Skip to main content

How do you experience Mcdonaldization in your everyday life?

The idea of McDonaldization is the idea that society as a whole is becoming more like a fast-food restaurant. That is, it is becoming as efficient as possible and is giving up on the idea of subjective quality in favor of objective quantity.  It is trying to turn out as much of a given thing as efficiently as it can, regardless of ideas like quality or diversity in tastes.


How might you see this in your life?  Let me suggest two ways in which you have probably encountered McDonaldization in your life.  First, you have surely encountered automated processes in various parts of your life. Have you ever been to a store where you checked out your purchases through an automated, self-check system? Have you ever tried to call for customer service only to get an automated voice telling you to press certain numbers on your phone depending on what you want?  If so, you were experiencing McDonaldization because one aspect of this trend is the trend toward control of the workforce through the use of machines and lower-skilled workers who do not get to make decisions.


A second way you have probably experienced McDonaldization is in your education.  McDonaldization stresses “calculability.”  It wants to make sure that we have easy ways of calculating what we are creating so we can “know” how well we are doing.  Therefore, we have lots of standardized tests.  These tests purport to show how well students are learning, but it is plausible to argue that they do not do a very good job.  They do not really measure all the various ways in which students can learn.  Instead, they provide us with an easy way to quantify learning, even if we are unable to determine the true quality of that learning.


These are two ways in which you, personally, have probably encountered McDonaldization in your own life.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more