I went phoneless for a week. Although I have never considered myself as a highly technology dependent person nor a social-media dependent, I realized that my phone has played an important role in shaping my daily routine. Not only as a means of communication with people, but also my sense of navigation, time and security highly relied on this inanimate object. Waking everyday late and having no control over my time schedule was one of the first struggles I encountered, and not owning a clock amplified the inconvenience. My roommate, sympathetic to my messy situation, lent me her clock for the rest of the week. As my sense of time orientation was coming back to normality, I gradually felt more immersed in present experiences, even sitting on the bus observing students with their schoolbacks seemed oddly interesting.
Focusing more on the details, such as what they are wearing, reading, listening to, and making eye contact with them -something not so common nowadays- lead to small, simple but refreshing conversations. I met a philosophy student and we talked about the morality of picking cash from the floor and keeping it. I talked to an art student and she showed me some of her tattoos. These experiences, although short, happened in the same bus I have taken every morning this semester and yet it seemed like a totally different set. Small instants like these made days more memorable, which converse with my foggy memories of bus rides. I realised that these unthinkable scenarios were mainly constrained by the idea of convenience. I noticed how my behaviour gradually changed as I have spent more time in the United States. When I first arrived on campus, exporadic conversations with strangers was one of the most exciting things I would look forward to everyday. However, after some weeks everyone around me seemed more comfortable looking at their phones than trying to have conversations, and it became more convenient for me to stop trying. Nevertheless, this experience reminded me of the intrinsic joy of learning, about someone, something, or nothing at all.
Demand for convenience is what has made our society more dependent on the mcdonalized processes and companies. This pattern became more clear when I dined outside with my roommate. I wanted to do something that really took me outside of my comfort zone. So, I asked a girl who was sitting alone if we could sit with her. She didn't answer for a few seconds and then she politely rejected us since she was waiting for her date. I felt a little bit embarrassed, but something in me was pushing me to continue trying, perhaps I was more scared of being dissatisfied or regretful, than of being rejected again.
My roommate decided to sit down at another table, trying to stop me from another embarrassment. I stubbornly went to another table of three people and asked them if we could join them. Dumbfounded and with a confused expression, one of them asked us why. For the purpose of making this experiment as natural as I could, I answered that it was a tradition from where I come from to eat with strangers. From experience, I know that people will not be sceptical about someone else's culture, but instead they would be more curious about it. They, a little bit precautious but now interested, invited us to sit. All of us were looking at the menus when I decided to break the mcdonaldized operational system of the restaurant and asked her if they could make a non-spicy noodle dish spicy. The waitress answered that it was not a common request, so she didn’t know if it was possible. After a few minutes she came back with a smile, she looked happy about the notice. Perhaps the unchanging methodical script that the waitresses follow can be non-exciting, and changing the norm brought some kind of joy to all the parties involved. When she left with our order, we started talking about food, a universally interesting topic, which made all of us be more comfortable around each other. After twenty minutes of waiting, the food arrived. One of the guys made a comment that it was quite a long wait and that he hoped the food was worth the wait. I couldn't understand how twenty minutes was a long wait. Back in Colombia, a twenty minute wait was the base serving time. This could only be explained as many of the restaurants have become mcdonaldized in the U.S, and people got used to this tyranny of convenient time saving, efficient and predictable experiences that most restaurants offer.
Mcdonaldization and convenience go hand by hand, they feed each other and make themselves stronger, strong enough to take power over our human nature. Sometimes, we don’t realize about the tyrannic power that convenience exercises on us on a daily basis. It leaves us with no choice of trying new things. This week came along with many struggles, however I was able to connect with strangers, with nature, with my emotions and my passions. I felt less comfortable but more alive. And I believe I was able to give other people a glimpse of what it feels to break social norms, to regain consciousness of the tyranny we live in, and to create opportunities for creativity, individualism and personal growth. As Tim Wu says, actions that take us outside of our comfort zone, our inconvenient choices, expose us to failure and stress, nevertheless, they teach us about who we are and our place in the world. Although I attempted to go against mcdonalized processes, it does not insinuate that this phenomenon is only bad news. On the contrary, it does bring us many advantages, such as control, predictability, convenience, efficiency and calculability in our daily lives. Without it we wouldn't be able to enjoy Netflix, Amazon, fast food, and other elements that have become part of our lives. Thus, as George Ritzer commented, “McDonaldization is a double edge phenomenon”(17), which enables us but it also constrains us.