My experience with McDonaldization involved a trip to Meijer, which had just opened months prior and the employees were considerably new. I hoped this would make it easier for an employee to have to stop and think. However, this was refuted when I conversed with one of the stockers and they mentioned how they had to learn the ins and outs of the store; which meant the location of various products. Therefore, conspiring with my father, we planned an attempt to confuse a cashier in hopes that it would make them think differently; to test their knowledge of the store’s ins and outs. An experiment to see if they retain the information they were taught to improve efficiency and communication with customers. The result was exactly how we thought it would be. After telling my father what McDonaldization was, which were how people are becoming mindless drones, he became more aware of it through the social interactions of all of the workers. Therefore, this meant he became aware of one of the cashiers. He noted how this person would say “Hello”, scans the items, exchange money, and then continued onto the next person and regarded them as “stuck in a loop”. Just as George Ritzer said in “The McDonaldization of Society”, “systems function efficiently by following the steps in a predesigned process”.
Walking up to an older woman working one of the two open lanes, we started to converse. After the initial greeting, she began to scan our items, until my father requested that he scan the items. Taken aback, the woman became confused and faltered in her scanning for a few seconds; either by the question or the fact that he was jumping up and down while asking. As he reached around and used her personal scanner, I asked her questions regarding products around the store (i.e. laxatives, adult diapers, any product she would recommend me buying). This woman had to stop and think, probably because she is not used to being asked these types of questions. Throughout this process, I was very anxious and hesitant. I am not one to disrupt order and am someone who encourages it. This is why I think there are good things about McDonaldization. It helps to get things done quickly and correctly, which is especially helpful in a time when people barely have time to even make dinner. (A popular excuse in Laura Shapiro’s ‘Something in the Oven’ article, which disputed the idea about how there are more convenience items because of the misconception that there is barely any time to cook.) However, this also means that people are losing their creative thinking; they are not exercising their mind to create new ideas. In all, this system makes like go quicker but the brain goes slower. Altogether, my father and I managed to disrupt her efficiency and mindless scanning. We broke the social norm and efficiency by scanning some of our own items and affecting the predictability by going off “script” for the customer-worker expected interaction. |