{"id":17,"date":"2026-05-03T00:07:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T00:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/?page_id=17"},"modified":"2026-05-03T00:07:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T00:07:57","slug":"the-amazing-digital-mcdonalds","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/the-amazing-digital-mcdonalds\/","title":{"rendered":"The Amazing Digital McDonald\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A little while ago I made a\u00a0few videos<\/a>\u00a0giving kind of a\u00a0blunt-trauma lampooning<\/a>\u00a0of the Amazing Digitial Circus \u2013 which, if you haven\u2019t seen, is a cartoon made unintentionally to entertain content mills on Youtube. Like all criticism, my own required significantly less effort than the cartoon I was whinging at, and it also does\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0really matter<\/em>\u00a0because without the original cartoon I was targeting, my criticism would be irrelevant. Still, even the merest attempt at quality in today\u2019s internet is considered a precious rarity, so there were some assertions that I shouldn\u2019t be attacking sacred cows. Or\u2026 endangered cows, as it were. It\u2019s as much a wildlife protection thing as it is anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, I will say this about it: so far almost every major Youtube thing since 2010 that has gotten as much attention as the Digital Circus turned out to be embroiled in a tornado of horrific scandals, so in time I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll be vindicated. I don\u2019t know exactly what Gooseworx has done, but soon the curtains will be drawn back on her horrible misdeeds and I\u2019ll regret to be forgiven. Will it be some kind of pooping scandal like Youtube\u2019s Blippy? Will it be filming a dead body, like whichever Paul brother did that? I\u2019m aware that Mr. Beast has suffered some kind of comeuppance for acts more severe than the crime of being Mr. Beast, which I feel like should have been a condemning enough miscalculation to start with. Whatever it is, at some point we\u2019re just going to get numb to these things because it seems to happen so often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I had to guess, it\u2019s going to turn out that a huge portion of Digital Circus\u2019s audience is small kids, and then some parents somewhere are going to find out about the vore<\/em>, and then once that\u2019s on Fox News, oh god, there will have been vore on Fox News. See, this is the advantage of traditional media, is that they could put shows in a specific time slot and expect that they\u2019d be watched by the demographic they were aiming for instead of having an AI decide that little Margaret, a tender four years old, should watch Mickey and Minnie Mouse explore each other\u2019s bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a son myself, and as a rule, I don\u2019t let him watch Youtube unless I am there watching it with him<\/em>, because I made a living on Youtube for quite a while, and I know exactly what the asshole suits who centralized society to be controlled by an ad-bot <\/em>are okay with. And speaking of corporations with low standards, this actually brings me to the central topic of this essay: Digital Circus made an episode about working at McDonald\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That clown could probably sue for a stool to stand on.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Apparently Gooseworx slaved at a McDonald\u2019s for five years, and that kind of resonates with me, because I suffered through a CVS Pharmacy for that same length of time. The episode itself was sort of focused on Gangle, a character whose gimmick is that they\u2019re a white mask on strings, and it was about how the mask that represents their emotions is actually a metaphor for a mask that hides<\/em> their emotions. That\u2019s so earth-shaking it probably registered on the Richter scale and killed a few people in Japan, but that\u2019s not what I found interesting about the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I liked about it was just how bland<\/em> the McDonald\u2019s atmosphere felt. And that\u2019s not a dig, although it may sound like one. In spite of having a colorful cast of weirdos who show up to the register, they all fundamentally just order things off the menu and then move on. The most outlandish customer they deal with is basically a woman with too many kids who has a hard time keeping track of what\u2019s in front of her, which is honestly kind of a common occurrence, and for me, was just one customer among many suffering through that. It\u2019s part of the business \u2013 people have lives, and they bring them into the store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You\u2019re doing great, ma\u2019am. I\u2019ll have you ready in ten minutes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The person I remembered more was a woman who used to come in with every coupon ever fabricated by man\u2019s unworthy hands. She was memorable because she turned every check-out into a series of litigations, and I realized at some point she probably should have had one of our employees on retainer because it was a full-time job unto itself to go through an entire book of expiry dates, pricing limits, and two-for-one conditional arguments. Or rather, I guess we were the company\u2019s agents, so we should have been paid more by them, but naturally that would never happen<\/em>. Still, even with her, I was mostly amazed at how she was able to shoplift from our store every Friday, and we were still obligated to tell her \u201cthanks, come again.