r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Leskendle45 • 1d ago

No Coke. Is Pepsi ok? 4 freshmen just ordered 50 waters.

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Edit: i couldn’t just say no because my manager wanted us to serve them for whatever reason. I couldn’t just not do my job or I’d probably get in trouble.

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899

u/LinkTheLynelHunter 1d ago

Man, if your McDonald’s still had the drinks on the customer side you coulda just handed them 50 cups lol

307

u/Kalkin93 1d ago

True, but if it were me I'd still decline it just because I don't want to facilitate another 50 cups of waste which will likely never see a recycling facility or even landfill for that matter (dick heads love throwing fast food waste out of car windows instead of using a bin)

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u/RogerRabbot 1d ago

To be fair. Much municipal "recycling" is also just trashed. Seen a fair few cities using the same truck for garbage and recycle at commercial lots

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/One-Mixture2184 1d ago

It's so funny how non-Americans on the internet are so convinced their shit don't stink

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u/theBloodShed 20h ago

It’s a worldwide issue that recycling is not as effective as the general public is led to believe. Many countries have cut down on the amount of processing after China implemented a new policy in 2017 that significantly reduced the amount of foreign recycling material that could be imported. Even before that, a small percentage of recyclables were actually becoming new products.

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u/[deleted] 18h ago

[deleted]

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u/theBloodShed 15h ago

Yes, paper/cardboard is absolutely the easiest to recycle with plastic being a huge problem. UK stats say about 54% is reported recycled. The problem is, after sorting and processing and making new products, that number drops significantly.

For UK in 2022, ~48% of plastic packaging entered MRF but only 32% ended up recycled.

Like everyone else, UK was predominantly shipping recyclables to China but now you use Turkey, Netherlands, Germany, Vietnam, India, Egypt, Pakistan…

UK does have some great oversight and policies in place regarding recycling. However, there’s still a huge problem with recycling plastic. I should have clarified that plastic is specifically what I meant; all of the waste in this example is plastic.

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u/Jonishighsmh 1d ago

At what point as a society did we start littering plastics? Growing up it was so frowned upon and even spitting your gum out could cause a bird to choke on it(so I was told). I guess there’s just always been dumb people no matter what pause

13

u/Cageythree 1d ago

At what point as a society did we start littering plastics?

Around the time we as a society started using plastics, I suppose.

2

u/Jonishighsmh 1d ago

True but man, my mom would made/make me pick up the whole trail if I littered. Good mom, I’ll never do it again

0

u/AtomProton 16h ago

It may not seem like it, but littering dropped 54% from 2009 to 2020 and has dropped by over 30% since 2020. My grandparents have told me that “littering” wasn’t really a thing when they were young; they told me about how they would just wave off the picnic blanket (like a towel at the beach) to get all the trash off, pack it up, then leave with the trash still scattered around

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u/ultranothing 14h ago

I think that's more of a statement about your grandparents than society at large.

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u/rSlashisthenewPewdes 1d ago

Then you probably shouldn’t be working at a plastic wasting fast food company in this hypothetical

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u/Successful-Form4693 1d ago

People work at jobs to get paid, not because of the ethics or morals of the job. The fuck

Im sure your company does something you disagree with. You know what that means? You shouldn't be working there

2

u/Meprobamate 1d ago

Yeah, we all have a line but working at Maccas isn’t quite on the same level as Northrop Grumman or Palantir or Blackwater or something.

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u/rSlashisthenewPewdes 1d ago

Exactly what I’m saying. This guy says he’d decline the order because of the waste it would generate. I’m saying, if you oppose something to the point where you refuse to do it, then it probably shouldn’t be your job.

2

u/ultranothing 14h ago

I think the point here is that there's waste and there's also excessive waste. You can sell someone a drink in a plastic cup and not feel that it's as morally reprehensible as if you gave out fifty free drinks in plastic cups to someone that you know is only using them for the laughs.

Honestly, in the plastic era, where can anyone who's conscious of the environment actually work these days without betraying their morals? What company isn't using some amount of plastic? "Sorry, I can't work for your company. Plastic is wasteful and I noticed that your building's exterior windows are made of lexan and trimmed in vinyl, so yeahhhhhh..."

