Fast Food Nation?

My local KFC is looking to hire new staff.

I know this - not because I've been crimping with my homies again and got the low down - but because they've printed it in four foot high bright yellow lettering in their front window. A good piece of free advertising I suppose, but not the smartest move to pull outside the two busiest roundabouts in J Town. The locals live a charmed existence getting round the two of them as it is without The Colonel putting them off with his eight foot erection.

Incidentally - ever notice how The Colonel has mysteriously started to fade away on all the KFC signage and packaging? Oh he's still there - if you look close enough - but you really have to look. I'm not surprised though, the guy looks like a member of the KKK, only without the hood. He's even got a militaristic title. I guess 'Arch Deacon' was a little too much of a giveaway so they went with 'Colonel'. That, or he looks like a paedophile, which I've personally suspected for quite some time. Finger licken good anyone?

Anyhoo, the sign in the front window is nice and big and I guess it has to be when your target workforce is more akin to focusing on the tiny text of mobile phones. Either that or the urban myth about the 'something extra' in the coleslaw is actually true and the occupational hazard to that kind of carry on - as your mother always told you - is that you will eventually go blind. So best make the letters nice and big for all them adolescent boys who will have had plenty of practise by now aye?

I should point out at this point that I don't class every teenager as a stoner, for there are some incredibly bright kids out there, but it seems that the weaker link in their generation all work in fast food restaurants these days. There are however some hard working, thoughtful kids holding down these types of jobs too, so I exclude them also from my remaining unscientific generalisations.

KFC and all of the other fast food joints are on a real hiding to nothing these days. They've almost become the persona non grata of the eating world. Not that I'm distraught by this, because as a parent I have now come to see them as the kiddiefiddlers they all are (I'm still talking to you, Colonel!). They should be made by the Commerce Commission to remove the 'fast' from their advertising too, especially McDonalds who perversely, are now making all their burgers only as you order them. Not in advance, but while you wait. Kinda defeats the purpose of fast food doesn't it? But more on McDees later...

Once clean restaurants (and I lose that term loosely) are now no cleaner than picnic tables. When it's a struggle to get barely enough conscious staff to front the counter, you can bet you'll be cleaning your own table.

But it wasn't always this way. I remember as a child visiting places like KFC, Homestead Chicken, McDonalds etc and it was standing room only. Places staffed by a motivated, happy bunch of teenagers who were prepared to do whatever it took to make your experience a memorable one. Pay rates were even worse for teenagers back then, but these were places that gave opportunity and not just easy money. Working in a fast food place back then was a real teenage status symbol too. It didn't get much cooler than working at the Golden Tits.

I remember applying in person one Saturday for a handful of vacancies offered at the local McDees - there were so many kids my age there that had the Internet been around back then, I suspect it would have stopped that day because all the nerds were lining up together. I didn't get the job incidentally, possibly because my acne count was not as high as some around me that day.

It all changed in the early nineties though, when we started cottoning on to the fact that fatty food in large quantities would pretty much kill us. Thus we started to shy away from the hand that had fed us for so long.

Kentucky Fried Chicken - as it was known back then - decided to drop the 'fried' bit from it's name as a result. I actually met the guy who was in charge of KFC at that time and claims he was the brains behind the name drop. He was an inspiring man - one of those half is glass full types and when asked 'hows it going' would reply something along the lines of 'Brilliant' or 'Marvelous'. I've got a feeling he was also as bent as a row of tents though. Which is okay, if you like that sort of thing.

It wasn't long before all the established fast food joints started changing their menus, their advertising and their image. All in a desperate attempt to convince us that they had changed and that although they still cook everything in a bathtub full of fat - it was now good fat. We weren't buying it - literally.

McDonalds have even now introduced salads and rubbery pasta meals for kids too(ever wondered what happened to all the left over Happy Meal toys? They melt them down to make the pasta meals I reckon). None of it has worked though. The only thing that has gotten me back into a McDees after reading books like Fast Food Nation and watching Supersize Me, was the life size cutouts of Sarah Ulmer in her cycling gear. Alas, some bugger had beaten me to it though and had pinched the one from our local before I got the chance.

My advice to all the fast food companies in NZ like Restaurant Brands (who own KFC & Pizza Hut) is to forget fighting it, flaunt what you've got. People who want fatty fast food are still going to come through the door, because it's addictive. So don't pretend to be something you're not, go back to doing what you were best at.

Take all the money you put into feel good advertising and spend it on staff and improving the eating areas of your establishments. Don't worry about developing product ranges that don't match the rest of your menu. Let Subway sell subways - they're crap anyway and someone looking for a quarter pounder is not going to be happy with six inches. If it's worked for the local fish and chip shop for all these years - by far the busiest 'fast food' places any night of the week - it can work again for you.

Not McDonalds though. The anti-Christ of the fast food nation. My advice does not apply to you. For no other fast food company deliberately targets children like you bastards do. You have marketing strategies that begin with emotionally locking in children at the youngest possible age. It's a strategy that would make Adolf Eichmann proud. Don't know who he was? Google him, he had a master plan too.

True story - an employee of McDonalds was fired in the States because he couldn't in good conscience follow the marketing plan he was tasked with. What was his job at the company? He got to dress up as Ronald McDonald - the real paedophile in this story.

Never trust a clown, at least not one peddling a Happy Meal.