I never eat there, or at least not since C read Fast Food Nation, but I think McDonald's is a very well-run corporation compared to other fast-food places. Did you know they promote almost all their managers from inside-- which means they all started as one of those people who ask "Would you like fries with that?" The likely candidates are sent to Hamburger University, which is a real place with campuses in Shanghai and Sao Paulo, among others. The French one is almost all run from inside France, with French-sourced food; during the big mad-cow scare of the '90s they emphasized their local éleveurs of beef. Here, you can get a beer with your hamburger and there's even a little pastry shop inside the one in my neighborhood. But it's not as cute as this one on the rue Saint-Lazare.
