Mcdonalidization in Society
McDonalidization McDonaldization, as stated by George Ritzer “is the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world” this is the modern day version of Weber’s concept of rationalization. One of the fundamental aspects of McDonaldization is that almost any task can be rationalized. George Ritzer suggests that “later on in the twentieth century the socially structured form of the fast-food restaurant will become the organizational force representing and extending the process of rationalization further into the realm of everyday interaction”. There are four main principles that “McDonalidization” (George Ritzer’s term) imposes on our lives. The first one is efficiency as effective operation. There are so many ways people can see the effects of McDonaldization in our lives, beyond just fast-food chains and grocery stores. For instance, the ATM’s, microwave dinners, drive-up window, salad bars, self-serve gasoline, Voice Mail, and supermarkets. The exciting aspect is that the people often ends up doing the work that in the past was already done for them. And the person pays for the privilege. People end up being forced to learn new technologies, spending additional time, and frequently pay higher values in order for the business to operate more efficiently. The second element Ritzer focuses on is calculability or the ability to produce and acquire large amounts of things very quickly. Calculability is nothing but bad, bad products, bad service, and overall bad quality. The further and further we get into times the more people are expecting quality-wise. We don’t want clothes that are nice looking, but not comfortable and we most certainly do not want cars that are fast and pretty but not safe. The third focus is control, which is the substitution of more predictable non-human labor for human labor. This is nothing but deskilling of workers. People hired