I can't speak to in US cities (where indeed restaurants tend to police non-customer restroom use more regularly) but I've never had an issue with using a McDonald's restroom when I've been driving someplace in the US.

Same experience here. Just got back from a six-day driving trip where my wife and I used McDonalds restrooms without issue multiple times. Some of them were even quite nice, as such things go. But I've also found myself in dire straits in cities, with nothing truly public and the McDonalds/Starbucks all locked down. The most dangerous place I've been in the last several years was an MBTA restroom (I was desperate). So much for "walkable cities" I guess, but good luck finding a proponent who will engage with that aspect.

Boston is extremely difficult to find public bathrooms especially around the Common/open drug marketplace.

You're not really that far from either Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market or North Station there. Can't speak to how easy it is to find one in any of the local hotels. Of course, in the latter case it helps to look the part and not look too clueless.

> Of course, in the latter case it helps to look the part and not look too clueless.

This is not just applicable to using the restroom as a non-paying customer. You can pretty much go anywhere if you just don't look guilty of doing something your not meant to be doing. They also say carrying a clipboard and looking in a hurry increases your "getting away" with it, whatever "it" may be.

The basement bathroom in Quincy Market is the best option in most of the city.

It would be really weird for McD's to require a purchase, at least for our use case. We often stop at McD's on a road trip (we have kids), and the first order of business is always the bio break, wash up, and then order food. It would be irritating to have to reverse that process and then leave our food to get cold while we sought relief.

It must vary a lot by location even in the US. When I used to bother asking, it was almost universally customer-only in urban and many suburban areas… and almost always got me strange looks for even bothering to ask in more remote areas (where they are often clustered next to a couple gas stations along a freeway exit).

Yeah I've been in many urban US McDonalds where the bathrooms are locked and you need to get a code from the cashier to get into them.

I've never used a McDonald's bathroom where I was required to make a purchase. Sometimes the bathrooms are located around the corner from the counter, near a door, in such a fashion that the employees can't generally tell if someone comes in, uses the bathroom, and leaves. I suspect it varies based on location.

This has been my experience on this planet as well.

I've only ever seen a McDonald's bathroom that requires a purchase in NYC around 15 years ago. I doubt that's changed in the years since unless the city made customers only bathrooms illegal.

All the ones I know have a coded lock on the door, and one (in a college kid area) requires employees to open the door.

I think this is a pretty broad generalization. Personally, I’ve never once been refused access to a McDonald’s restroom.

I haven’t been to a McDonald’s in a large city (like downtown Seattle), so perhaps it’s different there.

But so much of the world exists outside of cities :)

I went to a McDonald's in Seattle's SoDo in 2021 that had a bouncer at the door, and the bathroom had super annoying blue-lighting. It certainly looked like ordering before using the bathroom was the right thing to do.

There was a ton of street camping around there.

The blue lighting makes it harder to find a vein.

Yikes.

This was a pretty long time ago, like early-Millennium. It was my first job and I was 15. I saw people come in, use the bathroom, and leave, so I asked the executive what I was supposed to do.

>This was a pretty long time ago, like early-Millennium.

LOL, yep, I'm officially old!

Sorry, but as I approach 40, 20-23 years ago does seem like a long time. It went by in the blink of an eye, though.

It only gets faster

90-95% of McDonalds are franchised, so the lofty ideals of a McDonalds executive are entirely detached from what restaurants actually do. I doubt they are sending secret shoppers just to check the bathroom availability.

I use McDonalds bathrooms in a pinch quite often. I don't ask or anything, I walk in, it's there, nobody cares. However, it depends very much on location, and I do this only in suburban areas. if you go into Manhattan, bathrooms that are easy to spot are very much locked down, if there is even one at all, so you have to try to find less obvious bathrooms that don't attract a lot of attention from street traffic.

Same in Spain. There's an access code printed on the receipts. At least in the ones in tourist areas. Though you can wait till someone comes out or ask another customer.

In some areas of Spain, restaurants and bars that occupy the public space with terraces are obliged by law to provide bathrooms to anyone asking if I recall correctly

A counter-balance act

They have that for some restaurants in the US, but you can ask the worker and they will just give you the code.

It’s entirely a city/suburb/rural divide.

If you’re in an area with homeless restrooms can’t be found.

If you’re not, they’re plentiful and free.

I believe this. When I go downtown, the restrictions on facilities go up dramatically. Out in the 'burbs where we live, it's far more relaxed. But we don't have homeless people here (to speak of; we do, but it's on the order of a dozen for a city of 40K).

Even the ones where they lock the bathroom you don’t need to make a purchase. I just ask the worker to buzz me in and they let me. Its not making or breaking their paycheck to police the bathroom so they generally don’t care if you look like you won’t cause a mess in there.

I’ve been up and down this country and outside of the pandemic one certainty had been that if I need to piss and I see a McDonald’s I know I’m covered. This changed during the pandemic since many of their lobbies were closed. But in the last year I haven’t seen a McDonald’s that you couldn’t walk into and use the facilities. Now they’re not always the cleanest bathrooms, but they’ve always been there.

People talk a lot of shit about McDonald’s but there’s a lot to be said for a rock solid never changing option anywhere in the country.

Hotel lobbies also have great facilities

Supermarkets. Big Box stores. Malls always. Bars usually, buy a soda, tip the bartender.

One time I availed myself of a 24 hour porn shop at 3am. The bathroom was spotless.

I relied on department stores and Western-style hotels when indisposed in Japan. There weren't many McDonald's around where I was.

> outside of the pandemic

This was when our reliance on McD's became much more obvious. During the pandemic they closed outright for a while, and then opened just the drive-thru, and it was months before they were fully open inside with bathrooms again. It made road tripping with the kids a bit more exciting. Fortunately one of my kids can pee on the side of the road easy enough in a pinch.

This may be regional, or a franchise vs corporate thing, but in the PNW I have never been to a McD's that had a purchase requirement to use the restrooms. But we very rarely go to an urban McD's, so that may be part of it.