Mcdonald's was my first employer, and while I've got a ton of "somebody pooped in the ballpit" stories, I really think the restaurant is a net good.
As a 16 year old it was awesome to work alongside other folks of varying ages and nationalities and get to know that other "walks" of life existed. I made friends outside of my highschool, fell in love, got burnt by the fryolator like 8 times, and most importantly learned about hard work and the value of money.
But I also saw veterans from the VA having their Saturday breakfast meeting. I remember watching them sit for hours with smiles on their faces as they talked about their time in the service. I watched regulars come in and make smalltalk at the register. I saw the homeless get their daily meals. I saw people at their worst, screaming about McChickens, and at their best, telling jokes and making people smile. It really is a watering hole and I'm thankful for the time I spent there.
I also had MCD as my first job at 15, and have a lot to appreciate.
My parents basically wanted me to experience a “crappy job” at least once (it really wasn’t that bad of a job, plus 50% employee discount which was a great deal for a teenager and McD lover), and told me that people who are versatile and are able to endure hardship will be able to make it through and pick oneself up even when life becomes difficult for whatever reason.
And another quote from my McD coworker, who was an aspiring music composer, changed my view on money, I had a problem with hoarding money (still kind of do) and he said to me “money is not the goal, it’s something to help achieve your goals”. Didn’t understand that until I was older but it eventually struck me.
Great place to be for teenagers looking for their first work experiences really.
The last time I ate McDonald's it was during a long road trip and it was late at night. Inside the store, everything was being handled by 3 teenagers and that blew my mind.
I rarely eat there but I can appreciate that one of the world's largest chain restaurants, with all the hygiene/safety issues that come with preparing food, are largely run by teenagers following a format/system.
My children are still young, but I've long thought I'd want them to work a basic job for a large employer (fast food, supermarket, etc) as a teenager to get an appreciation of how small cogs working to a fixed formula can create something massive.
> are largely run by teenagers following a format/system.
this is the actual genius of the McDonalds' franchise. It's not the menu nor the food recipe, but the formalized business process. Every step is listed, there's a manual for everyting, and training is sufficient for anyone with a brain to get it.
It makes every maccas exactly the same everywhere.
Went to a McDonalds after midnight, after an epic Eminem gig nearby. We just needed some coffees, not food.
You don't go to Maccies for a good coffee but fucking hell, they were the only place we could get it from. Drive through was closed but I could order inside. Some tough guys hanging out and flexing but they're just waiting for their mate to finish their shift.
24 hour coffee is a total boon when you've got a 2 hour drive ahead of you after a big gig.
McDonalds in my country, Australia, has superb coffee. They have fresh-from-whole bean espresso machines in every store -- Often as part of a McCafe with a dedicated barista.
It is seriously as good as coffee from nearly any anywhere else, and consistently so.
I’ve been working in Japan for a decade and one of the things that made morning Roppongi much more tolerable was being able to slide into a Maccas and quietly drink a coffee before going to work.
I’m heading back to Aus now and the thought I wouldn’t be able to do that was actually a little depressing.
In Canada, if you want to rank coffee, it goes McDonalds > Starbucks > piss water >>>> tim hortons. Obviously, if you're in a major city, local coffee shops are way better.
Every time I read about Tim Horton's online, people always talk about how terrible it is. But every time I visit Canada, I'll stop at multiple Tim Horton's during my time there and they are always busy. Maybe it's not great, but it's good enough for how fast and cheap it is.
I think the draw is the doughnuts; we don't have Krispy Kreme or any of those other chains here. While people are at Tims to get doughnuts, they also pick up other things.
Also, they build Tims in some very rural areas that Starbucks would never bother with, and keep them open pretty early/late (sometimes 24hrs), making them one of the few places to congregate at those hours in small towns. Tims (and A&W, oddly) are where you'll find the seniors who can't stop getting up at 3AM, sitting and reading the paper.
It really is because a) traditionally tims used to be really good. b) tims is literally everywhere. I don't think there's other fast food or coffee chain here that is so omnipresent c) they were a Canadian brand and still try to portray themselves as one even though now they are owned by a Brazilian company.
It really isn't that cheap tbh. A coffee at McDonalds is gonna cost about the same price, and starbucks is like $0.5 more.
They have consistently OK coffee. You could be lost in North Dakota, or roasting in New Mexico, or snowed in Wyoming- if you find a McDonald's, the coffee will be OK.
I try to support small remote gas stations & buy stuff there, but the coffee is often undrinkable.
Very interesting article, thanks for posting! I've thought about this a lot in the context of online communities (IRC channels, old-style forums and "old-style" games where people can host their own servers, and you get to know "the regulars"). I think the "clan" or "community" idea in some online games really makes them into "third places". I used to play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory a lot. The key point in the game is that while of course people were better than others, it only took 5 or 6 hours of play to level up to the highest point you could be. Most servers saved xp points between connects, so while it may take a new player on the server 5 or 6 hours to level up to stuff like faster reloading, there is no massive difference between what some players have access to and what others have access to - you don't accumulate weapons or items or skins, nor can you buy them. This means that the game is very heavily (somewhat luck) egalitarian in that some people have more skills than others, but everyone has an equal opportunity to gain those skills.
