Self-Service Ordering at Fast Food Joints - Gizmodo: "This is a spotting of a crazy ordering contraption at one of those Taco Bell/KFC hybrids in North Carolina. It seems that paying a high-school kids $6 an hour was too much to handle, now they are putting the burden of ordering onto the customer. This is just a large touch screen where all of the ordering and paying happens. It doesn't seem like that much more of a convenience. What about Grandma who can't even work her toaster, or perhaps somebody with bad eyesight? This would just hold up the lines even more. Anybody actually used one of these systems and wants to offer some input? They don't seem to have them around my Kansan backwoods."
Deconstructing the McRib - Slashfood: "For those of you who have never encountered a McRib Sandwich, it is a boneless, rib-meat pork patty that is shaped, dunked in BBQ sauce and sold by McDonald's. The McRib bizarrely appears to have bones in it, due to its shape, though this is merely to give the product recognizability. McDonald's actually maintains a spoof site about boneless pig farmers, poking fun at the boneless nature of their patties. Processed meat patties are inherently unattractive on their own and McDonald's knows this. It is for this very reason that the McRib patties are dunked in hickory barbecue sauce before being served with onions and pickles on a 6-inch bun. For anyone wondering what the patty looks like on its own, Fast Food Facts has kindly deconstructed the sandwich for your viewing pleasure. And if, by some chance, you do not fine processed meat to be pleasurable, it's at least very interesting."
Such waste, such imprecision, such disregard for customers' sodium levels.
Today such abandon would probably earn a swift reprimand in a company that pours millions of dollars into its attempts to squeeze every last efficiency out of the production process in an increasingly competitive fast food market."
