There are tons of great experiences to have in the world, obviously, but what really beats the simple pleasure of getting a food you love for free? It doesn’t even matter if that free item is ordinarily inexpensive! It’s just the fact that you don’t have to pay for it when you normally would have to. It’s like cheating the system or getting a little bit spoiled. It’s really the best. And it’s even better when that free stuff is free food. Because honestly, who doesn’t like a free snack or a free meal for no reason at all?
That said, it’s always fun to read about the ways in which some people manage to get their hands on free food — maybe so you can steal their tricks and get some for yourself. We don’t judge! And that’s especially true when it comes to fast food, which is fun to brag about getting for free. Recently, for instance, someone managed to trick the system while snagging themselves some free McDonald’s, which honestly, sounds like a dream come true.
A guy basically tricked a McDonald’s kiosk into giving him free burgers. He might be our new hero.
Even better? He made a YouTube video showing us exactly how he got the free burgers.
The guy, whose name doesn’t seem to have been released, went to a McDonald’s in Australia with his friend, where they used the self-serve kiosk to order a meal. In the video, you can see them ordering 10 $1 burgers. They customize their order to make the price go down by removing the beef patty, which saves them a discount of $1.11 each burger. This doesn’t really make sense, because each burger is already $1.
They add one regular hamburger, which is a dollar, but because of that price difference, they end up getting credited… and their total comes out to zero dollars.
[fm_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oFpTNsPu_w"]Basically, they got a free hamburger by ordering a bunch of beef patty-less hamburgers. What did they do with all of those empty buns? No one knows.
Does this sound like more trouble than it’s worth? Well, yeah, to be honest, especially since the original hamburger was only $1. So they did all of this work to save… $1.
But again, free food is free food! A free burger is still a free burger. So, it’s still a win.
Just look at that “no payment required” notice. It’s wonderful!
Guys find way to hack McDonald's self-service machine to get 11 free burgers pic.twitter.com/2FNmTvfvtE
— HM Shamim (@hmshamimtkg) April 8, 2019
The original video on how to hack the kiosk went viral very quickly, hitting more than a million YouTube views in one day. Tons of people saw it, and wanted to copy it.
So unfortunately, that means that McDonald’s is going to catch on to this one pretty quickly. How could they not? You can expect that this hack won’t work soon and that the glitch will be fixed.
Some Twitter users weren’t very impressed. A few pointed out that it’s just too much hassle and waste.
What’s the point of 10 burgers without the patties?
— Marty (@5dragons) April 8, 2019
One noted that if they didn’t brag about it on the internet, they probably could have kept doing it. They have a point!
By sharing this they could have missed out on a larger monetary transaction.
— Karl Svatos PhD (@Svatos1) April 8, 2019
Still, some people gave them the appreciation they deserved. They did figure out how to get a free burger in a weirdly complicated way! We may never know how they figured this out, but it’s still pretty cool!
Because really, this is how it feels to get free stuff. This applies in every scenario:
Oh, and some McDonald’s employees are even a little relieved. You wouldn’t be able to pull that free burger trick off with an actual person, but a kiosk? Yeah, that’s why humans are better employees than computers.
Moral of the story: Computers are not always as smart as we think they are. Who knows what else could happen with these kiosks?
And now we may or may not be hungry… for a McDonald’s burger. Free or not. Who can blame us?!