Newer online games like Overwatch (which I play more now) have distroyed this community spirit. The normal mode of playing is no longer that one joins a server full of regulars, rather, you're matched up with random people. You can play with specific people, but it's weird to randomly friend request someone after the length of a game (20 minutes or less). The mitigating factor is that you can choose to "stay as a team" if you enjoyed your 20 minutes, and it'll group the people who select that together. After playing more games in this group, you might start chatting ("fancy another game?" or "you did great in that!" etc.) and then add each other as friends. But it's not the same as hanging out.
Old games were more like going to your local running club every week. New games are like going to a different fun-run in a different part of town each week, and then maybe someone asks you to to run with them again at one of the fun-runs, but there's a very low chance of that happening and it's kinda weird.
Chat servers/channels/whatever that allow off-topic discussion seem to be the go-to "third place" online now. HN and Reddit are too large to qualify in a meaningful sense for the majority of users.
i have a pet theory that matchmaking in team games, and the destruction of “placefulness“ in-game, has contributed to the widespread experience of increased toxicity in these communities. it’s magnified the online disinhibition effect, as the consequences are now even more diffuse. probably the same percentage of jerks, but you can’t get your friend who runs the server to ban them.
discord servers seem to have filled the niche, to some extent, as each server can develop its own norms. i’m hoping that OW2 takes the opportunity to address this design problem in-game, via guilds, clans, or tournaments, something along those lines.
Good points about familiarity and regularity. There is a lot of scope to improve online spaces by bringing those elements in. And maybe getting rid of/reducing - infinite scroll addictive news streams + upvotes/likes/retweet/counter stuff which I guess distracts everyone from connecting.
If you are interested in Third Place stuff, Howard Shultz talks about how that philosophy is behind the success of Starbucks much more than the coffee :)
Skimming the article, and in particular after reading "Oldenburg's characteristics", I feel it misses what I'd guess would be the core characteristic of a third place: choice. Home and work are places where you have to be[0]. The "third place" is somewhere you choose to be.
--
[0] - Not technically, but the costs of not being there are generally too high to give one any realistic choice in the matter.
>As a 16 year old it was awesome to work alongside other folks of varying ages and nationalities and get to know that other "walks" of life existed.
For a certain range of "other walks". Rich and upper middle class kids would seldom work there for example.
Which makes compulsory army service an even better version of the "meet people from all walks of life". It also helps with not over-dramatizing things (think "emo" teens) and generally being lazy (think kids whose parents do everything for them well into their 20s). And most people could do with more discipline, not less.
Unfortunately it comes with the baggage of you know, killing people. That said, in countries not in the offense this (being involved in combat) is almost never the case. Though these countries, with exceptions like Switzerland and Singapore, don't have an army service.
Perhaps an alternative, where people have to spend time with all walks of life, privileges are minimal, and they get to do some good, like e.g. planting trees, helping in crisis situations, etc, would be great.
>2) By far the biggest baggage in my view is the involuntary servitude being forced on innocent young kids. That is not worthy a free country to me.
(1) the "innocent young kids" are 18+ grown-ass adults. Time to learn the also have some responsibilities towards the society they live in, not just privileges. Paying taxes alone doesn't count. This country they grew up, gone to school, and live in only exists because some people fought hard (and many died) to defend it.
(2) It's not "involuntary servitude" it's citizen service. Free countries don't come for free - they're fought to create, to defend, and to keep free.
The military isn't "service" like a normal job. You are thrust into a world where rank has an immense amount of power over your entire life and, depending on your chain of command, you can be subject to abuses of power that are state-sanctioned. If the platoon SGT decided he wants to single you out for any possible reason there isn't a lot you can practically do except suffer.
I served over 10 years in the military and it was a great decision for my life but I'm somewhat against conscription except in dire times.
>You are thrust into a world where rank has an immense amount of power over your entire life and, depending on your chain of command, you can be subject to abuses of power that are state-sanctioned.
That sounds like a microcosm of American society as a whole.
Too often it's people glorifying service, combat the military, the police that are so quick to build it down by ramping up fears and a siege mentality in relative safety, militarising the police and limiting freedom in the name of defence.
People who uphold freedom as a dogmatic concept, a holy word void of context that can be attacked by outsiders other than some invading nation as if it is not a product of the systems and society that is free.
Those "grown-ass adults" are still not old enough to handle an alcoholic beverage, but they're old enough to kill people, get killed, and get physically and psychologically maimed for the diplomatic failures of actual "grown-ass adults".
"Paying taxes alone doesn't count."
Who said anything about "paying taxes alone"? A role that involves paying taxes also involves working as a participant in society. You can choose to gatekeep about who and what counts if you wish. My gate says that teachers and healthcare workers are far and away a more important societal good.
"This country they grew up, gone to school, and live in only exists because some people fought hard (and many died) to defend it."
