McDonald's Worker Revealed What Those Beeping Noises Really Mean

Even though the hustle and bustle of a McDonald's restaurant with screaming children, bellowed order numbers, and crying adults disappointed with their Happy Meal toy are almost enough to distract people from the Big Mac or small fries they might have been eyeing, one disruption may outrank them all: the seemingly incessant beeping noises from the kitchen.

That disruption goes back years. In 2015, a Redditor wondered why every trip to Mickey D's came with a side of "non-stop beeping and other strange noises coming from the kitchen." And perhaps more importantly, they wanted to know why it was "so ... annoyingly loud that all the customers can hear it." To an outside listener, there might appear to be no pattern or purpose to the unnecessarily violent beeps that always arise while trying to grab the attention of a member of McDonald's staff. Given McDonald's huge presence of over 38,000 restaurants worldwide, the curious beeping might have bugged a huge number of people – however, the mystery has at last been solved.

A video uploaded to TikTok by @forthy_boi showed a McDonald's worker standing over a chicken McNugget fryer when suddenly the machine sounded an aggravating alarm and instructed the crew member to pull the nuggets out of the fryer. Once they were removed, the worker pressed a button to cancel the beeping. According to McDonald's website, nugget prep has several steps. The nuggets are delivered to restaurants frozen after being dipped in flavor, battered, and partially fried. "They're' fully fried" before serving.

Viewers responded in diverse ways. One admitted, "I always wondered what that sound was." Others believed it was made by cash registers or when drive-thru customers were waiting. "I thought they had a secret arcade," remarked a commenter. Someone compared the sound to hospital heart monitors, funnily wondering if there are medical beds in the back of restaurants. 

Beep-haunted dreams seemed to be a particular problem for some. Self-identified McDonald's workers claimed the constant noises mentally affected them and ruined their sleep. "I cannot even have one day in peace," one viewer lamented. Despite these complaints, one TikTokker suggested turning the noises into a song, and another recalled dancing to the beep as a child.

Cookie oven and fries fryer sirens have also been publicized by @forthy_boi, adding to the McDonald's cacophony. The fryer seems particularly distressing. Someone associated the sound with "a warzone" while a different user wrote, "And y'all wonder why we McMad all the time."