McDonalds Tells Employees Not to Eat Their Food

McDonald’s and other fast food chains have been in the news lately due to fast food workers fighting for a higher minimum wage. McDonald's has been receiving more of the spotlight because of “advice” they’ve been giving their workers. First, it was the “budget plan” – which admitted that workers couldn’t survive on McDonald’s wage alone. Then, they apparently advised workers via their hotline to go on food stamps. While these issues open up the door to arguments about economics and minimum wage, it also points out that McDonald's has created the media scrutiny they’ve received. Now, McDonald's has proven they are not only out of touch with their employees but also with the material carrying their name.  According to “McDonald’s on employee resources site: Not lovin’ it” by Kevin Conlon of CNN.com, McDonald’s shut down their employee resource website because of “a tip on the site to employees to avoid McDonald’s fare”.

The article describes a graphic showing a fast food meal typical of a McDonald’s value meal “under the caption ‘Unhealthy choice’. Next to it is a picture of a sub, a salad and water under the caption ‘Healthier choice’” To reiterate, this is on an official McDonald’s site telling their own employees that the food they serve is an unhealthy choice while a meal similar to Subways is a better choice.

McDonald’s shut down the site and in their official statement stated the reason as “Between links to irrelevant or outdated information, along with outside groups taking elements out of context, this created unwarranted scrutiny and inappropriate commentary.” To paraphrase: “oh crap, we didn’t realize we were promoting against ourselves and now that this has come out we look stupid”.

It’s clear that McDonald’s isn’t familiar with the image they present to their people via a site under their own name. Your name is your name, your image, and your brand. The lesson from this is that a vendor, contractor, or any other partner does not account for the clear stupidity of allowing information to come out that negatively markets your company and tells its own people to not support the product.  Hopefully, McDonald’s will learn to browse any and all sites they create for their employees