So this land and the people living on it wouldn't exist because people chose to kill other people? Huh.
"It's not "involuntary servitude" it's citizen service."
Just call it a different name and it's a-ok!
"Free countries don't come for free - they're fought to create, to defend, and to keep free."
A free country is hardly a free country when it forces you to die for, in most cases, bogus reasons for bogus wars.
>Those "grown-ass adults" are still not old enough to handle an alcoholic beverage, but they're old enough to kill people, get killed, and get physically and psychologically maimed for the diplomatic failures of actual "grown-ass adults".
Well, depends on the country/culture. In several they are allowed to handle an alcoholic beverage just fine too at that age (heck, even slightly younger). And that's just on the level of law. In their own, they manage just fine to consume alcohol, with schemes ranging from an older friend buying, to fake IDs and all that.
That said, if a country is under attack, then it doesn't matter whatever one is ready or not. You handle it with whatever you have. Especially if the enemy, or the fate imposed by the enemy, wont spare teenagers either.
>Who said anything about "paying taxes alone"?
Many people - who think it's their one and only duty as a citizen. I'm not just replying to what has been said, but also to common attitudes and more general themes related to the subject.
>So this land and the people living on it wouldn't exist because people chose to kill other people? Huh.
A country is not it's land, it's the state, it's sovereignty, it's infrastructure, and so on. So that land would exist, and others would be ruling it, including you. Huh.
>A free country is hardly a free country when it forces you to die for, in most cases, bogus reasons for bogus wars.
The existence (even prevalence) of bogus wars, doesn't make all war fighting bogus. Usually the bogus wars are on the offense side to begin with.
The US didn't have any reason or right to be in the Phillipines or Vietnam for example. But they did have a reason to fight the British. Or the Japanese for that matter.
> (2) It's not "involuntary servitude" it's citizen service. Free countries don't come for free - they're fought to create, to defend, and to keep free.
Conscripts are forced to serve in the military. Sounds like slave soldiers to me.
The alternative option would have been slavery with no steps, so there's that.
Those speaking derisively of "nationalism" more often than not do so from the vantage point of being within a free nation and having a citizenship.
But it's doubly ironic to dismiss nationalism so from the sweet privilege point of being a citizen of the most powerful nations on Earth (e.g. for an American).
When you don't have a nation (e.g. a colonised or enslaved people, ethic minority ill treated within an empire or a larger nation run by another ethnicity, immigrant) you very much want to get access to one.
> "Of course, there's only two sides, nationalism or slavery."
The choices are staying strong enough to defend the nation or slavery. You could ask the former colonies of the old colonial powers about that. Or the Native Americans. Or the former subjects of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere". Or, more recently, the Ukraine.
I am a liberal but denying the importance of the military is just foolishness.
Yes. Did you expect some magical unicorn third option?
An idea like:
"I'd like to live in a free country but I don't want to ever fight for it, so please don't invade it people, we're all pals and everything right?"
only flies when you're already in a strong nation, that others don't dare mess with. And that's because others in your nation didn't let that idea fly in their heads.
Sounds like slavery and brainwashing with extra steps to me complete with doublethink.
It is no accident that "we had to destroy the village to save it" came from a conscript army. Your choice doesn't matter but you have ordained responsibility and not those with power.
I went to a private school in Australia and had lots of friends from upper class backgrounds and almost all of them had a part time job at McDonald's or a supermarket purely for the experience and so they could have the finest PC gaming parts.
They all left before starting uni to focus on study but I think it's untrue that upper class kids do not work at McDonald's. They just don't keep working there for the long term.
~$15-$17 AUD per hour and all living expenses paid for by parents. Combined with money you get from relatives on birthdays it becomes pretty easy to buy a new $400 gpu
The first criteria for a Third Place (wikipedia link below) is "Occupants of third places have little to no obligation to be there. They are not tied down to the area financially, politically, legally, or otherwise and are free to come and go as they please."
Military service has a lot of benefits. But it probably wouldn't serve the same purpose that Mcdonalds does in these communities
They had that in Italy since the early ‘70s, a “National Civil Service” as alternative to compulsory military service for people who “objected to the use of weapons on grounds of conscience”. It was a somewhat-punitive regime (18 months vs the 12 of military service, often with little choice about the organisation to serve, and basically unpaid). The range of activities was very wide, from menial tasks in offices and libraries to pretty hard labor in healthcare. As with all compulsory experiences, some people loved it, some hated it.
Somehow it still exists, despite military service having been abolished more than 15 years ago. I have no idea why one would ever ask to join, but Italy being Italy, there is probably some bureaucratic reason for organisations to shove volunteers under that umbrella to get free money from the state.
I’ve also noticed McDonald’s as a whole has a very good hiring program. It’s rare you get someone who just doesn’t give a crap these days. I would say as a rule their employees seem intelligent and motivated to be friendly to customers whereas it’s become hit or miss at more expensive quick serve alternatives.
