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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2741 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 18, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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It's fascinating what's happened with McDonald's over this war. The only pro-Israel action was that the dude who owned all their franchises in Israel decided to give free meals to the IDF, of his own accord with no involvement from corporate HQ, and in fact corporate leadership took pains to distance McDonald's as a whole from this guy's actions, but nonetheless Muslims around the world became convinced that McDonald's supports Israel and should be boycotted, to the point where McDonald's franchises in Arab countries suffered substantial loss of business. Corporate HQ even decided it was worth buying all the Israeli restaurants from the aforementioned Israeli franchisee in hopes of restoring their reputation among Muslims, and apparently that happened in April of this year, but if you're still seeing protestors outside a McDonald's in October I guess that didn't work out as well as they hoped.

It calls to mind this post I saw on reddit a while ago.

Damn, is that really all they did? That's so silly.

I'm guessing there are a lot of people who really don't understand how the franchising business model works and don't really get how much autonomy individual franchise owners are afforded.

This is why they win. Someone who is aggressive and unreasonable is far more intimidating than a reasonable person, and gets a lot more of what they want. That goes double for a group, and triple when most modern structures of (corporate) governance are carefully designed to dilute responsibility as much as possible.

corporate leadership took pains to distance McDonald's as a whole from this guy's actions .... Corporate HQ even decided it was worth buying all the Israeli restaurants from the aforementioned Israeli franchisee in hopes of restoring their reputation among Muslims

What would being reasonable have got Muslims? If they'd sent a letter to corporate about how one francise owner was behaving badly, or boycotted that one store, it would have been completely ignored. As it is, they have the board practically on its knees. The applicability of this to political struggles closer to home is left as an exercise for the reader.

There’s even more comedy when it comes to Starbucks.

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