I was kind of afraid I'd lost that blogging feeling after a dry spell and that maybe all my creative and intellectual juices had been sucked out of me by "Survivor." I am SO happy that Rupert wasn't voted off tonight that I can't sleep. I went in/on (is it "in" or "on"?) a chat room for the first time the other day to tell the WORLD that I want to have 20 Rupert babies and the Andrew is a TOOL. Actually, what I said was, "Andrew is the kind of jerk whose office walls are covered with Motivator posters but can't operate the xerox machine" and someone wrote back to say that I should have said "copier" and I just gave up. Anyway, it was a big day on Survivor and as far as I can tell chat rooms are for chumps.
In between adrenalin shots of pure joy, I was thinking about a story I read in the New York Times this Sunday or last, about the woman whose kids were killed when someone set her apartment on fire while she was at work at her job as night manager at McDonald's, who's now (or last I read) being held on charges of reckless endangerment for leaving her kids alone without a babysitter. The story reported how she was afraid to lose her job, she'd recently been promoted, and made references how the money you earn at these crappy jobs doesn't begin to pay for child care.
Here -- I'll find the story. I'm not going to bother trying to link to it, because the NYT is so pesky about their content -- actually, I don't even like using their website because of the whole registration process which I find strangely insulting and dehumanizing, I mean, it's kind of strange that my reaction is so violent -- I'm the same way at Safeway when they insist on a customer card or address me by first name -- remind me to digress about the politics of customer serice some other time -- I'll quote from the article now:
Daily Choice Turned Deadly: Children Left on Their Own
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: October 19, 2003
"Recently promoted to assistant manager at the McDonald's, Ms. Brathwaite was required to work a rotating mix of morning, midday and nighttime shifts that made reliable child care nearly impossible to keep on her modest wages. Nor could she leave early, since she was responsible for securing the day's receipts. When desperate calls to the missing sitter and a neighbor went unanswered, her lawyer said, she was afraid of losing the job that supported her children."
(And then it's kind of interesting to me because the article quotes Linda Gordon, a historian, and that makes me feel vaguely relevant, or maybe just smug because I vaguely remember who she is.)
And then the writer tells us about another case, this one in Santa Fe:
"an illegal immigrant, the mother of seven, had gone to work at McDonald's, leaving a 6-year-old daughter in charge of siblings aged 3 and 1. The frightened girl had called 911. But supporters — including the sheriff who bailed the mother out of jail — saw her as a desperate single mother fearful of deportation who was doing the best she could in poverty."
She also says that " The Child Trends researchers found that higher-income children between 6 and 9 were actually more likely than poor children to be left unsupervised for several hours, even after controlling for the fact that the better-off parents were more likely to have jobs." Which I thought was interesting and counter-intuitive. She gives some examples of rich kids being left alone with cell phones and pizzas.
But anyway, it was the two references to McDonald's that really caught my eye.
Ever since reading the book "Fast Food Nation," I've been aware of how there's been so much attention paid to nutrition, and the unsanitary packing plants, and how crappy fast food is for kids -- speaking of, has anyone seen the ad for the new Kentucky Fried Chicken kid's meal? They call it a "laptop" meal, and it comes with chicken strips, applesauce and, prominently featured, a big Sprite or whatever it is that's passing for 7-Up now -- I think maybe they are thinking that a clear drink is more healthful than a cafeinated drink? Or maybe they're just pushing their clear drink on general principles. I don't know. Anyway, it's pretty gross -- and for me, that parts of that book that I found most profoundly moving and exciting (exciting like in, "I want to burn something down," or write my congressman using *strong* language) had to do with the shitty working conditions for everyone involved at the packing plants and the restaurants, etc.
I have a friend in public relations who was telling me about how his work with companies with reprehensible social records lately has been to directly confront the harm they have done or are accused of doing or are associated with by putting funds towards those causes, rather than pussy-footing around them.
McDonald's has a charitable arm, Ronald McDonald houses, which seems from its publicity to have made its primary mission to provide hotel rooms for people whose kids are in the hospital, which is frankly, I think, kind of a diluted message. I mean, we could all understand taking care of sick kids, or helping the homeless, but hotel rooms for people whose kids are sick ... it's just too random. Plus, does anyone else think it's kind of amazing that McDonald's is asking us to donate to its charity?
I have a couple of ideas.
1) McDonald's should open up a line of day care places. I know this has already been done in essence, but not at the massive scale that McDonald's could. Think of it: If every other McDonald's where converted into a day care facility, our nation's day care needs could almost be met. Many of the folks who work at McDonald's would be great day care workers -- many of them seem to be mothers, or the kinds of folks regularly employed as nannys and daycare workers already. And many of them already have the play areas already built in.