Hah. Places like Chick Fil A have amazing employees, even Culver's has a cut above. But most of the people at MCD/Wendy’s/BK simply do not give two shits
It really does depend on the locale. In larger cities in South Texas for example, your opinion mostly holds: McDonalds employees are the lowest rung, they know it, and they don't seem to particularly care. In small towns though? The local McDonalds is often one of the only places to eat that's open late, and because the employees and the locals are essentially supporting each other, the attitude is completely different. Not being constantly rushed with a line around the building probably helps.
All that said, I'm amazed that Chick Fil A is able to maintain such a high quality of customer service within cities, even when they seem to be just slammed all day long. I have no idea how they pull that off so consistently, but they do, and they've earned my respect because of it.
Chick-Fil-A pays a slight premium and recruits heavily in the evangelical churches that the operators belong to.
The small town McDonald’s are actually pretty similar. Usually they are owned in the community, while urban McDonald’s are usually part of a multi-unit franchisee. Chick-fil-A doesn’t allow that.
While it's a heartbreaking article and a nice write-up on the importance of McDonalds as a community space, I think the other core takeaways here are these: poor people are getting no resources to help them with their mental health, a place to live, or even a volunteer to talk to; franchise businesses are doing more for some of these people than the government-provided services.
Betty Ryder from this article is a big example. You can tell she has a place to stay in at night but what about her days? It's not like days are much friendlier to homeless people when it's cold out and the fact that the employees are nice enough to not kick her out even though many would... it's both life-affirming and incredibly sad. How many Bettys is the system letting down, both in my country and the USA? How many of them depend completely on the manager of their local McDonalds not being a jerk?
Many small towns used to have drop-in centers, which acted like community centers where people could spend their day. Public Houses used to fulfill this need as well, but evolved into commercial "pubs" for drinking. Of course the various churches often still fill in parts of the role of community centers in many areas.
As everything gets commercialized and privatized, community can become a lower priority and thus taking care of people who don't pay for anything is no longer something those centers do. Eventually many towns ended up with nothing public at all, and it sounds like McDonalds is filling the need that these places used to do.
An interesting microcosm of this issue is public outdoor seating out the front of businesses being introduced in some city squares. The seats are public, provided by the city, yet because of their positioning it's easy to mistake that they are for the business. When people think the seats are for businesses, they don't feel comfortable utilizing the space unless they're paying the business.
Would you go to a pub without buying a beer? Probably not, so they're no longer Public Houses for the public, and not everywhere has a place that's filled in the need.
Frankly, I think communities are scared of who would show up, and that's precisely the problem. We have cordoned off and alienated our communities into The Paying and The Poor. You don't get to be part of the community unless you're the former.
Replace "Mcdonalds" with "Burger King" and it's the same story for the indian reservations of the southwest. (For some reason I've never seen a McDonald's on the rez, but there's always a Burger King.)
Bars and clubs used to be the community "third places." Then it was shopping malls. Then it was Starbucks, until Starbucks stopped caring about its communities and focused solely on moving customers thorough as rapidly and profitable as possible.
Now it's McDonald's, and similar outlets. All this shows how important having somewhere to go other than work and home is to a society.
I often wish local councils would fund places where you could just go to to hang around. My uni had a bunch of these places and it would just be an air conditioned room with lots of couches/chairs and a ping pong table.
Often I'll be sitting at home thinking "I want to go out and do something but it's too hot and I don't want to go shopping/spend money"
Maybe these services do exist and I just don't know about them. In that case I wish they were advertised better.
Libraries, maker spaces, men's sheds, and community gardens all fill some of the role you're talking about.
Depending on your hobbies, there are other similar things: I have a membership to a local community motorcycle garage, where you can hang out and work on bikes. Or just hang out.
I know you're probably not talking about bars, deliberately, but a lot of bars have pool tables and darts and you don't have to feel obliged to drink too much while there.
>Libraries, maker spaces, men's sheds, and community gardens all fill some of the role you're talking about
I see these around the city but unfortunately I'm living with my parents stuck in the suburbs and it seems like there is nothing around.
All of the bars I have been too have been loud and packed, I feel that there is essentially 0% chance of meeting someone there. It has only been useful if going with a group and getting food/drinks so we can take one of the outdoor tables.
I often wish local councils would fund places where you could just go to to hang around.
When I lived in Seattle, the State of Washington had a set up for just this sort of thing at the convention center.
If you needed someplace to go and bang on your laptop, it offered free space with free electricity and WiFi. Instead of being a formal co-working space, it was just large chairs with built-in desks, like we used to have in elementary school. Except that they were comfortable, wired with electrical outlets, and scattered around a nice hallway with good views of the city.
Very inviting, but almost nobody used them in part because they weren't promoted — you just had to stumble upon them. And also because at the time, they weren't necessary. Finding tech office space was as easy as striking up a conversation in a coffee shop. I landed a squishy office on the 30th floor of a downtown skyscraper with views of Puget Sound for free just because the startup guy I bumped into at Tully's liked the sound of what I was working on.
Alas, with the arrival of VC money into the tech sphere, the days of bootstrapped cooperative entrepreneurship appear to be gone. I wish someone would write a book about that era of tech. It was really something.
