McDonaldization, Essay Example

Convenience is king in today’s society. McDonaldization is everywhere, in every industry; food, retail, education, you name it and it’s there.  I have never thought about the pros and cons of such an existence as I grew up not knowing anything different. We now live in a society that allows for any want, need and desire to be satisfied at anytime and anywhere.  There are 24 hour restaurants, ATM’s, fast food and grocery stores, all of which are usually located at an arm’s reach from any place that you may be.  Long gone are the days of the once a week trip to the grocery store or the post office due to distance or hours of availability.  With the click of a few keys or a 5 minute drive anything is now within our reach and at any time.  We have become a society of multi-tasking professionals, students, parents, and consumers, a product of our environment.

Convenience is a major advantage to the McDonaldization of society.  The ability to grab a bite to eat by just going through the drive-thru or shopping by simply ordering a product online and having it shipped to your address has erased time restraints people previously had.  Fast food has dominated the market eliminating the time requirements in preparing meals. You can complete banking transactions virtually anywhere at any time, education can be completed without ever stepping into a classroom, and you can grocery shop without every setting foot in an actual grocery store. There is more time available for people to be able to do more things. People are able to have a full work schedule and school schedule while relying on the convenience of not having to complete other tasks in their day. We have overbooked our schedules and McDonaldization has created an efficiency factor in our lives that we can no longer live without, allowing for multi-tasking and higher productivity personally and professionally.

So how can convenience and efficiency be bad?  It’s simple, we pay for it.  For example, ordering online.  When you order groceries online you can have them delivered, but there is a delivery fee.  Often times that fee is more than what it would have cost to go to the store yourself, we are charged more for less.  You can lose the ability for personal selection, using the same example of ordering groceries online; you have now removed yourself from the selection process. Someone unknown to you, someone with a different preference, like or dislike is now choosing your products, picking out your apples, choosing what brand name detergent to get based on your price criteria.  Students are losing the benefit and social interaction of learning in a classroom environment allowing for poor quality or produced work generating a generation of uneducated higher ed. McDonaldization has now standardized the quality and selection.  Though convenient you are paying more, losing personal selection and receiving lesser quality.

Secondly, fast food has significantly reduced the need for a home cooked meal.  Quality time with family or friends has fallen victim to drive-thru convenience.  As a society we are becoming less healthy settling for food that is mass produced and chemically enhanced to cater to the express demand.  I believe the high obesity in both children and adults is directly related to our ever increasing reliance on fast food.  More importantly, the simple family structure seems to be deteriorating as a result.  Meal times used as a means for communication and relationship building are almost non-existent.  Children no longer shadow their parents in the kitchen to learn the art of cooking a home based meal.  I feel that the lack of the home environment is contributing to the social issues we have today in both children and adults.

I can consider automation and control a second advantage to McDonaldization.  Let me take for example retail and grocery chains.  No matter where you are nationally you can walk into any retail mall or grocery chain and know how to navigate your way around.  The stores are set up the same, structured the same and provide the same products and product quality in every location.  No longer do you have to go to a specific location to buy a product because it is better quality there than at a different location.  Products are standardized in price and quantity and the customer service is preprogrammed with machines and software doing most of the work for the employee.

I see this every time I enter a Walmart store.  No matter what store or what location I can navigate freely and find exactly what I need.  No matter what the product I wish to purchase I can be assured that no matter what location I am at the price will be equivalent to any other Walmart store.  One stop shopping is prevalent everywhere, you can walk into a Walmart, grocery shop, get your car serviced, get a manicure and a hair cut all in one trip.  Walmart has cornered the market in convenience and services available to the consumer.  Banking with Walmart is even now an option with their brand of pre-paid debit cards.  This trend is spreading fast amongst retailers and from I see daily, is becoming an industry standard globally.

The automation and control that McDonaldization feeds is resulting in a less than desirable outcome for the human factor. With most systems whether it is grocery or retail becoming more and more automated, employees are having to do less and less and are required to know less and less or a physical person it not required at all.  What has this done for the human factor and for our job market? McDonaldization is leading toward a higher unemployment rate as we continue to replace people with machines. We are dumbing down our employees, becoming completely reliant on technology to do the work for us.  We no longer have to use our brains to calculate and quantify a transactions we merely take the computers outcome as certain.  Human ingenuity is no longer a factor of employment and basic qualifications merely require the ability to learn a few simple functions.  In some cases employees are being completely replaced by the technology, a great example of this is the “self checkout” at the grocery store: a position that was once occupied by a human being is now fully automated and no human involvement is needed to process a transaction.  Machine is replacing the man and in doing so we are increasing unemployment and over all reducing quality of life.

A third advantage to McDonaldization of society is increased quantity and variety of products available to the consumer.  In the competition for success, more and more industries have changed the way they do business to become more convenient and provide a larger range of products to the consumer.  This has introduced products on a national scale that were previously unavailable to consumers in different regions, not just nationally but globally. Bringing the product to the consumer has become a business norm; this has created new businesses and new markets worldwide creating a whole new industry in itself.  Today products are sold in bulk or available in large amounts usually at a reduced price in comparison of purchasing the product individually; Sam’s Club, Smart & Final and Costco are prime examples of this.  Specialty stores carry items from overseas or cater to a specific market or population.  There are chains of health food and vitamin stores, stores that carry organics and other once in abundant products to the general population.

However, more does not always mean better. What are we really sacrificing by purchasing in bulk or when we receive a larger quantity?  The sacrifice we have is often quality of the product. Mass production and sales has resulted in a lower quality or product being sold, we are sacrificing taste for the time needed to cook and durability as a result of machine production. Famously in fast food, product is manufactured to cook fast in order to make a fast delivery to the consumer.  This has resulted in a product that often lacks taste quality does not seem to be an industry standard any longer or a product that no longer resembles the original food, the focus has shifted to mass production of product, speed of the delivery and bottom line sales without emphasis and attention the quality of the product being sold.

There are definitely advantages and disadvantages to the McDonaldization of society and growing up in a generation that never known any different has made distinguishing the difference hard. As a society I think that we have become complacent with a lower quality of life in general in exchange for the convenience that we receive.  But one must ask them self, if it is really worth it?  Are we so willing to give up and allow the few monopolies control the masses?  As individuals we have become slaves to our created ways of life, not questioning the benefits or repercussions of what we have created, let alone the long term effects.  I think that we have become so involved with the flow and overloaded with life’s demands that there is not fight left in us to argue otherwise.

What McDonaldization has meant to me is a way life, the way that I know how things are and the way they work. Looking back at the pros and cons it makes me wonder are we really heading in a better direction?  What functions as human beings are we sacrificing and at what cost?  Can we really keep the convenience and the quality or does one have to give out to the other? As for me, I do not think that I will be able to determine the true effects of McDonaldization until I experience society without it, but learning about it has opened my eyes to the realization of what society has become.