Robert Forto

McDonalds

What happened between breakfast and lunch today?

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I am brand new to National Blog Posting Month and like everything in life it  comes with its very own acronym– NaBloPoMo. Isn’t that great? I love it.

Anyhow, you will get to know me very well, and if I don’t scare you away with my sarcastic humor and my look at life through fire iridium lenses, I’ll bet you will enjoy the ride.

The topic prompt that I am using is from a couple days ago: What happened between breakfast and lunch today. 

Quite simply, I am learning how to save YOUR life.

I am taking an Emergency Medical Technician course at the local college and it is full of acronyms and mnemonics. The first one is the name of the course itself. Yep, you guessed it: EMT.

I’m not the oldest student in class but I am no spring chicken either. At 40 I am wise enough to know when study and young enough not to be suffering from a case of (mild) dementia.

To start the day off right, I stopped off at the local gas-n-go and grabbed at extra tall extreme java mocha with whip and a day-old half-priced doughnut with those little sprinkle-ly things that somehow always get stuck in your teeth. The breakfast of champions right?

It is an hour to the college. Everything is an hour away in Alaska. That’s why nobody lives here. Well that and Monday Night Football actually starts in the afternoon…

We are half way through the course and what does that mean boys and girls? Test Day! All of my co-students were anxiously pacing and biting their fingernails enough to put the local manicurist out of business while we waited one-by-one to be called to the hallway to perform a trauma assessment.

The deal is–your tester (a paramedic) holds on to these sheets and you run down a checklist as you work your way from head to toe on your patient. My patient was a co-student who’s name is John but wants to be called Fred. Go figure.

After donning the required safety gear–those cool blue latex gloves. You start with the A.B.C.s (airway, breathing and circulation) and then the acronyms start in earnest.

We have:

D.C.A.P.

B.T.L.S.

L.O.C.

S.A.M.P.L.E.

O.P.Q.R.S.T.

Glasgow coma scales,

B.P.s,

S.P.O2’s

and on, and on, and on…

You have exactly 10 minutes to get ‘Fred’ stabilized, packaged up and ready to roll, all the while your tester is making sure you don’t miss any ‘starred’ items on the sheet.

Sure most of this is from memory. That’s okay. That’s why we do it over and over again so when we get our fancy Star of Life patch in December we will be ready to come to YOUR home and do this for real. Yep, we won’t see any real blood and guts until after graduation.

That may be okay for some but what happens if you spent all this money and you have a weak stomach? Remember that old show Quincy, M.E. where the new doctors fainted at the beginning of each show?

Needless to say, I passed with flying colors and I just so happened to be the last one under the gun. What happened next? Lunch!

Where did we head? McDonalds of course. 

Look at it this way. I’m already practicing the eating habits of our fine men and women in uniform. Fast food is a public safety worker’s best friend.

What did you do between breakfast and lunch today?

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Netflix Apocalypse

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Image representing Netflix as depicted in Crun...
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We saw the warning signs just a couple months ago. Netflix decided to stick it to their most loyal customers and raise prices on their two services: streaming movies and DVDs by mail.

I have been a subscriber to Netflix for more than four years. My family and I love their service. In fact, we currently have two plans (part of the family is living in Colorado and the other in Alaska). We have gladly paid the 10 bucks that is withdrawn from our credit card every month.

We also travel frequently between the two states and use the streaming service to watch movies on our iPhones and iPads away from home and on the airplane.

But as I said, the beginning of the end started a couple months ago when the Netflix brass thought that they needed to raise the price to almost 19 dollars for customers that were receiving both streaming and the DVD option. Customers just like me.

There was a huge backlash on social media and over a million of people went so far as to cancel their accounts. We were not one of them. We continued to fill up our queue with movies and receive two of them per month like clock-work in just two business days, even up in here Alaska.

I awoke this morning to an email from Reed Hastings the CEO of the little red envelopes. It started off as what I thought would be a sincere apology: “ I messed up.” Hastings said. “I owe everyone an explanation.”

Then came the bombshell…

Hastings said that Netflix could not remain successful in the online streaming end AND the DVD end if something wasn’t fixed.

Reed continued to try to apologize to hard working guys like me that have forked over several hundred bucks over the past few years to his service.”In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based on past success. But now I see that given the huge changes we have recently been making, I should have personally give a full justification to our members of why we are separating DVD and streaming and charging for both. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do,” said Reed.

Really? 

We all know what is up, Reed. Its about the bottom line. I know how it works. I am a small business owner too. But you know what I don’t screw my most loyal customers so I can have a better executive compensation plan for the brass.

Sure you gave us a little forewarning of the price increase. Till the beginning of September to be exact. I am not crying over a couple bucks. To the contrary. I still think the movie service is a great deal. Think about it. What costs twenty bucks these days? Two people at dinner at McDonalds will blow a Jackson and you are lucky to buy ONE ticket at the movie-plex.

But not 19 days later you are at it again! Hastings you have gone a little too far. Today you announce that the two services will split in a few weeks. The streaming content will remain Netflix but the DVD by mail service will be called Qwickster and will be become part of a separate brand.

What does Qwickster mean to you? It means that you will have to go to a separate website to order your DVDs and customers will have two entries on their credit card statement. Hastings laments that the service will be “exactly” the same but with a new name.

He also says that there will be a new video game rental option through Qwikster and substantially more streaming content in the coming months.

Great!

