'Cause you said, said he was the one
Baby yes you said, said you were in love
Back to basics: Step 1
Arthur
JJC
Outgrowing 17
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Left-Handed Saggitarian
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Paranoid
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Macdonalds killing more trees?
Friday, June 27, 2008, 11:09 PM
I am sure that most of us would have noticed that Macdonalds has changed the system in which they serve their customers. Instead of getting the customer to wait, they get the customer to move to the next lane with a receipt and wait for their order. I don’t know if you realise but more often than not, you don't have to wait very long to get your order placed on your tray. This is seen as being much more efficient compared to where the staff can only serve one customer per lane and has to wait till the customer gets his or her order most of the time. Sure, I do understand where Macdonalds is coming from.But you do realise that the printing of the receipt is redundant, don't you? It just serves as a form of identification of the customers so that the staff knows who the order belongs to. This is redundant in my opinion. Are the staff at Macdonalds so inefficient and so scatter-brained that they really can't remember who ordered what? If it was during a peak period, perhaps it is justifiable to print those receipts but what about the non-peak period? Macdonalds isn't always having a full house. I am pretty sure everybody's aware of that.
Even if the Macdonalds staff is truly scatter-brained, it is still not justifiable to print these receipts. How so? Let's first assume that the Macdonalds staff is truly scatter-brained and can't remember who ordered what. For example, there are 5 customers on the next lane waiting for their orders to be served. If let's say burger A is ready and the staff dosen't know if the burger belongs to customer 1,2,3,4 or 5 and askes the customers who ordered burger A. Do you really think that the customers would start fighting and said i ordered it? The likelihood of such a scenario occurring is arguably almost out of the world. Most of us are rationale and wouldn't go around snatching others' orders which we probably wouldn't even feel like eating in the first place which explains why we didn't order it.
There's also the napkins which you can help yourself to at the self-service counter which are made of recycled paper. I am pretty sure that the step taken to switch to napkins made from recycled materials was a step by the corporation to reduce the number of trees it has to cut down and i applaud that move. Applaudable as it is, there are some inherent flaws with that. The first one being, the receipts printed would proabably reduce the number of trees that these recycled papers can help to save or even more than offset the number of trees saved and ends up resulting in more trees cut. What's more, the very nature that the napkins are self-service makes them subjectable to abuse. Not all of us are as environmentally friendly as we think we are and thus the abuse. To say that everybody is aware about protecting the environment is clearly a fallacious statement. In the case that it's not, we would proabably not even have to promote the campaign where we get Singaporeans to bring their own plastic bags or recyclable or environmentally friendly bag to the supermarket. The fact remains as it is. Most of us are not doing our part, small and insignificant as it is, to protect the environment. I've seen people pulling out dozens of napkins when they really don't need that much.
Macdonalds has done it's part to try to protect the environment by switching to recycled paper(although whether it's because of a lower cost albeit unlikely or because of the true desire to save the environment remains unbeknownst to me) Perhaps Macdonalds should take yet another step and only print those receipts when necessary because i am sure not all of us need the receipts and also because it is not of much practical use as we eventually chuck them into the bins. It's not that i am trying to fault Macdonalds. It's ultimately still a commericial firm and being that, it's profit driven, accountable to it's shareholders and does it actions based on whatever that's best to the company. As much as Macdonalds can try to play a part, perhaps we should start playing our part by saying no to the receipts and taking only what we need.
We need to save the environment for our future generations and something closer to our heart, reduce the effects of global warming. I am sure I don't have to preach about global warming given that it's a rather popular topic in recent years and can be easily researched on on the Internet. Eitherway, we should be more conscious of our actions and the impact on the environment.
Labels: Global Warming, Macdonalds, Trees