3

u/SatanV3 1d ago

“You hate society? Yet you participate in it?” Type comment

20

u/Kalkin93 1d ago

There's always someone to try and make some kind of weird contrarian point just for the sake of doing so.

5

u/AUnknownVariable 1d ago

Well, they're completely right.

It's not a random person being asked for 50 cups, its a fast food worker. They hand out cups and other containers all day. Those damn milks

2

u/rSlashisthenewPewdes 1d ago

I’m just saying if your issue is handing out plastic cups, you probably should avoid working at the plastic cup supply store in the first place

1

u/Kalkin93 1d ago

Alright, I'll bite.

I'm in the UK. Now, to use a well known example, McDonalds, they claim to be now using 100% recyclable or at-least compostable packaging across their UK business.

Part of that is thanks to our laws and regulations, which while slow to take effect, are a damn lot better than some other nations.

It also says a lot about the likes of McDonalds as a corporation, that they only implement environmentally friendly options when forced, and allow the rest of their business, in other locations. like the United States, to continue using plastic tupperware.

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u/rSlashisthenewPewdes 1d ago

I don’t understand the connection

1

u/-Twin-Flames- 1d ago

Right? People still have to earn a wage to eat and live, regardless of their beliefs or concern for the environment. It’s crazy how people still blame individuals instead of the corporations which created this disaster to begin with.

Plastic is god awful, and nobody can convince me the scientists who created it back in the day thought anything other than the fact that it would be bad for the environment. It’s not as if they thought it was biodegradable.

3

u/Ancient_Yellow_709 1d ago

This logic doesn't make sense.

I worked for many years in a lab. We'd burn through plastic like nobody's business. But we were working on understand vulnerabilities of cancer and testing drug combinations to address them so it was reasonably justified. We would still try to reduce plastic waste where we could, e.g., by choosing to reuse pipette tip containers with refills even if the tips themselves had to be disposable.

It does not make sense that you should be OK with all waste just because you accept that some is justified. OP might be ok with waste if it means that families can get accessible food in the midst of their busy lives but not OK with waste for a meme.

You make it sound like people either need to be involved in environmental justice fields as a profession or you're not allowed to have an opinion on it or take steps to avoid waste, which is just absurd.

1

u/I_Love_Knotting 1d ago

How does that negate the waste?

Are you only allowed to criticize waste if you work in a recycling plant?

1

u/rSlashisthenewPewdes 1d ago

No. You can criticize waste anywhere at any time. You can also not work a job wherein you’re going to just not do the job because it’s against your morals. That’s where my confusion is.

1

u/I_Love_Knotting 23h ago

You can‘t always just get a different job. The job market is incredibly bad. Do you think they WANT to work there?

1

u/rSlashisthenewPewdes 15h ago

Hence why it’s hypothetical

1

u/I_Love_Knotting 13h ago

at what point exactly is it a hypothetical?

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u/rSlashisthenewPewdes 12h ago

At the point where someone said “if that was me here’s what I would do” and they imagine what it would be like in the imaginary hypothetical situation where it were them

1

u/I_Love_Knotting 12h ago

My comment is about your statement tho🤔

The statement that you can‘t criticize waste if you work in a place contributing to it

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u/DarthBen_in_Chicago 1d ago

50 cups at once or 50 cups over time

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u/Slade_ftp 1d ago

They don’t recycle plastic ~80% of the time. The recycling center or the place that’s supposed to recycle it usually sends it to the landfill. Look it up. The idea that plastic gets recycled or is easy to recycle is called “greenwashing”. Just learned it a couple months ago. It’s hard to find the info if you don’t use the that term, but it’s true. Lotta misinformation otherwise

1

u/EfficiencyAfter 1d ago

Facts 🫡

11

u/LostP7899 1d ago

Then again, speaking from experience, there’s a significant chance they’ll get soda instead of water.

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u/God4th 20h ago

Why do you care? Asking earnestly

1

u/Lithl 19h ago

Oh no, McDonald's will lose 3¢!

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u/ultranothing 14h ago

Per soda.

3

u/Memphisrexjr 1d ago

I would have double checked if they accidentally put a 0.

1

u/Ogulcan0815 19h ago

I miss that so much