{"id":323,"date":"2004-01-29T16:17:13","date_gmt":"2004-01-29T23:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=323"},"modified":"2004-01-29T16:17:13","modified_gmt":"2004-01-29T23:17:13","slug":"why-i-eat-at-mcdonalds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2004\/01\/why-i-eat-at-mcdonalds\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I eat at McDonalds"},"content":{"rendered":"

After some snarky comments<\/a> on my last post, I feel compelled to explain why I eat at McDonalds.<\/p>\n

Every saturday, no matter where I am in the world, I seek out a mint copy of The Economist<\/em> and then a nearby McDonalds, and read the leaders over a Big Mac meal. It’s one thing to read about the forces that propel society today; it’s quite another to see the gears clicking at close quarters. Globalization, mass customization, marketing, consumerism… McDonalds rides the crest of all these waves, producing something as basic as a fast meal, yet managing to convince the locals from Bali to Barcelona that they want it. It’s an amazing feat. By going to McDonalds, I make sure I understand, at a visceral<\/s> gut levelBonus pun.<\/span>, how the world works. That is why I eat at McDonalds.<\/p>\n

But I lie. Who am I kidding?<\/p>\n

I was imprinted at an early age, when road trips with my parents across the US were punctured at regular intervals with screams of “McDonalds!” as yet another set of arches floated into view on the horizon. My sister and I vied for the honor of being first to see the next one, but to win you had to have the best view, and to have the best view you had to have the middle bit of the back seat, so we fought a lot over that.<\/p>\n

But it was worth it. On road trips, our family had a symbiotic relationship with McDonalds — a pact: We the offspring promised to behave if at regular intervals we could partake in a simple Pavlovian routine: Arches appear, we scream, we stop, we gorge, we shut up. My parents were happy, we were happy, and above all, McDonalds was happy. To this day, I see nothing wrong with that, and I don’t even have kids. People who do seem even more grateful to McDonalds.<\/p>\n

Over the years, I have become an expert rationalizer for my visits to McDonalds. Here are a few more ways in which I tell myself that eating at McDonalds teaches me things I will not learn anywhere else:<\/p>\n

Meet the locals:<\/span> It’s they who eat at McDonalds in Barcelona; the foreigners sit at Caf\u00e9 Zurich being fleeced for their authentic experience. In Moscow in 1993, I stood in line together with hundreds of others in eager anticipation, dollars in hand, to be met by an absurdly eager Russian serving crew. Russian and eager! If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought McDonalds was holding their loved ones hostage at gunpoint out the back.<\/p>\n

Make a statement:<\/span> In Brussels, I make a point of ordering in Flemish: I will say “Een Big Mac, een groot friet, en een cola” and the response, often, is a surly “quoi?”. Then, depending on my mood, I will either repeat the order in slower Flemish, or else breezily in French, thereby clearly showing how linguistically superior I am to a high school kid making minimum wage.<\/p>\n

Also, whenever the server asks me if I want to “supersize” or “plusmeny” my order, I make a point of refusing. This way, I am signalling to McDonalds that I<\/em> am immune to their marketing ploys; I’m<\/em> the one making the decisions here, and that I know exactly what I wantDeep in the inner sanctum of the McDonalds University<\/a> library, I am sure their sacred texts mention this as the main reason for asking me. “Let the customer say no; give them a sense of empowerment that they will want to repeat.”<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Consumerism is good:<\/span> People say that democracies do not go at war with each other. I’ll go further: Countries with McDonaldses in them do not go to war with each other. And that can only be a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After some snarky comments on my last post, I feel compelled to explain why I eat at McDonalds. Every saturday, no matter where I am in the world, I seek out a mint copy of The Economist and then a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-5d","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}