Japanese McDonald’s forbids entry to entire middle school’s student body

A McDonald’s restaurant in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan has decided to deny entry to all students of a certain local middle school due to frequent occurrences of “disruptive behavior”. The ban has allegedly been in place for about six months now, but the situation resurfaced after a tweet showing a notice put up by the restaurant went viral. What kind of behavior could have led the international business to take such drastic measures?

Many users of social media sites such as Twitter weighed in on the situation, the majority seemingly sympathetic to the restaurant’s decision. One user expressed their support, saying, “There are people who will look at this and say “Lumping the students all together is wrong! Only ban the people who did it.” But the restaurant can’t identify every single person, so there’s no choice but to ban everyone.” Since the majority of junior high schools in Japan require students to wear uniforms unique to their schools, a student could be easily identified were they to visit the restaurant.

Another Twitter user expressed their surprise at the situation: “I’ve heard of junior high schools getting banned from Disneyland, but banned from McDonald’s is a first. What’d they do?“ Though only rumors, there are indeed stories of certain schools being banned from organizing field trips to Disneyland in Japan. Reasons include students pushing Mickey Mouse into a pond and similar.

Additionally, criticism was directed towards the school’s vice-principal for seemingly ignoring previous notices about their students’ behavior at the restaurant. In their statement for ENCOUNT, they refused to make any comments regarding the restaurant or details of the incident, as they claimed they were instructed not to by the Board of Education. They did however mention that students of the school were receiving “disciplinary guidance”.

Occurrences of “disruptive behavior” have been something of a trending topic in Japan recently. This week is the first hearing for a 21-year-old man who earlier this year went viral for recording himself drinking directly from a common-use bottle of soy sauce at a Kurazushi, a popular conveyor belt sushi restaurant chain. The incident sparked an outrage all over Japan, with people criticizing the unsanitary and disrespectful act.

A couple of months before the soy sauce drinking incident, there was a soy sauce licking incident in which another man trended for licking the top of a bottle of soy sauce meant for customer use at a Sushiro, another popular sushi restaurant.

Many users made connections between the sushi restaurant incidents and the McDonald’s one, some wondering in what direction the ban situation will go from here. One user tweeted “It’s probably only a few students, but they should take them to court like Sushiro did. For now, good job McDonald’s.”

It seems as though the public is mostly glad that the McDonald’s has taken some actions to protect their employees and deal a blow to the “customer is always right” culture. As more restaurants become targets for similar pranks and disruptive acts, businesses in Japan may be becoming more strict in an attempt to save face and avoid losses in profits.