Twitter Is Cringing At This Failed McDonald's Proposal

For those in need of some good old-fashioned schadenfreude, a video taken in a South African McDonald's has surfaced onto Twitter. "Witnessed such a sad situation today ..." a user tweeted along with a video in which an embarrassed woman at a McDonald's cash register kept on looking back at the man proposing to her from behind until she decided to walk off alone. Pictures from the comments showed that after a few moments he left too, pushing the cart of food with him.

While the original poster described the situation as a sad situation, most of the comments turned to analyzing the scene. "Man proposed at a McDonald's and expected her to say ... yes??" one asked. Another attempted to take the proposer's side, arguing, "You understand that she could've said yes in public and told the man no behind closed doors to save him the embarrassment." No one agreed. Instead, several people thought that if anything embarrassed him, it should have been proposing in a McDonald's. Or, as the original poster later tweeted, "I think he should have done it at the table at least. Not the till."

A whole other discussion erupted when one aspiring Sherlock Holmes pointed out that the man was wearing a wedding band. Some assumed the whole thing was staged, some figured that he put the ring on in some attempt to save face, and others took it as a sign that he had another family already.

As people spend more time back in restaurants and other shared spaces, many might have forgotten about anything public, let alone public proposals. Perhaps that's for the best. A Practical Wedding strongly advises against public proposals, specifically ones that are grandiose and put the couple in the spotlight like the McDonald's example on Twitter. Before too many people get too huffy, the piece does differentiate this from quietly proposing in a place that happens to be public, like at sunset by a lake. The reasons someone may go for the ostentatious route could include wanting to add pressure for the adored person to say yes, not realizing that this isn't necessarily romantic, and feeling the need to make a scene for themselves.

Georgia Tolley, editor of the Before the Big Day wedding blog, suggested to the BBC that you don't really need to show off for the proposal, "You're going to have your wedding, there's going to be loads of opportunities for you to rub your love in other people's faces and go 'look, we're fantastic, we're perfect, we're an amazing couple.'" Without knowing more about the couple at McDonald's, it's hard to say why the scene happened. But many can take away the lesson that one should probably not propose there. However, we might have a new hobby of watching compilation videos of public rejections while eating a Big Mac.