I’ll cop to a major character flaw. I like the McRib. I absolutely crave those greasy death bombs! I assume you’re sane and won’t touch anything that gross. Good for you. It means there’s extra pressed pork mystery meat for me!
Now I’ll mention a character trait I don’t consider a flaw. I hate eating in my truck. It’s crude, ridiculous, uncivilized, and undignified. I don’t care if it’s Filet Mignon or a McRib, an adult should endeavor to eat at a table when possible. I get it, there are exceptions. Sometimes you’re in a hurry and need to cram calories down your gullet like a human garbage disposal on hell’s own treadmill. But in general it’s better to eat like a civilized human being. I view meals at the wheel as degrading lessening of the human condition. That’s just me. YMMV.
It should be a harmless preference. However, it’s 2021 and the world has gone to shit. The nearest McDonalds has closed its dining room. I’m not sure the explanation du jour for closing dining rooms. For a while (over a year ago) it was based on some voodoo explanation about viruses. Honestly, I laugh at that. The dining room of a McDonalds is only marginally cleaner than the floor of a subway urinal. Yet the black death of 2020 crossed some sort of virulence threshold and we can save humanity by eating in a car’s cab; which is apparently sterile. Now it’s 2021 and the dining room is closed exactly like it was before but for entirely new and improved reasons.
There’s not enough workforce to staff the place.
My McRib addicted self has noticed that McDonalds dining rooms are open in fits and starts. Though recently everyone within a few hundred miles of me just plain gave up.
This is why I notice it. If I want a McRib I have to eat at the wheel of an idling Dodge…. like a disgusting uncivilized animal. Gross. (McRibs are gross too but, as we’ve already established, that’s different.)
During the brief unknowable season of the McRib I’ve started playing a game. I’ve started watching which fast food restaurants have open dining rooms and which don’t. A large number are reduced to hurling food at plebeians like feeding hogs in a automotive livestock chute. The pattern, or lack thereof, is interesting.
The game expanded and soon I started counting who’s wearing masks and who isn’t. Sometimes it’s “required” because some jackass in politics thinks this two year old idea matters and they’re just the God to have such control. Sometimes it’s not required by regulation (never law) but corporate asshats require masks anyway. Why wouldn’t they? I’ll politely receive a McRib from a masked employee but there are shrieking Karens who won’t do the opposite.
Then the game became tracking the fading hours of operation. In the hinterland, fast food restaurants are struggling. Not only are they running out of employees to mop the floor in the dining room but they’re running out of employees to man the drive through. They’re closing earlier and opening later (don’t get me started about Egg McMuffins). Hours are irregular. Sometimes they’re closed during hours they’ve posted as open. Sometimes they run out of people and close right then.
Wherever you go, they’re hiring. These are different than the hiring signs from the Trump boom. It went from “good pay, decent hours” to hands and knees begging; “for the love of God, please work here!”
Meanwhile, getting served by masked subservient (and almost universally female) servants feels hinky. It makes me nervous. It feels like they’re lower class and I’m upper and I hate the very ide of that! (It’s a damn McRib… nobody in that exchange is anything but low class.)
I truly believe all humans are created equal and the masks clearly seperate servant from customer. When someone at Starbucks or McDonalds has their face covered they start feeling less… human. They become depersonalized food serving units. I can’t see them smile. I don’t hear what they’re saying. The interaction becomes clipped and short.
For the unmasked I might try a humorous connection “I love McRibs… you’re doing God’s work m’lady!” For the masked, a formal line is drawn and they’re clearly lesser beings than the unmasked freak driving the truck. I try to mumble “thank you” but they almost subconsciously have eyes averted like there’s something unclean about their job at the drive through.
The phrase “supply chain disruption” does not explain any of this.
Employees locked behind a face burka don’t look safe… they look chained. As far as I can tell none of them like it. Then again nobody gives a shit about the employees’ opinion… which is why employers are scrambling to keep the whole thing running.
Ace of Spades has a good take on it:
I think there is a darker undercurrent in all this, and the COVID vaccine mandate may have been the last straw. Why do people work in the first place? A big answer to this, of course, is “for the money.” This is certainly true, but it is only true to a point. It’s different for everyone, but at some point – and I suspect it is a lower point than most would expect – money becomes less important than intangibles for a lot of people. The big intangible is respect. The vax mandate is a respect black hole. The aggressively pro-vaccine crowd is pissed because it took so long and the companies lacked the courage to act independently. The anti-mandate crowd is pissed because no one at the company stood up for them. The neutral crowd who couldn’t care less one way or the other resents all of the jawboning and time wasting and paperwork hoops they have to go through. Absolutely nobody feels respected in this matter, and it is a major matter.
While supply chains have been disrupted, that’s just a symptom of a bigger problem. People who’ve never heard of Ayn Rand and don’t give a shit about politics instinctively knew when to “Go Galt”. They’re not going Galt… they’ve already gone. That’s why you could fully staff a McDonalds in 2019 and can’t in 2021.
Rand was something of a bitch, and so she missed the change among the working classes. Rand fretted over captains of industry and genius materials scientists, but it never crossed her cold heart that the honest hard working entry level McDonalds floor mopper had a breaking point too. They’re not NPCs, they’re people. When that line is crossed (as it has been) they’ll “shrug” just as much as a pissed off brain surgeon. (It’s also much easier for them to shrug than the brain surgeon. They can always find another McDonalds job if they change their mind. A pilot at United Airlines has a lot more to lose. Which is why shortages are coming from the bottom up.)
This isn’t just “supply chain disruption”. After all, the supply chain (barely) held. McRibs are present and on site. The lights are still on. There’s no shortage of the buckets of BBQ sauce that I’m addicted to.
Overworked skeleton crews slowly losing the fight are not “supply chain”. They’re mistreated humans. Whether on purpose or by accident, whether through well intentioned but unwise micromanagement or revoltingly elitist snobbery they’ve driven workers out of the workforce. President Potato, whom it’s said has earned the greatest number of votes in all of America’s history, can’t see the problem. Nor can half of society. The other half isn’t about to explain the obvious.
For good or ill, this is almost a permanent change to society. It’s not a temporary situation. It’s not going away. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get another McRibs.