Pharrell Williams Says He Was Fired 3 Times From McDonald’s For Eating The McNuggets

Pharrell Williams is revisiting memories of his time working at McDonald’s—and the firings that followed.

The “Happy” singer and acclaimed producer recently shared the story of his short-lived fast-food job. “McDonald’s, my first and only job — got fired three times,” Williams said in a new interview with the BBC. “I was eating the chicken nuggets.”

The Grammy winner explained that his nugget snacking didn’t go unnoticed. “It got me in trouble,” Williams said. “I got fired three times. Not for the same thing. The first two times, it was just because I was lazy. The third time, it was just kind of like, ‘Dude, what are you doing? Why are you just sitting there eating nuggets? What are you doing?'”

Williams found the sauces irresistible, leading to some unapproved snacking. “I found the sweet and sour sauce and the chicken nugget pretty, an alchemical combination,” he explained. “I was one of those kids, I just liked flavors. So I would have sweet and sour on one, and on the other one I would have ranch. And I’d just go back and forth.”

Williams later collaborated with McDonald’s to create a jingle in the early 2000s. “I thought it was ironic, and I thought it was very funny,” he said on Hot Ones last month.

Williams was behind Justin Timberlake’s 2003 single “I’m Lovin’ It,” part of Timberlake’s endorsement deal with McDonald’s. The song included the brand’s now-famous five-note “ba da ba ba ba” jingle, which was co-created by ad executives Tom Batoy, Franco Tortora and Andreas Forberger, who received songwriting credits.

Williams clarified his involvement, explaining that he wasn’t responsible for the jingle itself. “[McDonald’s] brought that to us and asked us to make a song out of it,” he said.

“I mean, I didn’t wake up one day and say, ‘Oh, I got an idea for McDonald’s: da da da da da, I’m loving it.’ It was more like incorporating a jingle, you know, an idea and the concept that they had around.”

Williams didn’t mind being associated with the tune. “I think people think that I was like, ‘Wait a second, hold on, it’s going to be three days or whatever it is, five, and I’m loving it,'” he said. “That’s not what happened. It was more of them saying, ‘Can you make a song out of this?’ And we were like, ‘Yeah, sure.'”

This clarification may address any potential overlap with Pusha T, a longtime collaborator of Williams, who stated in 2016 that he wrote the five-note jingle—a claim that was later disputed by Batoy.