We all know McDonald's has been losing money for awhile (or had been, last I saw) and if it doesn't have a big shake up soon, is doomed to fail. What better thing to do than to really directly confront head on the accusations that it is contributing to the unhealth of our nation's children by *directly* caring for them. This would also allow them to take advantage of all the marketing they've been doing to children.
2) Second, more modest idea: if I had some kind of day-care non-profit, now's the time when I'd run, not walk, to fill out a letter of inquiry for a grant from old Ronald.
OK -- hold the presses. Turns out, the Colonial is more clever than the Clown -- they've already thought of this! Maybe that's why McDonald's had to go for the wierd obscure cause.
Looking around the KFC website, first I found their description of their laptop meal: "When it comes to its kid's meal, KFC emphasizes a complete meal with multiple food options and packaging designed to "edu-tain" and engage kids during mealtimes with interactive puzzles, games and activities. The Kids Laptop Pack, which resembles a laptop computer, features the meal on the inside and innovative kid-focused fun on the outside."
But even more insidiously, I see that a portion of the proceeds goes to their charity, "Colonial's Kids" and what might that charity be devoted to? CHILDCARE! Well, I guess there's no such thing as an original idea. And I guess that's a good thing that they're giving money to the Y.
What kills me is they ask for donations, too. Isn't the whole point that they have made a ton of money, have money to burn, and now it's time to "give back"?
I think my suggestion that McDonald's just convert half its holdings to day care is a good one. But if you're looking for childcare grants, you might want to try KFC. Just don't feed their food to your kids.
My friend's child was born with a very rare heart condition. The child has had several surgeries at OHSU. The Ronald McDonald house has made a pretty big impact in their lives especially when the mother was divorced and unemployed.
It may seem random and obscure, but it is actually much needed and appreciated.
That said, I do agree that it is strange that they ask for donations. I don't know enough about the Ronald McDonald's houses and their funding, but I suspect that the donations make up a tiny percentage of their operating expenses. I suspect they ask for donations because it is a good way to publicize that you do charity work without saying "Look at us, we're doing charity work." That's probably a cynical way of looking at it, but I doubt McDonalds makes enough money from the donation boxes at each restraunt to put a dent in the budget for the number of houses they have.
I'm sure many worthy people have benefited from those Ronald McDonald houses and that’s great and I’m all for it – that's too bad about your friend’s kid, btw -- but that's not really the point I was trying to make or dispute because, at the risk of making my cynicism part of the text rather than the subtext, I tend to think that these fast-food charities are more driven by marketing and tax concerns than raw altruism, and I think that taking this line of logic, something like day care has the potential for a more universal impact than those houses.
I don’t really want McDonald’s taking care of kids, you know – I mean, my point is kind of that McDonald’s is the last place in the world I’d want to leave my kid and I find the whole idea of corporations directly confronting the ill that they do in the world pretty complicated or maybe predictably fraught with moral dilemmas. For instance, it’s interesting/predictable how they pick their cutest victims – McDonald’s has done a lot for kids, and cows (I wonder if they sponsored any of those cows for kids things around town?) but not so much for immigrant workers working in meat packing plants or their stores. And it’s great to help single moms when their kids are sick, which does happen – but how about helping them with the day-to-day issues of keeping them safe while they work which I’d guess happens more often to more people?
What would truly be awesome is if, in addition to those hotel rooms, McDonald’s had quality day care facilities on site for the mom’s working there and anyone else, and if we had as many quality day care places as we have McDonald’s – it’s like that old poster, “wouldn’t it be great if day cares had all the money they need and the military had to hold bake sales for airplanes?” or something snappier along those lines.
If a corporation contributes money to a problem that it helped to cause, does that make it more hypocritical, or more honest? I really truly don’t know but it’s kind of interesting to think about.
It is good to know directly that someone was helped by the houses – makes me feel a little bit better about the egg mcmuffin with cheese I ate last weekend – I grow fat, that others may have somewhere to stay when their kid is sick. Not to get all ranty about it, but I kind of feel like McDonald’s charity use the same logic.
I think the houses probably ask for money because they are actually independent from McDonald's corporation itself and likely have an extremely entreprenureal model for charity. Their website asks for money, too. I'd be interested in finding out more, though, about these corporate charities. I should ask my friend the marketing guy.
My Public Relations professor called it hedging and wedging. The idea is that you do a lot of good things as a corporate citizen so that when something bad happens that people think "Well, I hate what company X just did, but they do good things so I'll give them a chance to fix it."
Which if you think about it is actually the way you respond when friends do something you don't like. You don't like what they did, but you still like them. At least until they continuing committing bad acts.
At the end of the day, you're kind of stuck when it comes to corporate charities. You never know whether they contribute because they believe or if they contribute because it is a good public relations policy.
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There are alot of Sororities that sponser a certain foundation and i know of one of them that sponsers Ronald Mcdonald houses and they have donated over a million dollars to the fondation....