Work and Leisure

The devil still makes work 47distribution and consumption of food and – more importantly – everydaylife. McDonald’s unique contribution is to apply Fordist or Tayloristassembly-line production techniques wholeheartedly to the fast-food industry.The application of standardised dehumanising technologies lowers costsand increases profits. Ritzer discerns four shibboleths of the McDonald’sstrategy – efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. Franchisingenables a global firm to shape and retain ownership of the cultural capital,advertising and marketing the brand label, but permit others to busy themselveswith its material production. Such strategies maximise the profits ofgiant corporations, while distancing them from exploitative work practicesand environmental despoliation.The insight driving Ritzer’s polemical analysis is how such rationalisationof production and consumption styles has permeated other areas of sociallife – education, health care, politics, and travel and work in general (Rojekand Urry 1977; Smart 1999). However, McDonald’s rationality also producesirrationalities, unintended negative consequences such as environmentalimpacts and dehumanised labour. It all means disenchantment, false friendlinessand, importantly, junk food at high cost. The consumer provides thenecessary labour power to realise consumption. Traditional service staff, suchas waiters and waitresses, are no longer required. By offering flexible familyeatingtimes and fun styles and promotions, these new forms of individualisedself-service can rely upon the consumer to wait, queue and work in his/her free time. Examples elsewhere include microwaves, vending machines, anddrink dispensers; EPOS (electronic point of sale) and EPOT bar-coding;scanners, copiers and self-service ticket machines.Ritzer (2000) somewhat romantically counterposes the relaxed and interactivetraditional family meal with the harassed and self-absorbed consumptionof eating at McDonald’s. Yet fast-food can be seen as complementingchanging eating patterns and family lifestyles, especially the enormous marketingeffort directed at children as consumers. For adults, too, Americanstyles of eating such as ‘snacking’, ‘grazing’ or ‘refuelling’ are increasinglypopular, also reflecting the erosion of shared tea and lunch breaks. Peoplesimply do not have the time to shop, to prepare ingredients, to cook food,often even time to sit down together and then clear up afterwards. Thefeminisation of paid employment and changing expectations in the sexualdivision of labour have resulted in ‘eating out’ becoming the major item ofleisure spending in the United Kingdom.But it is not just the money-rich, time-poor niche markets that constituteMcDonald’s customers. Rather than being locked in the iron cage ofMcDonaldisation, Bauman’s (1992) contention is that the majority of thepopulation in postmodern times are seduced into consumer culture; theexcluded minority yearn to consume too. The nation-state is no longer interestedin seeking legitimation, in binding producers into work, in socialisingcitizens into homogenous national culture. Politicians have relinquished the