I know, almost all the McDonald's locations I've been to recently have gotten rid of their free refills a long time before this decision the entire company itself made. It's been that way since the covid lockdowns obviously to stop the drink machines from getting contaminated with covid but they still had the no refill policy in place way after the WHO declared the covid state of emergency over. Even though almost every McDonald's I recently went to stopped giving free refills, that wasn't the case with every other fast food restaurant I went to, every other fast food restaurant stopped being afraid of germs and allowed refills again, Popeyes, Burger King, Wendy's, Arby's, Chick-Fil-A, you name it. I would be very disappointed if every fast food chain stopped free drink refills. Again I do know inflation and higher minimum wage are partly factors in the recent price increase of fast food but when it comes to something as crappy and mass-produced as McDonald's, I can't help but suspect that corporate greed if arbitrary price-gouging is a major fact, especially when the portion sizes are stupidly small and the company reports record profit. Although I kind of see the reason for the particular McDonald's locations I went to not allowing free refills anymore, those locations are in bad neighborhoods crawling with drug addicts and I understand why they wouldn't want filthy drug addicts messing with the drink machines but you wanna know yet another ironic thing, other fast food restaurants at those exact same street corners as those McDonald's locations do still give free refills, one McDonald's has a Popeyes right across from it and the Popeyes has a drink machine out in the open for all customers to full their cup as many times they want, the Popeyes is a lot less crowded than the McDonald's though. Another McDonald's has a Chick-Fil-A across from it and that Chick-Fil-A does give free refills while the McDonald's doesn't but at the Chick-Fil-A, the drink machine is behind the counter so you'll have to ask an employee to fill it for you.
