Refused a Big Mac, Bicyclist Ends Up in a Pickle

A hungry McDonald’s customer was thrown in jail for riding up to the drive-through window on a bicycle and adamantly complaining when the restaurant refused to serve him because he was not in a car.

Robert Fox, 33, made his stand on his British-made folding bicycle when he found the McDonald’s door closed except for its drive-through window at 11:30 Wednesday night.

The bicyclist assumed there would be no problem getting his hamburger, but the voice on the squawk box told him the drive-through serves only motorists. Fox felt he had to argue.

“It was the principle of the thing. I felt they were discriminating against me as a bicyclist,” he said.

Cars lined up behind Fox. Drivers honked their horns and the restaurant called police.

Officers from the three squad cars suggested Fox take his complaints to McDonald’s corporate headquarters. He persisted, and asked some of the motorists to buy his hamburger for him. But one woman complained to the manager that she was afraid of the man on the bicycle.

Police asked him once more to leave and then arrested him.

Fox, a yacht captain from Ypsilanti, Mich., couldn’t come up with the $25 bail, so he spent the night in Broward County jail. He was charged with trespassing. The next day he called friends and they bailed him out.