Check out the "reservation" status of Saskatoon Saskatchewan. (which is quite complex in a lot of ways)
anyway, I'm something of a regular at a McDonald's at the edge - usually bringing our wee one. It's one of the busiest places for kids to happily play together and many people gather happily to chat and keep warm.
Lots of sense of community there. As long as people don't push too much, management doesn't mind - after all, the place is pretty much nonstop drive through 24/7 too so people present don't actually have to be customers ...
.. it's fed into it feeling like a community gathering point.
I really wish there were more options, but it's nice that at least this is working so far.
Some people in the comments express distaste for the very idea of McDonald's being a community hub, but claiming that this sentiment is "feudalistic" is also wrong-headed. McDonalds is tacky – not just because it's cheap. The colors are cartoonish, the music is loud and, frankly, this is just not what it was created for. At its best, McDonald's is, and always has been, a place for families with children.
That said, the alternatives are also poor. Bars are small, obscene and focused on drinking; "serious" restaurants are exclusionary and expensive; parks are, well, open to elements.
Where I live, we have many anti-cafes. Some are highly thematic, quiet, stylish, with comfy rooms for groups which want privacy, and time there is cheap enough to make food joints non-competitive. Then there's libraries (though in the US, it seems, they've come to serve another community function, for an even lower income demographic).
The sentiment that this is "a new low" is not nearly as damnable and undemocratic as some here try to signal. It is possible to do better than having a gaudy corporation's food joint serve as the core for modern community.
>The colors are cartoonish, the music is loud and, frankly, this is just not what it was created for.
Not to discredit your argument, but in some places (countries) McDonald's has changed their "look" to something more akin to a restaurant, with less cartoon-ish colors, quieter-ish music (or no music at all) and different ambiance lighting to actually resemble a place a family would go. I've heard before that in the US there's this big disparity where in one state/city McD has a completely different "look" than others from other regions, sometimes making it look like a completely different brand only having the trademark M to identify it.
Every McDonald's I have been to in Australia has been remodeled to look like an average cafe, there is no music and the color scheme is mostly, white stone texture / brown wood.
It's not a deluxe restaurant but it's not horrible. The coffee they serve is perfectly fine as well.
Yeah, I have been in McDonalds in European countries that would rival US fast casual restaurants. Order at a counter or automated kiosk, have a seat and food is delivered. The stores are also very clean.
In Australia they seem to have made the kiosk the only option when in store. Tbh I don't mind it as the UI on these kiosks is very well done and I can spend my time looking through the list of available options.
Much prefer the kiosks, especially if I'm making changes/additions to the normal stuff on the order. Plus they often let you jump the massive queue at the counter. A lot of people seem quite averse to using them, and self-checkouts.
I wasn't so much opposed to using them originally but I just had no reason to use them since regular ordering worked fine. Now that they have removed the regular counters I have bothered to learn the self serve ones and I feel mostly indifferent about it.
Last time I went to the counter an employee said "let me serve you from here(the self serve)" at that point they are just educating you on how to order yourself next time.
I live in Spain and I haven't been to many mcdonalds restaurants but I don't remember there being any music at all? Just loud chatter. But people here are generally loud so perhaps they simply didn't think it was a good idea to have music.
I don't know much about how they looked in the past but currently they have sober colours. This is what a current restaurant looks like: https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/RxMy6l6HjBZujf7pHjtR... Seems like mostly hamburger colours? Mustard, lettuce, tomato.
In my neighbourhood in Canada, the local Tim Horton's (a sandwich/donut/coffee fast-food chain) fills up with elderly people chatting and gossiping every morning. I see the same folks through the window, day after day.
My mom goes to her local Tim Horton's every week to meet up with some of her friends. It's an informal drop-in social event, basically.
They sure aren't going because the coffee's good. It's because that's where their friends are.
This comment from the above link is worth highlighting:
>Last thing: I visited the first location of the California gold rush. It was a tourist town filled with vacation homes set aside a picturesque lake. You know what you did not find there? Any of the families of the old gold miners now trapped in despair or drug addiction or boarded up homes. Once the gold dried up, those settlers moved. Unpleasant to be sure, but they did. And I have to think they also liked living there and found it a difficult choice to move. Just as the migrants from mid west moved during the dust bowl. But they did it. What has changed? I have to think government policies that have subsidized the pain of economic competition have made the tradeoff between moving and not moving easier. Is that the world we want?
Arnade talks a lot about the difference between the elite "front row", who is at home anywhere in the world, as a member of the national or even global college educated class, and the "back row" that is typically rooted in a community that's very hard for them to leave. Because they depend on the community, and it depends on them.
After being sued, McDonald's hired Temple Grandin to devise a scoring system for meat processing plants. They are such a big buyer, they practically single-handedly forced reform down the throats of the meat industry.
I think the advantage of an establishment like McDonalds over a government run community center is that McDonalds is a business that has a clear purpose.
People turn their noses up at fast food restaurants, but they are ubiquitous and there are no political arguments over how to fund them. They have the familiarity of a major brand and everyone has been to one and knows how it works.
