Losing The Human Touch
I recently read in "The World is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman, about an experimental practice at a few McDonald's franchises in Missouri. A few stores have begun outsourcing their orders to Colorado Springs, over 900 miles away.
Imagine, you drive up, place an order at the intercom, and pull forward, expecting to see the person who was taking your order via the intercom. Instead, your order was taken in another state altogether, and sent to the store through high-speed data lines.
Does anyone in this country still care about people??? Or is it all about money? Places like McDonald's obviously employ people in the lower income brackets, and now we have stores that are firing workers in favor of the cheaper approach. The scary thing is, if McDonald's were to adopt this practice, it would only be so long before the other fast food companies followed suit. Great. Another big chunk of jobs lost in a country where our president has yet to create one single net job. Scary.
Imagine, you drive up, place an order at the intercom, and pull forward, expecting to see the person who was taking your order via the intercom. Instead, your order was taken in another state altogether, and sent to the store through high-speed data lines.
Does anyone in this country still care about people??? Or is it all about money? Places like McDonald's obviously employ people in the lower income brackets, and now we have stores that are firing workers in favor of the cheaper approach. The scary thing is, if McDonald's were to adopt this practice, it would only be so long before the other fast food companies followed suit. Great. Another big chunk of jobs lost in a country where our president has yet to create one single net job. Scary.
posted by ET at 9/09/2006 08:03:00 PM
2 Comments:
For a more positive outlook on corporate practices, you should read POUR YOUR HEART INTO IT. Discusses the creation of Starbucks and the mission, principles, and values that the company functions around.
Unfortunately, Starbucks is a rare breed in this country. It's practices tend to be more human based and less finance based. I will say, though, I find it strange that all Starbucks are corporate owned. On the same note, it's probably pretty easy to raise standards on the treatment of employees when you've got a store on every block that is owned by the corporation, and charging extravagently. I'd like to get my hands on some financial information regarding price mark-ups.
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