{"source_url": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com", "url": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-the-robin-hood-of-nuggets-how-an-edmonton-man-became-the-most/", "title": "\u2018The Robin Hood of Nuggets:\u2019 How an Edmonton man became \u2018the most popular person on the internet\u2019", "top_image": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/resizer/NdCMlf--Ir01um9ZGN0zxK78Pek=/1200x0/filters:quality(80)/arc-anglerfish-tgam-prod-tgam.s3.amazonaws.com/public/CPL6VOBU3BH2NGLJCJGDYKSBQA.JPG", "meta_img": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/resizer/NdCMlf--Ir01um9ZGN0zxK78Pek=/1200x0/filters:quality(80)/arc-anglerfish-tgam-prod-tgam.s3.amazonaws.com/public/CPL6VOBU3BH2NGLJCJGDYKSBQA.JPG", "images": ["https://www.theglobeandmail.com/resizer/NdCMlf--Ir01um9ZGN0zxK78Pek=/1200x0/filters:quality(80)/arc-anglerfish-tgam-prod-tgam.s3.amazonaws.com/public/CPL6VOBU3BH2NGLJCJGDYKSBQA.JPG", "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/files/dev/cannabis-pro/cannabis-cem-units-v10/tgam-ROC-promo-335.png", "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/resizer/-qC9Qz3pQD3Ef2ZMfqwI4rafafo=/620x0/filters:quality(80)/arc-anglerfish-tgam-prod-tgam.s3.amazonaws.com/public/CPL6VOBU3BH2NGLJCJGDYKSBQA.JPG"], "movies": [], "text": "Open this photo in gallery Former McDonald's worker Cody Bondarchuk was overwhelmed by the response after he tweeted: 'I worked at McDonald\u2019s for two and a half years and I put 11 nuggets in almost every 10-piece I made.' JASON FRANSON/The Globe and Mail\n\nBefore he was a hero, a legend, \u201ca true angel\u201d and a national treasure \u2013 or, depending on your view, a communist, anarchist and unrepentant corporate thief \u2013 Cody Bondarchuk was just a man in Edmonton, about to have supper.\n\nIt was 5:27 p.m. on Nov. 15, a Friday evening. Mr. Bondarchuk, 26, had been tucking into a 10-piece order of Chicken McNuggets with sweet-and-sour sauce, when he recalled something he and his co-workers had done when he was a teenager working at McDonald\u2019s a decade earlier.\n\nAnd, as people do these days, he decided to share the thought on Twitter.\n\nStory continues below advertisement\n\nMr. Bondarchuk wrote, \u201cI worked at McDonald\u2019s for two and a half years and I put 11 nuggets in almost every 10-piece I made.\u201d\n\nThen he clicked the little blue button to send his tweet.\n\n\u201cIn the first hour, I was like, \u2018Oh, this is going to get 100 likes and I\u2019m going to be really proud of myself for tweeting out a stupid thing,\u2019\u201d Mr. Bondarchuk said later. \u201cAnd then it just kept coming.\u201d\n\nBy morning, the tweet had 4,000 likes. When Mr. Bondarchuk took his lunch break that day, it had 100,000. Soon, the tweet was getting 10,000 or 15,000 new responses every minute, so many notifications his phone kept shutting off.\n\nPeople variously called him \u201ca Real American Hero\u201d (he\u2019s Canadian), \u201cthe extra nugget angel,\u201d \u201cthe hero we honestly didn\u2019t deserve,\u201d \u201cMr. Extra Nugget Giving Man,\u201d \u201cSt. Nuggets,\u201d and, the moniker that appears to have stuck: \u201cThe Robin Hood of Nuggets.\u201d (Or, less formally, \u201cThe Robin Hood of Nugz.\u201d)\n\nThere were those who blessed him, wished him good karma, thanked him for his service and told him he\u2019d restored their faith in humanity. As Twitter user @of_obvious wrote, about the experience of unexpectedly receiving 12 McNuggets in a 10-piece order, \u201cIt\u2019s amazing how much of a gift that feels like.\u201d\n\nThe tweet also prompted others to share their own random acts of fast-food philanthropy, from a Burger King employee who tucks onion rings at the bottom of fry boxes, to workers putting extra cheese on tacos, extra pepperoni on pizza, extra bacon on Baconators.