This is probably how it should be. As long as people have a safe and clean place to meet socially, it doesn't matter where it is. And we can be confident that the free market will keep McDonalds around pretty much no matter what happens
> I think the advantage of an establishment like McDonalds over a government run community center is that McDonalds is a business that has a clear purpose.
The trade-off being that establishments like McDonalds adversely affect the eating habits of people starting at a young age. The trade-off for any business as a community center, is that they must profit from the people, irregardless of the adverse effects. Facebook is another example.
> People turn their noses up at fast food restaurants, but they are ubiquitous and there are no political arguments over how to fund them.
The success of government welfare efforts in a democracy are culturally dependent. Social Darwinism is encoded into the DNA of American society. So people with privilege will often veto the establishment of social goods, as it is regarded as an unnecessary expense - maybe it means higher taxation, maybe it affects their land value, etc. In other countries, libraries, parks, community centers, galleries, campgrounds, etc. get adequate funding from the government, and with consent of the people.
So it's not so much that the free market provides the best possible outcome, it's more that the culture has constrained the best social outcome to places that increase the net caloric intake of the population, while decreasing their health outcomes. A lack of a public health system means the government is not incentivized to tackle these adverse health outcomes either.
in LA (and surrounding cities), we have an amazing system of recreational/community/senior centers that are used by all classes of people. sure, the (wealthier) west side has fancier activites (e.g., tennis) and generally larger/nicer facilies, but everyone has equal access to all of them. i've both played rec basketball (for a fee) and volunteered as a youth basketball coach at them.
the centers are run almost entrepreneurially, with a blend of public funding (based on service metrics) and direct revenue (by charging for activities). it works great.
More like a certain kind of people. More likely those who have the time to attend city council meetings and consistently vote in elections. The kind of people who can afford to.
The business on the other hand, does not suffer at the hands of a poorly designed political system.
Some people use McDonalds instead of Starbucks, or fill in the blank indy coffee shop, as a third space. If this is truly mind blowing, you might need to get out more.
Would agree that depending on the location McD feels like a “third place” for all people and not just the poor as described here. Like I was in Hong Kong and now Taipei and the McDs are all modern, most multi-floor, open late in busy shopping areas, and very social places, especially at night.
Contrast that with the one in FiDi in San Francisco which always feels dystopian to me walking in. It’s old, grimey, has a tiny seating area on the ground level with a dark musty basement area. Seems like most office workers avoid it like the plague and patrons are a weird mix of tourists and homeless people. It depresses me every time I walk in.
I am thankful for the role McDonalds and other commercial third spaces play in the lives of many, especially poor Americans.
I'm also deeply sad that this is made necessary by insufficient social resources and poor land use. It's even nicer to have community centers and parks that can serve this purpose without the need for purchases.
It's also nice that they provide employment for cultures without apprenticeship opportunities but, again, a bit sad that it's necessary.
Been a while since I knew anybody that worked at McDonald's... But while I was a lifeguard in college, one girl quit the lifeguarding to get more hours at McDonald's. They were much much better at tailoring her hours, and others around their school schedules, kids schedulers, whatever. Perhaps that was a localized thing, but it was always known as a good place to work around here.
Meta observation: zero (after 1 day, 150 comments) of the comments here touch on the meat aspect of McDonalds, in another forum that might have been raised as an ethical and/or environmental problem with McDonald's.
So McDonald's has figured out a way to use a journalist to market themselves as a down home, corn pone, local yokel "watering hole" chain to take the place of the independent diners and pubs and coffee shops and lunch counters, where employees used to support families with liveable wages.
I have a niece who's been a manager at McDonald's for many years now, who also trains new managers. Despite the fact that she's been a dependable, full-time employee of McDonald's for decades, taxpayers still have to subsidize her family so McDonald's can keep their profit margin high and they can bulldoze yet another unique, local business, and replace it with yet another airport-inspired architectural monstrosity with a line of kiosks, happy to take your order via touchscreen. It warms my heart and moves me to tears.
What a weird article beyond repair. mcdoof does not hold communitys together, people form communities and designate places to meet on their own and they do that totally without any mcdoof in the vicinity. Just imagine a short moment a world without mcdoof and the communities that people form would be unaffected. They would just meet at other cafes, bars and food joints.
People are downvoting the people not in agreement with the sentiment of the article.
Without downvoting can someone explain to me how we are sure this article is not sponsored by McDonalds?
Why are we all of a sudden being so positive about a food chain that has a long history of making things more difficult for non-industrialized food sources that were a source of income for poor communities before McDs expanded everywhere?
These are genuine intellectual questions, and non-emotional responses would be appreciated.
Which downvoted comment here is supposed to have "genuine intellectual" questions? The one stating "This is the worst of what America can be, truly shameful to hear?" The one stating "I had no idea that this even existed?" The one discussing "poor human garbage"? I'll give like 33% credit to "Sounds suspiciously like McDonald's is the knife that tears families apart" because at least this is trying to advance a meaningful argument, even if it doesn't go beyond vague casting of suspicion.
