz — when it is most like a watering-hole. 

A late-night Maccas feed is an indispensable part of the uni experience, a rite of passage for all: stoned, sober, and everything else in-between. The experience of tapping fervently against the fingerprint-smudged self-serve screens, in synchrony with the person beside you, is just as much a part of the initiation into tertiary education as it is to pull your first all-nighter — a high-school habit you half-heartedly promised to give up. 

Too many of my evenings have ended in a drunken stumble to the nearest Maccas — sometimes alone, other times linking arms with an equally intoxicated friend, our heads still pounding with the echoes of bad club music. Momentarily, I’m driven by little more than the most basic of human urges: a thirst, quenched only by a frozen Coke, and an urgent need to break the seal.

It is under the (rather unflattering) fluorescent restaurant lights that we rest our throbbing feet, basking in the air-con in the summertime while we debrief the events of the evening. Sometimes tears are shed over a 24-piece Chicken McNugget box, and while one friend bursts into hysterics, another inevitably brings up that one video of pink-slime-meat in a weak attempt to lighten the mood. It’s a method with very little success, and they’re often met with a chorus of groans and gags as green-tinged faces become greener. There always seems to be an underpaid worker, or a year 10 student working for $16 an hour, hovering beside the bucket and mop at all times. You can almost hear them praying to the venerable Ronald McDonald that they don’t have to clean up someone’s midnight Big Mac chunder. 

In a disconnected world, perhaps one in which you go through entire days speaking only your coffee order and a rushed ‘thank you!’ to the bus driver, there is something titillating about the shared experience of crowding around the pick up counter; receipt clutched in hand and moaning about the wait. A flustered worker calls out numbers in what appears to be no particular order — 117 then 124 and back to 119 — and every time their mouth opens, the crowd lurches forward in unison, with bated breath, each person hoping to be the next. 

It is a most curious sight, and a most curious collection of people: at one end of the counter hunches a lanky fellow in flannel pyjamas, eyes adorned with the most spectacular purple bags. Beside him, a gym-bro twice his size clutches the remnants of a protein shake, subtly peering at his flexed reflection in the restaurant window, oblivious to snickering observers. And at the back of the growing crowd of UberEats drivers are girls with glittered cheekbones and feather boas, still riding concert highs and bouncing in time to the tune of the beeping fry machine. But above their differences, they are united under the banner of greasy fries and corporate America. 

Although the crowd eventually dissipates, the camaraderie born of eating defrosted mystery meat of unclear origin persists for much longer. And when one person complains about soggy paper straws, we all nod in agreement.

Long live Ronald McDonald.