Imagine working at a fast food restaurant and seeing a child come up to order their food all by themselves. You might not think much of it, but what would you do if the child were still there all by himself after closing time?

That’s exactly what happened in this story, and one teen remembers the night vividly. Keep reading to see how the story plays out.

McChildCare

This happened a long, long time ago… I’d say 1996-1997 or so, when I wore a much younger man’s clothes.

I was still in high school, I believe the summer before my Senior year. I had a job at McDonald’s… The only McDonald’s, at the time, for a rather large tourist area in the Midwest.

It was common for ‘kids’, such as myself, in that area at that time to flagrantly flaunt various child labor laws and work shifts that were way, way too long during the summer.

Given that bodies were needed everywhere to serve the tourists, most employers didn’t care, either, and would simply pay the fines if they were ‘found out’. Most cases, it was entirely consensual ‘exploitation’ on the part of the minor (myself, 17 years old) and the employer.

OP was happy to work overtime.

I was scheduled to work the night shift that day, from 4PM to Midnight. I was called in at 11AM, and I went in eagerly.

I was saving up for a car and a computer, and what 17 year old didn’t want to make overtime pay when they had nothing else to do, anyway?

Plus, at first, I was told I’d get to take off before close.

It was a busy but fun day.

I worked my butt off, that day.

I started in drive thru, ended up as QPC (this was back when McDonald’s microwaved everything and kept a huge bin full of food for instant service) in the grill, on counter order, migrated to grounds cleaning (tidying the seating/washroom/playland), back to counter, etc.

I was all over the store, and having, in all honesty, a really good day of it. Sure, it was busy, but at that time our crew was fantastic, the management all pitched in, and we had fun.

Kids do like to feel grown up.

I vaguely remember serving a lone child at some point on the tills… probably around 1PM. That wasn’t uncommon; parent hands the kid money, he gets to be a ‘big boy’ and order his own happy meal, which is what this kid did.

I got him his food, wished him a good day, and proceeded on serving the endless line of people behind him.

Around 6PM I managed to break off the counter and get the lobby tided up; no small task, and it probably took me 30 minutes just to get 2 of our 3 indoor sections done. I skipped the side one (for now, I didn’t want to face the bathrooms after quite yet), and made my way into playland.

It was a standard playland.

This was an old-school outdoor playland that many McDonald’s had. Plastic playset with swings and such, the stuff you’d climb around on and have so much static electricity built up you could see arcs as you touched a ground point… and it hurt like hell.

We also had the plastic tables, and the ‘standards’ for McDonald’s at that time, a plastic and metal Mayor McCheese you coluld climb up, then climb around in.

I had just started cleaning out there, but it was quite busy and I got called back in to help out on registers again.

Again, vaguely, I remember a kid sitting alone, at one of the tables.

OP was about to get even more overtime.

9PM comes around, and we’re still taking a beating.

“SilentDis, can you stay a while longer?”

“Of course, nice manager lady, I’ll take your overtime!”

“You’re already on overtime?”

“I have been since I started today.” (week rolled over that day)

“Well… screw it, stay, your paycheck is going to be huge.”

The night finally ended.

I closed that night. All the way to midnight.

At the end of it all, we started the cleanup while customers were still in-store finishing their meals, while the 2 managers kept the doors locked and just let people out.

When the dust finally settled, and we were finally empty, they told everyone to grab something to eat, something to drink, and get the hell out to the play area for a much, much needed break. Smoke ’em if ya got ’em.

They really needed a break.

Exhausted, hungry, wrecked, but feeling good about it, our entire crew made their way out to the now (finally) empty playland.

We all sat down heavily, and sighed huge sighs of relief that the customers were gone, but we all knew we had at least an hour, if not 2, of closing clean up to deal with. Yeah, I was already part of the cleanup detail as well.

As we sat there, trying to calm down after the insanity we’d just been through (one of the busiest entire days the store had ever had up to that point), one of my co-workers happened to look up.

He noticed something unusual.

“Why is there a child sleeping in Mayor McCheese?” he asked, in the semi-innocent tone of exhaustion and puzzlement.

We all kind of stopped, and followed his gaze.

