In 1993, a man called George Ritzer noticed that the methods of running fast food restaurants were spreading to other areas of our life, like toy manufacturing, newspapers, even education. Now looking at the McDonald's organisation, Ritzer identified 4 features of this way of doing business. He called it by the catchy name McDonaldization. Yeah, an easy one to remember, isn't it? The first feature was efficiency, so, we started seeing drive through restaurants and flat pack furniture. Customers paid the same, but did the work for the company and were even told it was for their good, and they accepted it.
The second feature was calculability, you know... a need to know exact numbers. Hamburgers were sold by weight; the quarter pounder became popular. In Europe companies advertise the pasta that cooked in five minutes instead of ten, as a benefit. Do people really need those extra five minutes? The third feature – predictability. When a man goes into a McDonald's restaurant anywhere in the world, the experience is the same. And the final feature is replacing humans with non-human technology. People serve themselves in banks and supermarkets, and aeroplanes fly on auto pilot. By removing the human element, they're removing the room for error, or so they believe.