#fastfood

And for its part, the McRib makes a mockery of this whole terribly labor-intensive system of barbecue, turning it into a capital-intensive one. The patty is assembled by machinery probably babysat by some lone sadsack, and it is shipped to distribution centers by black-beauty-addicted truckers, to be shipped again to franchises by different truckers, to be assembled at the point of sale by someone who McDonald’s corporate hopes can soon be replaced by a robot, and paid for using some form of electronic payment that will eventually render the cashier obsolete.

"a torrent of beef spews out of a giant mechanical meat-hole onto a speeding conveyor belt; tubs, pipes and boxes of various sizes and shapes carrying a roiling mass of beef slurry; countless, mysterious processing chambers, each of which does who knows what else to the patties"

"challenge-response wastes time, as you pay double the cost of the latency between you and the person behind the counter."

"Steve Ells, founder of the red-hot Mexican-food chain, on his aim to make the focused menu as all-natural as possible, and why it's worth the expense"

"This video will take you through the steps and have you stacking your own $1 Big Macs"

"The person on the other end isn't even inside the restaurant youve pulled up to, theyre in Hawaii Santa Maria, California."

"So in the interest of showing how silly corporate policy can become, I've posted the pictures to Flickr and wrote about my experience."