So What, Who Cares (volume 1, issue 14) Why McDonald's is trying to burnish its reputation
McDonald's is on a mission to start "telling our story in a much more proactive manner" and convince people it doesn't serve fast food -- it serves "good food served fast." The company sees which way the wind is blowing -- Chipotle using things like a cow's origin story as a selling point for its food and a general cultural movement in which the chattering classes are serving environmental and nutritional concerns with every supersized burger. (To say nothing of the class issues: fast food has acquired a less-than-aspirational halo.) To reverse this perception, McDonald's is launching a campaign to influence "tastemakers," all the with the hopes that bloggers and other people who make livings in the "lifestyle" markets will somehow persuade the rest of us to just go get a Big Mac already. The company's got a history of savvy digital campaigns and it has wooed bloggers before; it will be interesting to see if this repositioning campaign gains traction among blog readers.
In contrast to this "Eat at McDonald's" blog campaign: the labor campaign launched by fast food workers who are trying to dispel their own myths about fast food jobs, namely the false perception that nobody relies on these gigs to make a living. The workers are arguing for a raise to $15/hour for the work they do and to not be fired for things like "attending a protest in my free time"; chattering class types are saying, "You get paid $15 an hour, you're basically asking to be replaced by an iPad that takes people's orders."
The jury is still out on how effective self-checkout is as an element of customer satisfaction -- survey results generally show a 50/50 split on how customers feel about checking themselves out -- but it is notable that Costco recently decided against installing self-serve kiosks, as did Ikea. Both companies are also known for bucking U.S. workforce trends in different ways (Ikea bumped up its minimum wage to above federal limits, Costco has a history of paying its workers well and having a remarkably low 6% annual employee turnover rate) that are labor-friendly. Both companies are also well positioned as financially prudent lifestyle outlets for urban, upwardly-mobile demographics.
So what? This is a perfect-storm moment for fast food -- not only are chains under siege for what the food is made from and how good it is for people, they're also being scrutinized for how the workers who make your (good) food fast are being treated. This is also an interesting moment for organized labor, and a fascinating case study in how to use social media.
Who cares? Anyone who owns several thousand shares of McDonald's is probably keenly interested in the goings-on. Other stakeholders in this developing story: fast-food franchise operators (many of whom run a tighter ship than company-owned fast food outlets do), anyone who works at a fast food place, and economists rooting for all messy and inefficient humans to be replaced by iPads that don't talk back. Okay, that last one isn't fair.
Also in the "Who cares?" camp: I hope anyone who is considering how they feed themselves and their family. In the spirit of full disclosure: I consider a large Diet Coke from McDonald's to be one of life's best and cheapest pleasures ($1.09 for 32 ounces of soda) and I get one at least twice a week. I'm thinking it might be time for a boycott until things improve for the workers.
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The 2014 wildfire season was expected to be brutal (see also: the American west is in the middle of a megadrought) and we've been extraordinarily lucky so far, with only 2.8 million acres burned by fires, compared to 3.9 million acres last year and 8.2 million acres in 2012. When you read "The Story That Tore Through The Trees," you'll realize just how lucky we've been: current fire-fighting practices may actually be worse for our wilderness than letting the fires burn. The ending of the piece packs a sucker punch: The Mann Gulch fire, immortalized by Norman Maclean in Young Men and Fire, cost 13 lives. And for what?
“Look at that piece of ground,” says Colin Hardy, a program manager at the Missoula fire lab. “You’re not saving anything but natural resources that historically burn every seven to 25 years anyway.”
The epic nature of fighting fire itself -- and what it means as a society when we decide we need people to fight fires -- is beautifully told here and reminiscent of Outside magazine's 2013 postmortem of the Yarnell Hill Fire.
So what? Author Kathryn Schultz suggests that our current approach to firefighting reflects a mindset from an earlier century: That we are at war with the natural world and this warfare shall bring out the best in people: loyalty, hardiness, self-sacrifice, courage. This view is out-of-step with the here and now, where we're learning how we're becoming casualties of friendly fire.
Who cares? This kind of story could get pushback from the professional firefighting community. Other stakeholders in the story: the Bureau of Land Management, any state forestry department, and biologists who study how habitats rebound after fires.
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One final pop-culture note: The first "flashcast" -- i.e. a podcast that is done on the fly, right after something happens -- for Sons of Anarchy is here! Philip Mozolak and I dish on what it means when your teeth fall out and place our bets on which episode Juice dies in. I do miss writing up a brief recap/analysis of the show, so as of next week, the show notes will be a) present and b) fleshed out.