The news of Happy Meals for adults seemed like a neat little publicity stunt for McDonald’s, and a fun story for everyone to chortle along with. Cactus Plant Flea Market-style four-eyed toys of the old McDonald’s characters, in a box for the grown ups, seems a certainty for viral success. However, it turns out it’s backfiring spectacularly on actual McDonald’s staff, who are reporting the hyper-popular promotion has brought about chaos and misery as they struggle to fulfill an avalanche of orders. “bro pls don’t order those adult McDonald’s happy meals bro I’m begging,” wrote one employee on TikTok.

2021's Pokémon card promotion was thought by many to be the nadir of customer invasions for the poorly-paid staff of the world’s largest fast food chain. However, this month’s Happy Meals For Adults endeavor is proving many degrees worse, according to employees we spoke to, along with those posting to Reddit and social media.

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Under the title, “New Adult Happy-meals are killing me,” one anonymous worker posted to Reddit to say, “We literally just came off the ‘buy one get one for a dollar’ and we were swamped with Big Mac meals. Now with this we have to literally stockpile them to survive a rush. I hate it.”

It seems that the offer of a cheap burger, combined with what will inevitably become a collectible toy, has driven customers into a frenzy, with orders coming in faster than restaurants can serve them. “The most difficult aspect of this promo for the crew is the sheer volume of these meals that we are selling,” one worker told Kotaku via Reddit DMs. “Most stores I have seen have sold out of either the special boxes, Big Mac buns, or toys. Some places it’s more than one of these.”