You don’t believe things like this. They do not exist. Too farfetched, too conspiracy theorist to be anything other than an urban myth: have you heard about the fast food company that’s studying eating disorders to sell more burgers? No, I swear it’s true, my friend knows someone…
You don’t believe unless you have it sitting on your computer screen, dragged from a guilty man’s deleted files. Circumstance conspiring with us, with me, so I have something to hold out to Pete and say Look. This is what I can do. I am worth it. So we can finish each other’s half typed sentences of disgust and awe.
This is big. So big that it’s hard to think of whole. It’s not a game any more. I’ve found something deeply sick. Sick and manipulative and perfect. The email’s not enough by itself, I can see that. But if they are capable of this then there will be more. And PBs will have nowhere to hide.
A very slick production, their website. Pity the security isn’t up to the graphics. Happy smiling children everywhere. Our most valued customers. The small print:
Prince of Burgers will not be liable for injuries or damage relating to the accessing of this site even if there has been negligence. Total liability will not be greater than the amount paid to access this site.
Comforting. They’ve had a make-over. No longer the 42 ingredients in your white/red sauce of choice, just watered down ‘nutritional information’. The Prince contains 170 per cent of the recommended daily saturated fat intake, and over half the recommended calories. The values do not include condiments.
There are little dancing icons with crowns. They list the community initiatives, the recycling programme, the environmental clean up. Underneath is says at the discretion of the local franchisee. But not in very big letters.
I found the remote access under the corporate banner. Attempting to increase worker productivity. What are they thinking? Don’t they know about people like me? People who live online. They’re just tourists, asking to get lost and have their pockets picked.
He’s not a particularly well organised man. No order to the filing. Sixty-three emails still in the inbox. But I had time.
A new fast food restaurant opens somewhere in the world every two hours. Fifty million people a day make the decision to contribute to PBs’ annual 18 billion dollar US profit. But still it is dying. In one model the universe keeps racing outwards, desperately trying to stay ahead of its own gravity. But it can’t keep it up. One day it’ll start to slow, stop, teeter, turn, get sucked back faster and faster to the place it all began. Santa Claus will once again be more recognisable than the grinning prince.
The average PB executive earns 25 times the income of the workers in their restaurants. They are still trying to lower the minimum wage.
Me, at my computer. This, an innocuously titled email. Only Confidential marked it as worth a look. Yes he deleted it, the stupid little man. Even conscientiously emptied the recycling bin. But did he really think that would make it disappear forever, the guilty email shredded, burned, out of reach? Yes. He probably did. But of course it hasn’t. Nothing is really lost. Nothing can be hidden forever. They’re called tombstones. Quite appropriate really.
PBs is not a family-friendly restaurant. It is a parasite that doesn’t know when to stop its feeding. They have studied us like lab rats in a maze. Brand loyalty begins at two. Babies can recognise a logo before their own name. And now this: the adolescent connection. Making us fat so our bodies and our minds actually need the shit they’re holding out. PBs is a drug.
They give us bright colours at three, playgrounds at six, additives at 13. The fries used to be cooked in beef tallow. PBs switched to vegetable oil to keep the vegetarians and health conscious happy. But something wasn’t right. Now a ‘natural’ flavour is added. It’s derived from beef extract. We just keep on coming back.
But not often enough. They can feel the sinking.
The marketplace is a joke. Competition is non-existent. Price fixing is rife. Landowners are bought out to be replaced by huge Prince subsidiaries. It’s either take their money or starve. The suicide rate of farmers and ranchers in the US is three times the national average.
Grain-fattened, anabolic steroid-implanted cows stunned, sometimes; hung upside down by chains, carotid artery slit so they die ‘humanely’, sometimes. Sawed in half and scraped clean of every last profit producing scrap. The fries 0.29 inches thick. The no-experience-needed-so-we-can-fire-you-whenever-we-want-so-don’t-even-think-about-joining-a-union kitchens. And we keep going back. It’s our fear of the unknown. No need to face frightening difference here. Homogeneity is unthreatening.
When Pete sees this he’ll know there is no other way to go. We belong together. Together, we can win.