According to the woman, Nicky Holloway, the girl who served her "just laughed" and she said she felt she wasn't being taken seriously. She was offered a refund or a new meal but declined.
A spokesman for McDonald's (we're not told who but presumably someone from the PR department) apologised and offered a gift and some free meals for the family. Miss Holloway declined this offer also.
Trading Standards offered to investigate but she declined this offer also.
A question I have, bearing in mind Miss Holloway's refusal to accept the offers above, is what exactly does she want?
The Metro writes
But the deal was rejected by Ms Holloway, who also turned down an offer by trading standards officers to investigate the incident. She wants ‘more to be done about it’ and plans to sue McDonald’s.
Ah. Is it perhaps that she wants a big lump of money? Maybe not, but why else is she suing? What does 'more to be done about it' mean? Firing the person responsible? Banning anyone who smokes from ever working at McDonald's? I don't know but a bigger question to me is, is her outrage appropriate?
Of course the workers at McDonald's should not have had cigarettes on them whilst working and handling food and of course the (according to Miss Holloway) attitude of the girl was unacceptable and of course she should have complained.
But that is about as far as it should have gone.
She was offered a refund or a new meal - that should have been enough, but I can understand that she refused this first offer. She should have accepted the second offer or let Trading Standards investigate. Or both.
Let's face it, the staff at any particular McDonald's probably have an average age of 16 so the attitude of the staff can be expected to be that of a teenager. Not acceptable, but not unexpected either.
And as for the cigarette, well, again it is unacceptable for it to be in the Happy Meal box but hardly warrants court action. I'm no lawyer but I was under the impression that some kind of loss or damage has to be suffered to successfully sue someone. Miss Holloway has suffered no such loss. McDonald's offers were reasonable given the scope of the incident.
She saw the cigarette before any harm was done. She was watching what her son was eating. In fact, she should be watching what her one year old son is eating. He's one. The cigarette was not in the food it was in the box. So what's the deal with the suing?
The questions I would like to put to you is, Do we expect too much when we suffer an injustice? And do we offer too little ourselves when we perform an injustice on other people?