\n\nStory continues below advertisement\n\nThere was every imaginable meme for \u201chero\u201d or \u201cgratitude,\u201d and an oft-repeated reminder that \u201cnot all heroes wear capes.\u201d\n\nThe story of the viral tweet was picked up by news organizations around the world, including the New York Post, Today and Fox News, which speculated Mr. Bondarchuk \u201cmay have just become the most popular person on the internet.\u201d\n\nThe tweet was liked by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, then just days away from the launch of his controversial Cybertruck, and read aloud by Tom Hanks, just days after the release of his movie about Mr. Rogers, in a video celebrating \u201csome of the nicest tweets on the Internet.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is a man who is not only being nice, but he\u2019s feeding the world a little bit better and bucking the corporate strategy,\u201d Mr. Hanks said after reading the tweet. \u201cBravo. That\u2019s a nice thing to do.\u201d\n\nOthers weren\u2019t so charitable. No small number of people called Mr. Bondarchuk a thief and questioned what would happen if every employee did what he had done.\n\nAs @DaianaT1 noted, \u201cThat\u2019s basically stealing, the nuggets weren\u2019t yours so it\u2019s not up to you deciding how many to put.\u201d\n\nStory continues below advertisement\n\nAsked by @North_Resists if there is a \u201cstatute of limitations on grand-theft-nuggets,\u201d Mr. Bondarchuk replied, \u201cI hope so because I calculated it and I would owe Ronald about $1,600.\u201d\n\nOthers called Mr. Bondarchuk a socialist, a communist, an anarchist and a rebel (either compliments or insults, depending on the tweeter), and a small collection of truthers questioned whether he really gave away any extra nuggets at all.\n\nAppearing on a radio show in Toronto, Mr. Bondarchuk found himself paired with a former McDonald\u2019s franchise owner who was adamant he should be arrested.\n\nBut while Mr. Bondarchuk notes he was 14 to 16 years old at the time of the McNugget activity and wouldn\u2019t do it now, he also isn\u2019t apologetic about randomly redistributing pieces of corporate poulet to the populus.\n\n\u201cWealth inequality is not getting any smaller and it just baffles me that people could look at this and find fault with it,\u201d he says.\n\nFor the moment, the viral tweet has levelled off at about 15,000 comments, 81,000 retweets and upward of one-million likes. Mr. Bondarchuk\u2019s followers on Twitter jumped to about 7,000 from 900, which he says has brought both additional expectation and scrutiny.\n\nStory continues below advertisement\n\nFor now, Mr. Bondarchuk is using the moment to promote his podcast, Heart Half Full, and also hopes it could help his planned run for Edmonton city council in 2021.\n\n\u201cIt certainly gave me like a bit of a perspective into what exactly it means to suddenly be in the spotlight in a very big way,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought I loved attention, but even this was a limit for me.\u201d\n\nOur Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day\u2019s most important headlines. Sign up today.", "keywords": [], "meta_keywords": ["Robin Hood of Nuggets", "Chicken McNuggets", "The Robin Hood of Nugz", "Cody Bondarchuk", "tweet", "hero", "people", "bondarchuk", "mcdonald", "mr bondarchuk", "Mr Bondarchuk", "likes", "Burger King", "Globe", "Tom Hanks"], "tags": [], "authors": ["Follow Jana G. Pruden On Twitter", "Jana G. Pruden"], "publish_date": "Sun Dec 29 18:55:55 2019", "summary": "", "article_html": "", "meta_description": "\u2018It certainly gave me like a bit of a perspective into what exactly it means to suddenly be in the spotlight in a very big way,\u2019 says Cody Bondarchuk. \u2018I thought I loved attention, but even this was a limit for me.