McDonald's
I'm supposed to hate McDonald's. After all, I'm a vegetarian. Budweiser has to pretend to like designated drivers, but McDonald's very plainly acts like I'm a scourge on decent society.
The relationship is usually grudging at best. We're an urban legend they can swear they've never actually seen; they're something we might have enjoyed as stupid kids but have since matured out of.
However, on my trip out west this past week, I've realized how impressive McDonald's actually is.
For one, they are beyond dependable. Wherever I order a McDonald's hash brown, I am guaranteed to get the same crisp, greasy soylent-green slab in every restaurant. Never mind that it remembers being a real potato like members of the Jefferson Airplane remembers the 60's: vaguely, a lot of years and a ton of chemicals ago. It's still dependably delicious, whatever it is - in every McDonald's, in every town.
Second, they are efficient. They deliver what you want, quickly, without the need for their employees to think for even a moment.
When I order coffee with one cream and two sugars, there are buttons that the employee hits once for one cream and twice for two sugars. A monkey could make my coffee and it would come out exactly how I want it. Of course, my example of a monkey making my coffee is absurd; any monkey applying to McDonald's would make manager pretty quickly.
Finally, McDonald's is just there. They're is in every town, at every stop on the interstate, and very possibly creeping up behind you as you read this.
If you're tired, hungry, or need a clean restroom during a road trip, you can count on a McDonald's being no more than a few minutes away. Travelers know they won't be getting anything with nutritional value, but they also know they won't starve.
I'm sure I should resent McDonald's for putting a lot of mom-and-pop artery-clogging processed food establishments out of business. I'll miss Wanda's Lard Palace, for sure. But there's something to the massive corporate aesthetic - the idea that someone in a suit can write a memo, and I can count on today's egg biscuit in Seattle tasting exactly like it did in Miami when I was a kid. It's comforting.
I haven't gone to McDonald's much in the last ten years, since I began shunning everything that real Americans love. But even though McDonald's still hates me, I've come out of this latest road trip a genuine fan.
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