McPoland: I'm tired of it!

Images from PeaceAware
Poor Ronald feels persecuted. A modern day Christ, if you will. McDonalds don't like competitors pissing on what they deem their territory. So when their arch nemesis Burger King reentered the market in Poland recently they jumped right up to the challenge to combat Corporate Enemy No. 1. Complaining customers have now taken a back seat to position no.3, that is after employees, who capture second place and get the silver medal of necessary annoyances for the McProfiteering Industry.

AmRest, which operates such brands as KFC, Pizza Hut and Fresh Point are a serious threat to the McPolandisation process underway amongst the 'playground-starved' nations children and their too lazy to cook, 'easily susceptible to the nagging factor' parents. And yes, Burger King et al. also have flour and water fries, rubber burgers and plastic salads which amount too something worse than shite (at least shit can fertilise land with some of it's nutrients). Therefore, the McCorpocrats have devised an acute plan to annihilate any possibility of alternate buns and burgers fucking up the corporal well-being of the biggest market in Eastern Europe.

The foulest and fattest fast food (note the deliberate alliteration to make myself feel poetic) business in Poland have decided to invest 300 million Polish zloty (€80 million) to renovate and expand 180 of its restaurants in the next 5 - 7 years. So when I go on a trip with my fellow teachers again next year there will be an ever greater omnipresence of the arching M's littering the Polish landscape. I note the trip to the countryside that we made together, as during our 10a.m. pit stop, poor old me was left all on his own, as my fellow travellers embraced the McBreakfast option in an adjacent McDrive to satisfy their bellies.

Not meaning to be judgemental of my colleagues at all here. That's just the way the sesame seeds on the bun crumble - I made a personal choice to not use their frankenfood service or piss pots as a result of hating everything they stand for and because I think their food looks like and is shit. So when alter/antigloablisation protestors throw a brick through a McD window I can totally understand why. Their record on union-busting, worker exploitation, crap food concoction, child manipulation is really second to none and deserves righteous animosity - albeit I wouldn't advocate any harm to come to staff or even the asshole management. A smashed window doesn't add any burden to the growing bottleneck in the Polish health service - a smashed face of a manager on the other hand would probably only reinforce their company loyalty and therefore be self-defeating.

According to the News.pl, McDonald's operates 210 restaurants in Poland, including 148 so-called McDrives for drivers. 54 operate according to the franchise system. In Poland the brand has been valued at PLN 33 billion. It has invested PLN 700 million and PLN 400 million has been invested by its suppliers. The majority of products supplied to McDonald's restaurants in Poland come from domestic suppliers.

So looks like Ray Kroc's Golden Archways are going up and up in Poland, as Polish people's waistlines increasingly grow out and their appreciation for good food falls on infertile ground.