\u2019", "meta_lang": "en", "meta_favicon": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/resources/assets/meta/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png", "meta_data": {"application-name": "The Globe and Mail", "viewport": "width=device-width,minimum-scale=1,initial-scale=1", "description": "\u2018It certainly gave me like a bit of a perspective into what exactly it means to suddenly be in the spotlight in a very big way,\u2019 says Cody Bondarchuk. \u2018I thought I loved attention, but even this was a limit for me.\u2019", "keywords": "Robin Hood of Nuggets,Chicken McNuggets,The Robin Hood of Nugz,Cody Bondarchuk,tweet,hero,people,bondarchuk,mcdonald,mr bondarchuk,Mr Bondarchuk,likes,Burger King,Globe,Tom Hanks", "news_keywords": "Robin Hood of Nuggets,Chicken McNuggets,The Robin Hood of Nugz,Cody Bondarchuk,tweet,hero,people,bondarchuk,mcdonald,mr bondarchuk", "last-modified": "2019-12-29T18:55:56-0500", "arc-id": "LGRBEB2635FYHP3CELFFNV7VGE", "arc-revision": "Q6XOINDQBRHWNOX7DJQPII2MFY", "release-version": "5_0_19", "apple-mobile-web-app-title": "The Globe and Mail", "msapplication-navbutton-color": "#da161f", "msapplication-TileColor": "#da161f", "msapplication-TileImage": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/resources/assets/meta/mstile-144x144.png", "msapplication-config": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/resources/assets/meta/browserconfig.xml", "theme-color": "#da161f", "fb": {"pages": 491600721006147}, "og": {"site_name": "The Globe and Mail", "locale": "en_GB", "title": "\u2018The Robin Hood of Nuggets:\u2019 How an Edmonton man became \u2018the most popular person on the internet\u2019", "url": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-the-robin-hood-of-nuggets-how-an-edmonton-man-became-the-most/", "description": "\u2018It certainly gave me like a bit of a perspective into what exactly it means to suddenly be in the spotlight in a very big way,\u2019 says Cody Bondarchuk. \u2018I thought I loved attention, but even this was a limit for me.\u2019", "type": "article", "image": {"identifier": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/resizer/NdCMlf--Ir01um9ZGN0zxK78Pek=/1200x0/filters:quality(80)/arc-anglerfish-tgam-prod-tgam.s3.amazonaws.com/public/CPL6VOBU3BH2NGLJCJGDYKSBQA.JPG", "width": 1200, "height": "799.1626794258374"}}, "article": {"publisher": 140961138903, "published_time": "2019-12-29T18:55:55-0500", "modified_time": "2019-12-29T18:55:56-0500", "tag": "Robin Hood of Nuggets,Chicken McNuggets,The Robin Hood of Nugz,Cody Bondarchuk,tweet,hero,people,bondarchuk,mcdonald,mr bondarchuk,Mr Bondarchuk,likes,Burger King,Globe,Tom Hanks"}, "twitter": {"site": "@globeandmail", "creator": "@globeandmail", "url": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-the-robin-hood-of-nuggets-how-an-edmonton-man-became-the-most/", "title": "\u2018The Robin Hood of Nuggets:\u2019 How an Edmonton man became \u2018the most popular person on the internet\u2019", "description": "\u2018It certainly gave me like a bit of a perspective into what exactly it means to suddenly be in the spotlight in a very big way,\u2019 says Cody Bondarchuk. \u2018I thought I loved attention, but even this was a limit for me.\u2019", "card": "summary_large_image", "image": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/resizer/MozwkQCetNFJhoEDwvIkl3hrDYw=/560x0/filters:quality(80)/arc-anglerfish-tgam-prod-tgam.s3.amazonaws.com/public/CPL6VOBU3BH2NGLJCJGDYKSBQA.JPG"}}, "canonical_link": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-the-robin-hood-of-nuggets-how-an-edmonton-man-became-the-most/"}