Last Friday afternoon I made a big mistake. Collecting the grandkids, and feeling in a bit of an expansive grandad mood, I said that we could go for lunch, anywhere they wanted.
‘Yaaaahy!’, they chorused, jumping up and down. ‘McDonald’s!’. I was cornered. Never say something to your grandkids and then back out. So off we went to experience the delights of the McDonald’s ‘dining experience’.
Things got off to a great start, with a twenty-five minute wait to get in. There was no one there to take our order. You have to line up again and make your choice from items displayed on a big electronic board, and put in your table number for them to deliver.
Your ‘meal’ duly arrives, looking something like how I imagine prison rations might appear. No knives or forks; you eat with your fingers. Tomato ketchup in little plastic containers, drinks in paper cups or drunk straight from the bottle.
The kids had burgers and ‘fries’. The order board had shown a picture of a chunky burger in a fat bun, with a thick slice of fresh tomato and crispy lettuce. What arrived were flabby, messy concoctions smothered in some sort of goo, with a nasty looking ‘cheese’ slice that bore a distinct resemblance to piece of half-melted plastic. The disparity between the image and the reality was indeed startling. All in boxes with the logo ‘McDonald’s’ emblazoned on the side, lest we forget.
All the time you’re surrounded by fat cunts and their whinging offspring, and unruly bunches of schoolkids acting up. Miserable spotty-faced teenagers in their McD’s prison-like garb slouch about despondently, shifting piles of discarded rubbish from tables and swabbing them down, and sweeping crap up from the floor. ‘Happy to help’ and ‘loving it’ are their mottos, I hear.
Later on I tried to find a McD’s site that I could go on to post my observations. What I did find was a copy of the McD’s ‘mission statement’. Get this, cunters;
‘Our mission is to make delicious, feel-good moments easy. This is how we uniquely feed and foster communities. We serve delicious food that people feel good about eating. We work hard to offer the speed, choice and personalisation our customers expect. We don’t just serve food, we serve moments of feel-good, all with the light-hearted, unpretentious, welcoming, dependable personality our consumers know and love’.
Fucking hell, I’ve heard some shithousing in my time but this takes the biscuit, and there’s plenty more of this ludicrous bombast if anyone can be arsed to look.
The reality is that McD’s is about junk food produced and served in a production line environment, all conforming to the lowest common denominator of ‘service’. It’s all about the sacrifice of care, quality and individuality to drab uniformity, speed, and the maximisation of profit.
Let’s take the knee and bow down to one of the gods of American corporatism. Amen to that.
Nominated by: Ron Knee
