While on a field assignment trying to track down Lawrenceville's mysterious Banana Bandit, one of our intrepid staff stopped for a bite to eat at the McDonald's on South Clayton and noticed the sign above on the dumpster. One in every eight Americans has worked for McDonald's at some point, and it seems they are coming for the other seven. Here at DGHQ, we have a theory, so dust off your tinfoil hats and let's break it down.
The pieces of the puzzle are as follows:
1. McDonald's employees are part of an ever-expanding machine. In an April 8, 2020 letter to McDonald's staff (linked here), CEO Chris Kempczinski references the Velocity Growth Plan, and refers to the McDonald's workforce as The System.
2. Dehumanizing workers as cogs in The System may sound dystopian, but it is a crucial element of McDonald's quest for consolidation of the masses, because The System requires enormous quantities of people to sustain McDonald's exponential growth. As seen below, it took McDonald's 33 years to open the first 10,000 restaurants, and only 8 years to open the next 10,000.
3. Economic woes following the pandemic left tens of millions of people financially unstable. In 2020, home ownership rates dropped to 63 percent, the lowest level in fifty years. House prices have exceeded most first-time homebuyers ability to meet them, and in 2023 alone, 69 percent of home purchases were made by investors who will then rent those homes to people who can't buy. Rent itself has skyrocketed, averaging an increase of 9 percent per year pre-pandemic, with increases of 15 percent a year or more common after the pandemic, and inflation is at its highest rate in decades.
4. People who are financially stressed need to eat cheaply, and are perfect targets to accelerate the Velocity Growth model referred to by the CEO. Enter the $5 meal deal, unveiled on June 25, 2024. Velocity Growth = more sales = more restaurants = more workers for The System.
5. People who are financially stressed also need employment, and as an added bonus, if you're a member of The System, you get to eat for free.
The trend is clear. If you're not already the 1 in 8, pretty soon you will be.
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Keep it classy, Gwinnett. This is not a political forum, nor is it place for intolerance or crude behavior of any sort. We are all in this together, so just enjoy the ride.