Feeding time at the Zoo.

I'm not a snob, but I might be out of touch with certain things in the world.

I took my family to McDonalds on a Friday at around 6pm. It had been a long day and it was easier to buy junk food.

We opted to go into the restaurant rather than drive through. It's easier to contain the mess with two kids.

We order the food at the self service kiosk, and get table service. All the time we are ordering people are shuffling past us, the kiosks are located right by the entrance so it is impossible not to get knocked. Directly behind me is the bin from all the waste food. Order the food on one side and see the end result directly behind you.

The volume of people entering the restaurant was quite surprising, a constant stream on youngsters and families piling in.

The teenagers all in groups, loud and cocky. The families with the parents herding the over excited tweens and toddlers, scanning the area for a table and when they see one, becoming blind to all others around them and going directly to it to make their claim on the land. The negotiations of who stays and who orders begins often involving shouting across the restaurant.

The majority of tables are littered with the waste of the last occupants that did not take their rubbish to the bin.

The staff are so busy they don't have a chance to clean the tables. Even if they did, trying to navigate the restaurant floor would be difficult due to the volume of people.

We were lucky, we got a table and our food came quickly, but we were surrounded by people waiting for tables or generally just milling around. People were eating their food standing up, it was chaos and not a pleasant experience. I felt like I had to shovel my food in.

I'm not sure if I'm annoyed, disappointed, or generally over thinking the whole thing, The visit was a snapshot of life at the bottom of the consumer ladder, a free for all, where the most vulgar of people triumphed and the polite were crushed.

The place was dirty, noisy and chaotic, and this was all down to us. It wasn’t great day for the human race.

The other side of this is why are McDonalds so busy? Why do we flock to this place? The food is terrible and not really that cheap anymore. Is this the result of extremely good marketing, awesome product promotion, or does the food have some kind of addictive substance in it, that keeps us coming back?

Why would we go to a place that is dirty, where the food is made by teenagers with questionable hygiene, the service is poor, and the food is of low quality.

We are unsophisticated beings that are selfish. We are eagerly waiting for a our next hit, in the form of a Quarter Pounder.

The positive in all this is that McDonalds is a great employer of the youth, despite teenagers with questionable hygiene, the company strives to get the young workforce in shape. I have some knowledge of this as my son works for them. He has become part of team, gained friends, and had the opportunity to earn money. This is good for a lot of teenagers.

While in the restaurant and seeing through to the kitchen, there are lots of people working, it is packed, but it is organised and almost military in it's deployment.

Taking it on face value, it is fast food, no frills and designed for mass consumption, with little emphasis on a dining experience. In fact I think dining in is intentionally discouraged by McDonalds. This is a well oiled machine that is designed to pump out food at a minimum standard, when the customers are in the restaurant they are cluttering the place, they don't have any coordination, there is no sense of team work, it is all about the self, that attitude mixed with hunger, make for an irate situation.

As much as I want to say I would never go back, I’m lying to myself. I will go back. I hate that about myself.