Why McDonald's Lids Have Those Rectangle Buttons—Hint, the Answer Is Mind-Blowing

Just when we thought we knew everything there was to know about McDonald’s—like what makes its french fries so good and why Coke at Mickey D’s tastes different from Coke at any other fast food restaurant—we’re met with a new fact that blows our mind. This time, it’s about those buttons on the drink lids.

You might think you know why they’re there—to mark what drink is in what cup, right? Well, that’s partially true. The circular buttons, usually labeled “Cola,” “Diet,” “Tea,” “RB,” or “Other,” are meant to mark what drink is what, which makes it easy for you to determine whose drink is whose in an order. But, there are additional buttons on a McDonald’s lid that serve a purpose.

The rectangular thingamajigs, found just underneath the circular ones, aren’t just there for decoration or to make stacking the lids easier, as you may have thought. Instead, they’re actually buttons that serve a purpose.

TikToker Michael McKee shared a video where they pushed down all the buttons on a lid with both the circular and rectangular buttons. After they pushed all the circular buttons down, they pressed all the rectangular ones, which made the circular buttons pop back up again.

You might be wondering why someone would ever need to pop the circular buttons back up. And, beyond the kids who play with the lids by pressing all the buttons down then taking the lid off and popping them back up to press them down again, the only other person who would really need to pop the button back up is the McDonald’s employee.

Let’s say a customer ordered a Diet Coke and the Mickey D’s employee fills up the cup, puts the lid on, and accidentally presses the “Cola” button instead of the “Diet” button. Sure, it might not seem like a big deal, but if the customer takes the cup and only sees that it says “Cola” when it’s actually Diet and doesn’t try it first, then they might think the employee messed up their order. Or, if a customer orders a few drinks, and the buttons aren’t labeled correctly, there’s really no way of knowing which brown soda is Diet Coke and which is Dr Pepper.

So having a way to pop the buttons back up and fix any mistake can save the McDonald's employees (and us customers) a big headache. Plus, pressing all the buttons down and then popping them back up again is just oh-so-satisfying.

Thank you, internet, for yet another piece of mind-blowing, maybe slightly useless, trivia info!