We all know that streaming content is the wave of the future. I understand that. But what about people, like me that don’t have a fast enough Internet connection at home or people that are on the already outrageously expensive data plans on their smart phones. I use my iPhone and iPad for almost everything and I am on the 4 GB plan and I use it to capacity every month and that is with very little streaming of video.

Wait there’s more.

If you are a subscriber to Netflix you know that one of the best features is the rating system we all took part in for movies that we have watched in the past. By rating the movies you have watched Netflix would “suggest” movies based on your preferences. Well as part of the Qwickster switch none of this will follow you.

I had well over 500 movie ratings on my account. Hey, Reed, thanks a lot for all that wasted time. It’s not your fault. I know. You are only doing your job. What will my default suggestions be now? Little Mermaid? Dune? The Deep? Boy, I can’t wait!

Reed also said in his personal email to me that the prices will remain the same with the new services. In fact he said, and I quote, “We’re done with that.”

We’ll see. I am putting my money on a price change before the beginning the of the year.

But you know what,I will stick with the service for now. I still like the concept and like I said, it is still one heck of a deal. But I don’t know how long it will last if they continue to alienate it’s most loyal fan base with moves like this.

I think Reed and the powers that be need to wake up and smell the coffee. Losing one million subscribers over your last debacle equalled what? A bulls**t email and a shake up of your business in my inbox this morning.

What’s next? 

Time will tell.

Will you remain a subscriber of Netflix/Qwikster? 

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McDonalds as the Microcosm of America

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Its 5:53 pm on Mothers Day. While most of America is sitting down to dinner to celebrate the mother, or possibly mother in-law in their life over a fine feast that the “men” prepared most likely involving an open flame…

I’m sitting here in Wasilly, Alaska at McDonalds. Yep, here in the town that Sarah built they DO have a McDonalds and to show our craze for the sport of dog sledding there is a full size Iditarod sled displayed promenantly in the middle if the restaurant.

On the walls there are dog sledding murals, etched glass and even a feed/drop bag or two from the race.

But the decor of this corporate behemoth is not the subject of this blog.

It’s the people that are here. That’s the real story of small town America.

As you may know, I don’t eat alone at restaurants. I think it’s creepy and weird for a middle aged man to sit and enjoy a three course meal alone talking to himself.

At this Mickey D’s they have some of those high boy tables and thats where I’m positioned enjoying a large fry and a Barq’s Root Beer.

Since Mcdonalds started competing head to head with Starbucks a couple years ago serving lattes, gourmet oatmeal, bastardized coffee shakes, and WiFi, the the kid friendly arches are a distant memory.

As I look around I see no mention of clowns, hamburglers or Grimaces. Special birthday party rooms with balloons and orange drink served in large coolers and an included cake are long gone. It goes against the new image of the chain, so I am told. Morgan Spurlock’s Super-size Me almost brought this chain down to its knees and maybe it was for the better. I don’t know…

I see a well lit place where people come to work in silence on their laptops and smartphones on the free WiFi that broadcasts Al Gore’s Internet to the far reaches of the parking lot and the marquee on the sign that is advertising strawberry lemonade.

While I’m pecking away on my iPad in the corner, across the way from me I see a couple sitting across from each other with their laptops head to head. It reminds me of that old Battleship game.

The lady is wearing a Jelly Belly’s hat with enough pins on it to require a neck workout and the man is dressed in Carhart’s and Crocs. This is the “uniform” of many of Alaskans as we survived break-up and now heading into summer.

On their computer screens is a game of Farmville and what looks like Yahoo Messenger. I assume they are playing together but not a word is said.

At the other end of the restaurant sits what looks like a homeless man. He has a large back pack and is quite dirty. As he stood to visit the restroom I counted no less than four knives of various sizes strapped to his belt. One of them a Rambo-style survival knife. You don’t see that Outside.

There is a steady stream of walk in traffic, most of them ordering chocolate dipped cones that Dairy Queen is famous for. I have never seen a McDonalds sell these anywhere else. Maybe with a DQ right next door that has something to do with it.

The walk in traffic is wearing everything. From parkas and gloves (must not be from around here) to a middle aged woman in skinny jeans and flip-flops. Most, if not all, the men have some form of facial hair and the kids all are wearing ball caps. Every one seems to have a smile on their face even with the higher prices in Alaska.

Here a Big Mac extra value meal is $6.39.

But what peaks my interest is the crew of the restaurant. There are at least 20 people buzzing around in red, purple, black, and even blue colored shirts and at least two guys in neck ties. I hear questions asked to the “management” by the lesser rank and file and hear mickey-speak like the cashier yelling back to the cook: chicken up minus tom extra mayo.

What I also find fascinating is how often these guys look up at the monitors of the orders that are in progress as they put fries and cups and apple pies on the trays. One can not help but wonder why do these guys need to reference this monitor so often? It’s only three items guys and they are all within hands-reach of each other.

But what is perplexing is in the dinning area there is me and the other patrons that I mentioned above and no one else. How does this place support the payroll of 20 workers?

Last summer I saw an ad in the local paper advertising jobs at this McDonalds paying $14.00 dollars an hour to start! That’s a payroll of $280.00 dollars an hour for this crew if everyone was just making the minimum.

So, as a finish my fries and take my last swig of root beer I ask myself; as we travel through life how often do we take our surroundings for granted and fail to look around.

At least I try to every chance I can because you never know when the roses will be gone…