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WEST VIRGINIA RECORD

Friday, March 29, 2024

Slipping and sliding at the Belle McDonald's

Mothers of big families often complain that as soon as they clean one room in the house, a kid comes along and messes it up again. By the time the last room's clean, other rooms have been newly trashed and she has to start over.

Imagine a mom with several hundred kids. How on earth could she keep her house clean?

There aren't any moms in West Virginia with that many children, but the average McDonald's restaurant easily could have several hundred customers and children using its restrooms in a single day. As soon as a McDonald's employee gets finished tidying up the facilities, there are scores of other customers waiting their turn to have a meal and use the bathroom.

The Mickey D crowd aren't slobs, mind you. Most are quite neat and clean up after themselves, but there are always going to be some who splash water on the floor while washing up, miss the trashcan when they toss the paper towel they dried their hands with, or leave pieces of the long train of toilet paper that got stuck to the bottom of their shoe.

To guarantee continuing pristine conditions, McDonald's would have to station an employee in each bathroom around the clock -– a practice that would drive up the cost of their iconically economical menu items.

That doesn't faze Kermelia R. Nesselrodt, however. Two years ago she allegedly slipped and fell in the ladies' restroom at the Belle McDonald's. Just last month, two years later, she filed suit against the fast food franchise in Kanawha Circuit Court.

McDonald's, she complains, failed to check bathroom safety conditions frequently enough so as to promptly flag or remediate hazards.

So, what's McDonald's to do? Raise the price of the Big Mac to pay for full time bathroom attendants, or toss the toilets? Should they sacrifice economy or convenience to accommodate quarrelsome customers? Either way, if it one day comes to that, you can thank the folks who look for puddles that might be hiding some lawsuit cash.

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