I don't have a lot of faith in humanity. Shocking, I know. Spend a few months working at McDonald's and you'd agree.
Don't get me wrong. It's not just that general "what the fuck am I doing working at McDonald's" feeling. It's more than that.
The first evidence comes from my fellow employees. Not to say that they're all worthless, because some of them aren't. The better workers tend to be a few years older or considerably older than I am, complete with common sense, a useful skillset and a work ethic. But those people are few and far between, who for some reason, never needed to set their personal career bar higher than burger assembly and have been able to happily maintain their position. And still, they strike one as poor souls ground into a barely lifeless shell by years spent toiling in the greasy kitchen of culinary hell. But they are what they are.
No, the problem is with the workers my age who apparently apply for jobs as sport, then compete in such contests as "see who can show up for work the least," "miss the most days before getting fired," and "complain the most about how hard a job that requires little more than existing as a skillset." One girl complained about not getting a break while she was on break. She's a gold medalist.
But the evidence doesn't end there. No, exhibit b is the people that, day after day, absolutely have to have their Mickey D fix. Without fail, these people return to McDonald's time and time again to gorge themselves on 99-cent double cheeseburgers and 2-for-1 bacon, egg and cheese biscuits. There's a Wendy's next door and a Chick-fil-A across the street, even a fucking Taco Hell on the corner adjacent, all of which offer, to varying degrees, superior alternatives to the godforsaken, alleged food-like substances McDonald's peddles. Even more disheartening is that the least popular item, in terms of sales, that McDonald's offers is the item most likely to evoke the sensation of actually consuming food: Chicken Strips. Surprisingly, the Chicken Strips are a high quality chicken product, which explains a) the high price and b) the lack of sales.
And it's not just the lack of quality in the food-like products, it's also the preparation. I realize that, in terms of eating outside of your own home, ignorance is bliss, but if you expect that a teenager making minimum wage in today's world of 3-dollar gallons of gas and 20-dollar CDs is in the slightest bit interested in the safety regulations meant to protect you from gastric disorders, you get what you deserve. Now, I've worked in two other restaurants, which were legitimate fine-dining experiences, complete with well trained chefs and gays. (Ironically, one of those chefs, a graduate of Johnson and Wales University, claims the goddamned Big Mac as her favorite food.) So let me say this: in terms of restaurant experiences, it is far better to have your salad tossed by a middle-aged gay man than to have the prettiest teenager handle your meat in the grill area. Keep that in mind on your next lunch break. Actually, just keep that in mind.
As absurd as all that has been, the most insane piece of evidence is this: a shocking number of medical professionals eat at McDonald's as regularly as the general public. My brother-in-law recently had to make a trip to the emergency room and was recognized by at least two people, a nurse and a doctor, from his position as manager at McDonald's. To paraphrase Lewis Black, I don't know much (this is where he usually says "but I do know this," and I won't claim to know something that medical professionals don't because it would probably involve professional wrestling or rock music of the Pacific Northwest from the mid/late-80s through the early/mid 90s), but I do know this: I'm not entirely reassured by the idea that someone who doesn't know better than to not eat at McDonald's often enough to recognize someone as an employee of McDonald's might be trying to figure out what medical problems I am suffering from.
So, there you have it: McDonald's as a microcosm of the ills of our current society.
Also, I'd like to point out a great deal of misogyny in Nate's Tuesday/Wednesday installment of the Lost Week. The entire week was a ridiculous amount of output; nice work.
Monday, October 03, 2005
The Case Against Humanity: McDonald's as Social Microcosm.
5 comments:
Ugh.. I haven't eaten at a McDonald's in.. forever. Not since Morgan Spurlock's "Don't Eat This Book."
I guess the hours of entertainment don't balance out the job itself?
The salad-tossing/meat handling line is probably the wittiest thing I've ever seen you write.....and that is saying a lot.
We need more McDonald's stories though....as many as you can stomach.
There is no entertainment to be had when other people are actively making your job harder through their stupidity. I really had no idea that the bar could get lower than it previously was, but these people are the bottom of the barrel; prime examples of stupid people not knowing that they are indeed fucking stupid. It would be different, if, say, I was watching it on TV. Living it, however, is no fun.
There really are no more McDonald's stories. The job, to no end, sucks. My specific job is ok, because I do salad prep and I don't have to actually work with co-workers very often, although now that school is back in session the idiot kids are on nights and weekends and I'm strictly weekdays, so it's not as bad as it was during the summer. Our store manager hates his job and has no social skills (I was there two weeks before he even spoke to me), the other two managers are unqualified for their jobs, our maintenance man is about three IQ points above tard (literally), the biscuit maker talks to me non-fuck-stop all damned day (fortunately he's rather intelligent, although he mostly spouts obscure music trivia and repeats old stories that I already knew). Just pure shit.
As long as I'm in Morristown, that's the job I'm keeping since my brother-in-law is a manager, but the job just fucking sucks. I've had crappy jobs before, but this is beyond belief.
As for the salad-tossing line, between that and the one on the board, that was two classic lines in one day. Fantastic.
I would like to say a couple of things:
Loved this, and I must agree that the salad-tossing/ meat handling line is gold.
And thanks for the recognition, not only of the lost week writing, but of the rampant misogyny. Seriously, I don't know what got into me. Calling the missing VA chick a "cooze" ... damn dude, that came outta nowhere.
The comments about the student in your class were par for the course and dumb hoes that turn up missing in the manner that the last two white girls that went missing and got their fifteen minutes of fame for it deserve to be called whatever comes to mind first, but what really brought all the misogyny together was this:
"But it'll probably go to one of the gashes I call my female colleagues."
That was kind of shocking. Not in a bad way, more like a heel-turn teaser.
I would have probably pointed that out in the comments of the post itself, but I was away from the Internet for an astonishing amount of time for most of last week. I noted your lament of my absence in the last lost week post when I was getting caught up on Sunday and meant to post something then, but blogger was down for maintenance at the time.
Thanks for the kind words, folks, and I'd like to celebrate my second post that received random comments from bloggers that probably didn't get here via Southernfried.
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