\u201d She\u2019d walk out with a flat screen TV, twenty frozen pizzas, four lawn chairs, three boxes of tissues, and a bottle of Tylenol, but have only paid ten dollars \u2013 most of which coming from the Tylenol. It was amazing; that lady was a coupon sorceress<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I sometimes find a little cynical about most shows is that they\u2019ll depict the customers as the bad guys. And I do get it, because any time a show is about working in retail, one of the main focuses of the job is working with customers. Naturally, a show, especially a comedy, will hyperbolize that challenge and make it into something huge, bombastic, and hopefully funny, but the truth is: when I worked at CVS, I never felt that the customers were my greatest roadblock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, I was sometimes the guy they\u2019d call if a customer was a big problem. Because I worked in the pharmacy itself, we often had to deal with insurance problems and other corporate catches that were legitimately hostile to everyone. The customers were mad, I\u2019d be mad, the doctors would be mad, but none of us had control over any of it. The reason why I\u2019d get called to handle it is because, I like to think, I\u2019m an okay entertainer. I\u2019d chat with the customer, explain the problem as best as I could in a way that held their interest while I punched away at the computer, and by the time I was done telling them what had happened, the problem would usually be close to resolved. I\u2019d do this more than once, and sometimes customers would ask for me<\/em> specifically in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Customers are not the enemy. You have things to do, they have things to do. A customer doesn\u2019t know what it takes to get their insurance to shut up and pay for the drugs, but they also don\u2019t know what it takes to make an animation. They don\u2019t know what it takes to figure out a really good set for a comedy routine. As a performer, you don\u2019t go up and berate the audience for not appreciating the work that went into your set \u2013 that\u2019d be insane and would get you jeered off the stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hecklers are<\/em> a thing and \u2013 okay, look. The point I\u2019m trying to make is that in Digital Circus, Gangle wants to be a webcomic artist, and she\u2019s sad she isn\u2019t getting to do that. However, if your passion is more to do with entertaining people directly, that ability actually isn\u2019t wasted in a retail setting. If you can talk to people and know how to use their time in a way that doesn\u2019t feel wasteful, while hiding all the technical bull-crap behind the curtains, that\u2019s the essence of a good performance. Customers really appreciate that, and they were usually the ones who provided me with validation for the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is one of the most volatile, negative reactions anyone has in this episode, and it\u2019s not towards a customer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What I noticed, that really got me thinking this much about the whole episode, is that the show doesn\u2019t depict customers as the foremost foe. It presents boredom as the main challenge. Tedium. Jax keeps checking the clock, but the shift just isn\u2019t over. He\u2019s not allowed to have any fun or be in control of himself until this is done, but it won\u2019t end. He can\u2019t even lean on the tables, because he\u2019s reminded he should be cleaning if he\u2019s got down time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s nothing very serious going on. Nobody is making any big problems, and although Ragatha is passed out, face-down in the sauce because every store has that one employee, they\u2019re still generally meeting their quotas, and it\u2019s fine. Even if they weren\u2019t meeting their quotas, they would only need to keep doing the same repetitive thing, but faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the pharmacy, we counted a lot of pills. We counted by fives. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty. We counted while taking phone calls. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty. We counted in between grabbing new bottles or putting old ones away. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty. We counted out thousands of pills per day, and the next day we\u2019d come in and count thousands more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I worked at one of the district\u2019s busiest stores, and I know that because sometimes I\u2019d pick up extra hours by floating at other locations. I\u2019d come in like a grizzled mercenary teaching a town of helpless peasants how to fight. On the phone with a customer, on hold with the insurance on another line, counting out pills while waiting for the customer in the drive-thru to finish signing their name on a sheet of paper. I used to show up to smaller stores and conquer their work que like I was Rome taking over Carthage, and the only way to sate my thirst was to see nothing left alive on the screen. Yet even as busy as I could get, the repetition could still make it feel boring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So