Fast food is both the backbone of and the bane of North American culture. There’s just something about the food that goes down as easily as it comes out the next morning that keeps people coming back. I love my fast food. The all familiar chestnut-colored tiled floors, incandescent lighting and poor air circulation has been an integral part of my teenage years and in shaping the person I am today (that is, a lazy sack of shit). Thank God for my hummingbird-like metabolism.
And of course I know that McDonald’s is disgusting. In fact, I read somewhere that it is one of the least popular fast food joints in the United States, but what do American people know about good food anyway?
I grew up eating McDonald’s. It was a treat. It was what the white kids ate, so by default I had to love it. And I did. To this day, I still have a fascination with everything McDonald’s. Like what exactly goes into their ‘special sauce’, what they do to the fries to give it that special McDonald’s touch to them, or what Grimace and the Hamburglar are up to in their retirement years.
McDonald’s has been, for me, and I’m sure plenty other young party-goers, a place of late night serenity and clarity. That sanctuary-like singularity beams down on McDonald patrons my age usually at around 2 in the morning, where, depending on the neighborhood your specific branch falls in, could be filled with late night exam crammers, drunkards, pot heads, crack addicts, or drag queens. And in that moment being surrounded by the chaos of QSR computer monitor beep-boops, the distant clatter of grilling, deep-frying, wax paper wrapping, and the accented chatter of some demographic minority, sometimes you just figure it out. Figure the shit out of your life. Don’t lie. If you reside in North America and are are least in your mid-teens or older, chances are you’ve had more than a few of those moments at a McDonald’s.
McDonald’s has always provided what would seem to me like make-believe happiness. I call it the ‘Happy Meal Effect’. The way those big glowing golden arches that bent in just the most comfortable way to the visual senses would catch your eyes from blocks and blocks away sitting in the rear of a station wagon or a minivan. The way the restaurants are just coated with the happy colors of red and yellow–and if you were really lucky, green and blue in the smelly ol’ ball pit. The way you would walk into the restaurant and your entire nervous system gets assaulted with upbeat noises and chatter, and oh the smell of McDonald’s French fries cooking in the corner of the kitchen…those were all happy times for me growing up.
But now that I think about it, how happy did McDonald’s actually make me? How happy does it really make anyone? Sure I was having the time of my life smearing salt grease and McNugget dipping-sauce (for the record, Hot Mustard for the win) on every surface of that McDonald’s or in the back of my dad’s Toyota Sienna. But I don’t think parents bringing their kids to McDonald’s have ever had a good time. What, you’re forced to sit on uncomfortable beige-y brown booths cleaning up after your kids’ burger wrappers and ketchup slops as they run buck wild in a jungle gym? One time when I was little playing in the jungle gym, a boy took off all of his clothes except his shoes and went down the tube slide 6 times naked. They ended up getting kicked out by management and closed the playroom for the remainder of our stay (which, let’s be honest, without the jungle gym, is only about the time it takes to snarf down a bacon cheeseburger and slurp down your soft-drink), which actually made me pretty upset. I mean, how bad could the poop streaks of an six year old boy at McDonald’s be? Just sayin’.
Or what about it’s 11 PM and you just picked up your kids from a birthday party and now they’re in back seat about to throw a tantrum unless you take them to the McDonald’s they just spotted from a mile away up the road, and it’s just too goddamn late and you have to get up early for work tomorrow, so you just pull into the drive-thru and get it over with so they’ll be too busy shoving their mouths on the rest of the car ride home to annoy you.
Oh yeah, as a kid I always had a good time. I mean, come-fuckin’-on. You’re dining on the most delicious deep fried shit of your life! But parents? Gee. I kind of think that parents who take their kids to McDonald’s have just given up on responsible parenthood. So, you wanted to take your kid to Seaworld for her birthday but couldn’t get enough time off, so you take her and her little dickhead friends all to McDonald’s on a sunny day. Or, you just don’t want to deal with those little fuckers being little fuckers anymore after a long day of running errands with them in the back seat of your soccer van, so you decide instead to go to the sodium-loaded drive-thru equivalent of Chef Boyardee or Chunky’s seafood chowder or Lipton’s chicken noodle soup (because even those sound like too much work in your current state of mind).
It’s a fake kind of happiness powered and generated off cola-burger-n-French-fry induced pleasure and the quiet hidden tears of not-the-greatest parenting combined. And, they have a fucking clown as their franchise mascot. If that doesn’t spell mediocrity of the foods that are bad for your health, I don’t know what does.
Which I suppose would explain why a lot of certain types of people choose McDonald’s as their hangout spot late at night. Other than the fact that it’s open real late. And I’m not talking about the people who work there or are just taking a break from their Wednesday night Netflix marathon and walking down the street to get a late night chicken wrap. I am talking about those shady-looking drug addicts who mumble to themselves or wait by the soft-drink dispenser with an old plastic bag waiting for someone to purchase a drink so the dispenser would unlock and they could proceed to fill up the bag with ice and Sprite. Gross. I am talking about those students who choose to study in a McDonald’s booth as opposed to say, a coffee shop, on campus, or gee, at home? The uplifting incandescent lighting and inaudible distant noises, it is my belief, brings imitation positivity and happiness to anyone who experienced the Happy Meal Effect as a child.
It is not a happy place. I mean, have you ever seen a McDonald’s employee be stoked about their job? Fuck no. When the manager of any particular establishment (i.e. every Latino/Filipino fast food worker in their late 20’s) looks like they’re ready to go apeshit and torch their restaurant, that’s a pretty clear sign that it’s not on the happiness radar. They probably also all embezzle money from the corporation, too. True story. I too, work in the service industry, but if I had to work in a fast food restaurant, I would probably dunk my head into a deep-fryer after a week. And if I were the manager, I would probably take off with all the cash after a Saturday night and buy a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia and work in a communist-owned sweatshop instead.
But it makes me happy. If you began reading this piece thinking I was going to conclude with a resolution to boycott McDonald’s altogether, I’m afraid you are an idiot. At least once a week, my strict late night dietary needs call for a McDonald’s Big Mac™ meal, large size fries, a Jr. Chicken™, and 10-to-20-piece Chicken McNuggets™. Occasionally, I don’t mind substituting the Big Mac out for a Filet-o-Fish™ (I don’t care what anybody says, it’s delicious), although there’s little more satisfying than stuffing my face with McDonald’s mystery beef, so the Quarter Pounder™, or it’s monstrosity brother, the Double Quarter Pounder™ may also come into play once in a blue moon. If I’m feeling particularly frugal, I stick with the good ol’ $1.39 +tax menu and get half a dozen McDoubles™ and Bacon Cheeseburgers™(can you actually trademark that?). I am not proud to admit that despite the fact that it sounds like I am listing off my preferred McDonald’s menu items, what I am really doing is listing off the McDonald’s menu items I’ve eaten in the past two weeks alone. And chances are, after I publish this piece and turn my laptop off, I will probably go spend another small fortune at the golden arch down the road.
-vH
P.S. McDonald’s, please take the McPoutine™ off your menu. It is disgusting and in no way contributes anything to this drunk-people staple.
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