I would be glad to entertain comments like the ones you have described. I just don't see them here.
> People are downvoting the people not in agreement with the sentiment of the article.
I downvoted a couple of comments in this thread, and flagged one of them. (A number of other people must have flagged that one too, as it is now "[flagged] [dead]". Turn on "showdead" in your profile settings if you want to see comments like that.)
In neither case was my downvote because the commenter disagreed with the article. It was because the comments were just plain nasty and disrespectful, both to other commenters and to the people who find community in places like McDonald's.
I don't have an answer to your question about sponsorship of the article, and I can't speak for anyone else, but I did want to explain the reason for my downvotes.
> "Without downvoting can someone explain to me how we are sure this article is not sponsored by McDonalds?"
The moderators have created guidelines about this type of post and instructions to address this sort of concern:
> "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data."
"Genuine intellectual questions" don't state a bias. You've already established that you believe McDonald’s is a bad actor, and all the reasoning in the comments have done nothing to change your mind. Your questions are rhetorical, not genuine in any way.
This article is, in a way, kind of sickening. One of the women quoted talks about how her son was killed by diabetes complications. Sounds suspiciously like McDonald's is the knife that tears families apart.
> Arnade’s work has raised the ire of a variety of people: photographers, journalists, advocates and community members. People have called his work exploitative, and much worse. Arnade tends to photograph mostly women; he has photographed them when they’re high and given them money they’ve used to buy drugs. He claims he’s built a relationship of trust with them. Critics, including some prominent photojournalists, say he exploits that trust to distribute photos of his subjects at their most vulnerable to a fan base of online lurkers.
So I'm going to comment on this. As an outsider I gather that there is a journalistic/photographer code that basically amounts to "don't help or get involved with your subjects."
Well, if you follow Chris' work or have read his book, that's a pretty fucking hard ask.
I saw this first hand when I met him outside a McDonald's in Portsmouth, Ohio. Portsmouth is ground-zero for the opioid epidemic.
I met Chris Arnade in Portsmouth on a whim. I drove into town. Navigated to a McDonald's and spotted him outside photographing what appeared to be a homeless family. They had been right outside the McDonald's begging. They were all filthy and pushing around their toddler in a shopping cart. It was late fall and getting cold.
Once Chris finished interviewing them and taking their picture I walked up and introduced myself. He was on his way inside to buy them some food, which we did.
Then we went back inside together and talked. He was shook. This guy had been all over but it was the cold and the kid that really got to Chris. He goes to the places most journalists don't--like his first stops are children's services and McDonald's in areas he visits. He talks to the people. He knew already that Portsmouth's children's services was beyond overwhelmed. They were underfunded ten years ago. Now they were barely treading water and the opioid epidemic had flooded them. I had been a teacher so he asked my opinion of what I saw with the toddler. Was this neglect and if so what would I do? Teachers in Ohio are 'mandatory reporters' meaning we are legally obligated to report anything with our students that we think might be neglect. From my training, this was unequivocally neglect.
He was torn. The journalist's code says "do nothing."
I had a two hour drive home that night to process this. It was fucked up. When I got home I e-mailed him my thoughts and said I thought we should alert children's services. I didn't have the families names though.
He e-mailed back and said he had been thinking about it too and agreed. But he didn't pass the buck to me. He made the call himself.
That night I saw Chris Arnade interact with people the rest of the world overlooks. I saw him treat them as people. Listen to them. Worry about them, give a few of them a meal, and ultimately wrestle with morality, ethics, and being a human being.
Those are my words. Chris' words are here about how he grappled with his time in Portsmouth. [1]
Even if there were such a code it would say no such thing. Journalists aren't scientists who need to protect the integrity of the research by trying not too influence results. Many fine journalists get actively involved in the lives of their subjects.
From the article you linked:
"I called for the expertise of child protective services. Not calling would have been denying what I saw."
Ah yes, the classic journalistic arrogance. If you see a bloated child keeled over in a third world country, do you simply photograph or do you help? Perhaps it is a failing of humanities education that this sort of issues are still worthy of debate, that the basic human instinct to give aid to a fellow man can be supplanted by philosophy and economic debate. A perfect example of why tertiary education is under attack from all sides; if the ivory towers brings marginal value and charges tremendously high rent, is it still worth keeping them around? A good topic for HN to consider and think about, it is easy to bash academia and universities as overpriced and irrelevant, but Khan Academy doesn't exactly fulfill the niche either.
Bashing tertiary education is one of those uniquely American things. Literally nowhere in the world is it considered a problem to have more education. American Universities are certainly not perfect and there are sectors that exploit easy student loans, sure. On the aggregate though, Universities are the bedrock of American progress.
I wouldn't say unique although it is anomalous as those examples are very third world. Mostly it comes down to attacking the source of dissent instead of defending their beliefs and ideas.
Most countries' universities are not "world class". They are good but the top US universities are like tech unicorns, entirely in their own class when it comes to innovation/rankings, network, and opportunities.
