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.
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.