Sure enough, a small boy, around 7 or 8, was curled up in the fetal position inside the little jail cell. He looked peaceful enough, but… where’s mom or dad?

We all kind of looked at each other, and all jumped up at the same time.

This is a big problem.

Manager 1 instantly headed inside to survey the bathrooms.

Manager 2 went out the backdoor to check the back parking lot, while the rest of us checked out the windows and behind the bars of Playland to see if someone was around.

Nothing… not even a vehicle we couldn’t account for (all the vehicles in lot belonged to the employees).

Well… what the ever-loving heck are we supposed to do now?

The kid only had one request.

Managers 1 and 2 returned and roused the child, and made sure he was, physically, at least, okay.

“I’m hungry.”

No problem on that front, we’re a restaurant. Got him a burger, chicken nuggets, a soda, and a Big Mac.

His eyes went wide and he began inhaling the food. Not eating. Oh… that’s not good. No one eats 30 minute old McDonald’s food like that unless you really are starving.

The police were able to get him to answer some questions.

The managers were good. One peppered the child with questions, gently, while we, for the most part, got on with closing duties, and quite a lot of worry for the tyke.

Manager 2 called the police.

About 20 minutes later, the police show up. Kid came with mommy, didn’t know how long he’d been there, didn’t know where mommy went, was there a long time, didn’t know mommy’s first name, or a phone number to get in touch with her.

Most of us were in tears for this poor little… well, at this point, orphan.

He told the officer everything he knew.

We were all asked about the kid, and I gave my exceptionally vague recollections of serving him and seeing him again, and the times.

I made sure the officer understood that I could – and hoped like hell I was – very, very wrong about all that.

He agreed with the sentiment… but told me I probably wasn’t at this point.

It’s now nearly 1:30 AM.

Everyone seemed to be worried about the boy.

I’ve finally got the inside restaurant done (including bathrooms), and had moved on to finally picking up the playland.

One of my managers joins me, having finished her paperwork for the day.

We worked mostly in silence, except for a few “I hope he’s gonna be okay,” type comments, referring to the boy.

The police were still hanging around inside the restaurant with him, slowly, and politely asking him questions. I don’t think even they knew what to do at that point… Plus, hey, free coffee.

Then the night took a turn.

Out of nowhere, a car comes tearing down the small frontage road, screeching tires, damn near catching air as they hit our ramp into our parking lot. Tearing around the building, back onto the frontage road, then back into the lot again, to finally come to a halt at the door.

A woman jumped out, and started wrenching at the side door (that was locked), then pounding on it. We couldn’t be seen because of how dark it was in playland.

The cops saw it, we saw it.

It was the boy’s mom.

The manager made his way to unlock the door and let crazy lady in.

The cops were already on their way over to the door, too. Kid looks up, and identifies ‘mom’… but really didn’t seem too enthused to see her, either. Like he’s been through this before.

I stayed the hell out of the situation, I didn’t want to hear anymore, and told my boss I’d rather just take off at this point.

She let me go, that she’d punch me out with an extra 15 minutes on top of the the 14h30m I’d already worked that day (I trusted her, and she did keep her word on it), and just took off from the side gate of playland.

He found out what the mom told the police.

I got into work the next day, and it was ‘business as usual’.

I asked what happened, and found out mom and the police officers had a wonderful little conversation that lasted around an hour, the highlights of which were:

She’d dropped off her kid around 1PM with $5 for lunch.

She’d then headed over to the casino “for just a little while”.

Was coming right back for him, obviously.

Not like she abandoned him or anything… after all, she’s here now, right?

There were consequences for the mom.

More than that, I’m not sure of.

I know CPS (Child Protection Services) was involved in the situation.

Also herd something about gambling cessation treatment for mom.

I only hope some good came out of that for the kid’s sake.

McDonald’s is not a babysitter! What was that mom thinking? I’m glad she came back for her son, I guess, but she’s a really horrible mother.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

The OP adds something interesting he learned years later that makes the mom’s actions even worse.

This person offers a correction.

Hopefully the boy’s dad was in the picture.

It is really sad.

She’s definitely not winning mom of the year.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.