A heartening and fascinating piece on that evil global hegemonist McDonald’s at A World Connected, by Paul Feine.

Lengthy, but worthwhile excerpt:

Golden Arches East, a recent book edited by James Watson, seeks to gain a better grasp on how McDonald’s is affecting Asian culture. The results of this inquiry are in many ways surprising. For instance, one essay tells the story of an unintended and unanticipated consequence of McDonald’s invasion of Hong Kong—the rest rooms in the city became cleaner.

Before the first McDonald’s opened up in the mid-1970s, restaurant restrooms in Hong Kong were notoriously dirty. Over time, the cleanliness standards of McDonald’s were replicated by other restaurants eager to out-compete the increasingly popular restaurant.

In Korea, McDonald’s established the practice of lining up in an orderly fashion to order food - the traditional custom, it seems, was to mob the counter.

When the first McDonald’s was opened in Moscow, it was necessary for an employee to stand outside the McDonald’s with a blow horn in order to explain to those in the queue that the smiling employees were not laughing at them but, rather, were pleased to serve them.

Moreover, and in contradistinction to the widespread assumption that McDonald’s is having an implacably homogenizing effect on global culture, Golden Arches East is filled with examples of the pains McDonald’s takes to appeal to the unique local tastes and customs of people around the world. My own experience with the decidedly leisurely attitude of McDonald’s employees in southern Spain further attests to McDonald’s ability to adapt to the local culture.

Incidentally, I’m not certain if that headline — popular among free-traders — is true. But off the top of my head, I can’t think of an example to refute it.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 10th, 2003 at 12:59 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.