The book that has changed my mind on an important issue lately has been The McDonaldization of Society, by George Ritzer. In this book, Ritzer manages to expound on the capitalistic theory of efficiency, a term he renames as “McDonaldization”. This theory, modified through the ages by such economic individuals as Fredrick W. Taylor, Henry Ford, and Max Weber has grown substantially in the last 150 years. It has grown from being a radical innovation in the capitalistic sphere to a universally used theory encompassing every aspect of humanity from life to death. Ritzer manages to divide his book into four main topics that are referred to in every chapter. Those four topics are : The Fast-Food Industry, Education, Health Care, and the Workplace. The exact scope of how this economic phenomenon is so widely used was personally the greatest shock. Prior to this, I was very weak in my familiarity with the current strive for the greatest profit margin and efficiency by the Health Care industry. This callous grab for profits bothers me when one’s life could be on the line.

With the continuing debate about HMO’s and the horror stories about patients of these programs dying due to inadequate treatment, one may wonder who exactly diagnoses these patients. In The McDonaldization of Society, Ritzer goes into a great amount of detail describing the loss of autonomy by the doctors as the various HMO’s gain power. The idea of efficiency comes into play in this profession, as the HMO’s strive for the highest profitability while still espousing legality. This results in a higher specificity of training for the average doctor, in order to efficiently diagnose the problem. This is problematic for the consumer, as the price rendered for the specialists far outweigh those of general practitioners. By laying out only a specific amount of doctors one can visit through the HMO, the HMO themselves exercise a certain amount of power over these said doctors. This creates a major problem in the search for efficiency. Logic dictates that a shorter diagnosis time is more efficient then a more thorough one, but these shorter diagnoses work in the opposite direction, actually being less efficient for the HMO’s. This is due to the decreasing quality of these diagnoses, which can cause error or misdiagnosis.

The major effect that The McDonaldization of Society has personally had is the re-evaluation of my prior jobs, which were both in the fast-food industry. Looking back, the search for efficiency was in full swing at both locations, with varying results found at each. At Subway, my last job, a person was limited in all aspects when ordering food. They had a choice of three coverings, those being a wrap, a sub bun, and a salad container. The customers had a limited amount of vegetables to choose from when getting their meal. The absence of a major amount of seating hit directly on a point Ritzer made. For the greatest efficiency, customers have to be continually cycled out of the store. The customer that chooses not to leave is a hindrance to efficiency, since an employee is blocked from cleaning and other related activities. Subway lost an amount of efficiency by requiring that vegetables were to be cut at the store they were served. This called for a more skilled type of worker, raising the price paid for said worker, and also introduced the possibility of spoilage. My first job, at Wendy’s, was the ultimate in efficiency. Nothing was performed there in the idea of pre-food preparation. All the meats were already cut into the familiar squares, the potatoes came off the truck ready for cooking. The major factor that made Wendy’s a pinnacle of efficiency was the willingness to recycle other foods into a completely new function when the aforementioned food threatened to become old. For example, the overcooked burgers were gradually reintroduced as the meat in Wendy’s chili.

The McDonaldization of Society was the key for me to realize the hidden machinations of the working world. Even if I had not had the jobs in the food-service industry, I would still have been able to notice these machinations through the numerous examples that Ritzer gives. These examples are by no means based solely in the food-service industry, as he also provides as details various universities and doctors. The book is masterful in not completely attacking McDonaldization as a capitalistic tool, but continually reiterates the simple fact that the theory is successful to a point.