The amount of derisive comments here show just how out of touch the majority of you people are with the poor human garbage that live in a world totally different from yours.
I agree with you aside from the out of place sarcastic human garbage quip. It saddens me how every fast food closure in San Francisco is so celebrated in "progressive" online circles, like the Market St. Burger King recently: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Burger-King-1200-Mark...
While I mourn the loss of cheap and quick options in SF, I didn't lose much sleep over that particular restaurant. I had sporadic access to the back-of-house at that BK for various reasons (that I won't explain here) and I'm sure it was only scraping by on health inspections. Rats, poor handling of trash, terrible smell, etc. It was closed once in 2016 for some of the above. You can't have a good third place when it's also a biohazard.
All this to say, however, that I agree with you that formula retail shouldn't be demonized by SF as much as it is.
For sure there are class distinctions that frequently show up in this community and sometimes in ways that are dismaying. But unless I missed something, the vast majority of comments in this thread are quite respectful of the people the article is about.
If you have a perspective that's different than that of other commenters, that means you have something valuable to contribute here, if you'd be willing to share your information and experience. But it needs to be done in a thoughtful way, not a lashing-out way—please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Quite apart from the rules, it's also in your interest to do that, because then your point of view (and perhaps also the people you're close to or identify with) get represented in a dignified and solid way.
This article blows it way out of proportion. I had no idea that this even existed, and if it does as the article says, what a new low America has reached - finding culture and community at fast food grease joints.
Yeah, those gross low class people. I, too, enjoy claiming that things I didn't know existed must be unimportant. Everyone knows that culture is found at stylized bars and haute eateries.
Right! I am shocked to see some of the rhetoric in this thread that is clearly held by higher income folks. To believe that community and culture requires material things like fancy tables and premium meals and dressed up waiters is....feudalistic, and the same sort of thinking that leads to golden toilets on $20 million yachts.
Community and culture requires friendship and comradery, something the poor hold in droves and the rich spend their entire lives trying to find. It really must be lonely at the top.
There is a group of SF Bay Area amateur radio operators who hang out on the N6NFI repeater. Every week, one operator announces the Wednesday Luncheon (he always calls it a Luncheon) at the Black Bear Diner in Sunnyvale.
This is a long lunch, nominally from 11:30 to 3, but sometimes they stay into the late afternoon. Apparently the turnout is typically 10-15 people.
Now, the Black Bear Diner is not a fancy kind of place where you might expect to find "culture", but maybe community?
I haven't been to one of these events, so I can't speak from personal experience. But I can tell from the ham operators who talk about these Wednesday Luncheons that they look forward to meeting up with their radio buddies in person, and they really enjoy the conversations and camaraderie there.
People do their best, trying to make do with what people is accessible to them.
If this revolts you on a deep level, then you could try putting some of that energy towards building the community places not owned by mega corporations that those people are lacking.
It's more about spending time with people, rather than the quality or content of the food. It's not McDonald's that's providing or defining the culture. It's the people.
People will spontaneously form "community" with what is available to them, whether this is the dog park or hanging and slangin on the street corner. Far more repulsive is a society that promotes nihilistic anti-community based on materialism and conformity.
So I suppose quickly killing yourself with Grand Slams at Denny's is right out, too?
And if that's too slow for you, there's always the Pork Store Cafe on Haight Street in San Francisco, but they're too busy serving hoards of self destructive people to let them hang out for hours after poisoning themselves.
This makes no sense, from the beginning of time people would be hanging out at pubs and watering holes - places that primarily sell alcohol - a poison technically speaking.
If anything hanging out at McDonald's is a positive development compared to hanging out at the bar
if you read this article (or just looked at the pictures) or others about groups that meet at McDonald's, you'll notice most individuals consume little more than coffee.
And "slowly killing people" is vastly over-dramatizing McDonald's effect on the vast majority of its customers. It's actually healthier than many similar options.
I hope you’re joking. I hope this whole article is a joke. No ones going to fast food joints for culture and community. They won’t find any. This is the worst of what America can be, truly shameful to hear. Wow.
Well in Europe it's like that as well. My neighbourhood didn't have a warm place to hang out and everyone went to the city centre to socialize and only when a McD popped up did I start seeing kids from the block hanging out in the hood
Common sense would indicate that neither is a joke. For instance:
- The Guardian is not known as a satirical publication.
- This post has several descriptions of personal experiences for whom McDonald's is what was described in the article.
As a 16 year old it was awesome to work alongside other folks of varying ages and nationalities and get to know that other "walks" of life existed. I made friends outside of my highschool, fell in love, got burnt by the fryolator like 8 times, and most importantly learned about hard work and the value of money.
But I also saw veterans from the VA having their Saturday breakfast meeting. I remember watching them sit for hours with smiles on their faces as they talked about their time in the service. I watched regulars come in and make smalltalk at the register. I saw the homeless get their daily meals. I saw people at their worst, screaming about McChickens, and at their best, telling jokes and making people smile. It really is a watering hole and I'm thankful for the time I spent there.