honestly, I have a bit of respect for Gooseworx for depicting boredom as the worst thing about the job. They say they worked at a McDonald\u2019s for five years, and I absolutely believe it, because once you\u2019ve really mastered what retail work has to offer, fairly that is one of the worst things about it. It\u2019s not the customers. If that lady with all the kids came in every single day, that\u2019s just alright, because occasionally you can talk to regulars, and sometimes they\u2019ve got interesting things going on. But I don\u2019t think boredom is the worst<\/em> thing about retail work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At CVS, after I was done counting and all the que was cleared, corporate had the belief that we shouldn\u2019t spend that time cleaning. Cleaning is important, but it doesn\u2019t do anything for the stock margins. Instead, they gave us a list of customers who hadn\u2019t picked up their prescriptions lately, and they made us call them. Can those of you at home guess why a guy who was picking up cancer medication every month might suddenly stop picking up their meds? This was a really depressing thing corporate made us do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But corporate was always like that. Their choices never seemed to have anything to do with the dignity of their staff, nor with the satisfaction of the customers. In fact, one of the tricks I\u2019ll never forgive is that they\u2019d set these quotas for our store. If we kept up and met those quotas all year, we were promised bonuses, or something \u2013 I can\u2019t remember anymore what we were supposed <\/em>to get, because we never got them. Instead, every time we met the quota for a month, it seemed that corporate would cut our hours so we were a little more short-staffed until, finally, we just couldn\u2019t meet the quota. That way we got no bonuses, and no down time on the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our pharmacist in charge realized the scam as it was happening, but we couldn\u2019t do anything about it, because failing the quota also came with a bunch of punishments. They\u2019d force the managers into meetings about productivity, wasting their time, and I think the employees would have to suffer through a bunch of insipid training modules \u2013 though again, I can\u2019t recall exactly because it\u2019s been a while and corporate frequently wasted our time in general. Regardless of what we wanted, however, there was eventually just no way to avoid the punishments, and we had to deal with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019d think this would be bad because it drove experienced employees to quit \u2013 It\u2019s one of the reasons I<\/em> quit. But the company actually liked that experienced staff was leaving, since experienced staff gets paid slightly higher wages, and if the company can pay lower wages, then that results in an upward trend in the stock margins. Worst of all, there was nowhere else you could go, because it seemed that every pharmacy was doing this, and the best thing you could do was work at a slower store where the pressure wasn\u2019t quite as bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that\u2019s why this episode really got me thinking. I\u2019ve never worked in fast food, so I have to wonder if it\u2019s as bad as pharmacy was, or if maybe Gooseworx was lucky enough to have been at a slower location, where boredom really is the biggest problem. For me, my greatest enemy while working in retail was the company itself, no matter how much I wished that weren\u2019t the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I\u2019d<\/em> written that episode, I think I would have had Caine appear out of thin air at random intervals, delivering from on high random, seemingly impossible tasks, such as \u201ccall dead customers and convince them to return to the store!\u201d Then, when they went out of business, he\u2019d give them all an A+ score, because the way he was measuring success was by dividing income by costs. It\u2019d turn out that, once you scuttle the business, you have zero cost, and if you use limits to estimate the results of dividing by zero, the outcome is infinity. It\u2019d be a very \u201cAI\u201d thing to do and also rage-inducingly<\/em> in touch with how modern companies seem to think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Is this a commentary on the danger of stroads? I don\u2019t get it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I would also<\/em> try to make it a bit clearer why Gangle threw herself into traffic, because I don\u2019t really understand that scene and it seems like a bit of a pain in the ass to try to work out the metaphor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little while ago I made a\u00a0few videos\u00a0giving kind of a\u00a0blunt-trauma lampooning\u00a0of the Amazing Digitial Circus \u2013 which, if you haven\u2019t seen, is a cartoon made unintentionally to entertain content mills on Youtube. Like all criticism, my own required significantly less effort than the cartoon I was whinging at, and it also does\u00a0not\u00a0really matter\u00a0because without […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/full-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-17","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18,"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17\/revisions\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}