Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988)

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-05-26/business/fi-4963_1_yugoslav-television

by dsego • 13 years ago

70 84 13 years ago

articles.latimes.com

I remember some people on HN saying that having the right to a job would be better than having a minimum income. As I understand it the various communist countries are an excellent case study in why this is a bad idea.

laserbrain• 13 years ago

Yeah, I forgot people living a better life in capitalism: perfect education and healthcare, pension after 40 years of labour and enough spare time to actually have a life. http://i.imgur.com/zAMkNCV.gif

patrickaljord3• 13 years ago

The only reason people would stop working for macdonalds was because in other jobs, people were being subsidized by the state to do nothing most of the day (as shown in the article) which eventually brought down the whole communist block. So yes, jobs are more important than a minimum income as long as others aren't being subsidized to do nothing (which leads a country to ruin as shown by the whole communist block).

swalsh• 13 years ago

I think a minimum income is a good idea in a society where there's little demand for unskilled labor. As long as the basic income is priced below the average wage of skilled labor, people will still have incentives to find employment... but those that can't, still have a minimum quality of life that should be expected in the first world.

eru2• 13 years ago

As long as the basic income is priced below the average wage of skilled labor, people will still have incentives to find employment...

I don't see how those two are related in this way. Unless you lose your basic income when you work.

m4x2• 13 years ago

New Zealand (and probably many other nations) provides a system similar to this where you either have a job and earn as much as you're able (based on negotiating skill and to some extent actual job skill) or you are unemployed and receive a benefit which is supposed to cover your basic living costs.

Without defrauding the system, you are better off getting a job as it provides you with a better income. Despite this, there are still a significant number of people who would rather remain unemployed than contribute productively to society. Many of them defraud the system or engage in crime to boost their income.

I think I would rather see the government guaranteeing a basic job rather than offering benefits for any length of time. Supporting somebody legitimately between jobs is fine. Somebody who hasn't worked in a year should be sent to a labour camp until they decide to find better employment.

ivanhoe2• 13 years ago

Not really. The problem with communism was the state-enforced mediocracy, not the social security. With minimum income you still can earn more if you wish, you simply have to work more. In communism you are paid as much as you need (or as much as government decides that you need), and it's not based on your work or skills. All people are presumed to work as hard as they can, because it's an idealistic society, a pure utopia. That's why there was no real communism to the day (and probably will not ever be), only a bunch of failed socialistic experiments that turned into corrupted dictatorships.

moondowner• 13 years ago

Just to say that the TV series mentioned in the article, Dynasty[1], was really popular then. My parents watched it as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasty_%28TV_series%29

patrickaljord3• 13 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zF... :)

cubancigar11• 13 years ago

I didn't get the connection. What would that be?

chiph• 13 years ago

TV has always presented unrealistic expectations. Look at the hit show "Friends" - there's no way that group of people could afford apartments that size in NYC with the jobs they had (waitress/chef/copywriter/actor).

eru2• 13 years ago

See http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FriendsRentContro...

nick2• 13 years ago

"Trained employees are quitting because they find they have to work like Westerners and get paid like East Europeans." That says it all. You always get what you pay for.

dasil0033• 13 years ago

Also, I bet the food prices aren't correspondingly low. I remember when McDonald's started expanding in Brazil a couple decades ago, prices were ridiculous (like $8-$9 equivalent for a big mac meal) but people still lined up around the block for the novelty and addictive quality of the food.

emiliobumachar• 13 years ago

Brazilian here. It's still about that expensive, and still very popular.

laurentoget• 13 years ago

Same in france. McD's is very popular even though for the price of a Big Mac you can get two delicious sandwiches from the corner boulangerie. Or at least that is how it was in the 90's.

T-hawk• 13 years ago

Prices in the US are creeping up to that level too. A full meal of Big Mac, fries, and drink is over $7 at all but the most rural McDonald's locations now.

dghughes2• 13 years ago

Then there is Alberta Canada I think Edmonton where fast food workers get paid $20/hour due to the oil boom in the area.

But a small apartment rents for close to $2,000/month if you can find one.

goodcanadian• 13 years ago

I think you are thinking of Fort McMurray. There is such a labour shortage in the oilsands (and correspondingly high pay), that there is no one available to work fast food, build houses, or anything else really.

Of course, I have also seen very similar results in resort towns for slightly different reasons: only the rich can afford to live there, so there is no poor to work the low paid jobs.

greenyoda• 13 years ago

"Trained employees are quitting because they find they have to work like Westerners and get paid like East Europeans. ... You always get what you pay for."

And I'd guess that employees are similarly averse to being exploited all over the world. For example, if you were hired as a developer in the U.S. at an average salary but your employer expected you to work twelve hours every day and answer support calls in the middle of the night, you'd quickly realize that you could find another job where you could get the same salary with less painful working conditions.

And the constant departure of qualified employees should be a strong signal to management that they don't pay enough.

velcro2• 13 years ago

Truth be told this article is exactly why a lot of (mostly untraveled) people from the US have a really distorted view of the rest of the world.

wyclif• 13 years ago

What an odd interpretation of this story—projecting a Yugoslavian problem onto the US. Sounds like "blame the US" diversion to me. McDonald's is a company of US origin but the Yugoslavian work ethic is a thing that would exist even if Ray Kroc had never been born.

Also: I think US citizens are a lot more well-travelled than you assume. Sure, they work hard and don't get much holiday time, but they do travel quite a lot in their free time.

velcro2• 13 years ago

Huh? Odd interpretations all around then - I thought I was blaming the media?

In my ignorance I must have interpreted the article like this: 1. Communism = bad, 2. all Communist people lazy = Communism doomed to fail, 3. big Western company comes bringing enlightenment but people no want jobs (couldn't possible have anything to do with lousy pay = must mean communists be lazy), 4. everybody knows in capitalism people work incredibly productively 8 hours per day - except those crazy Yugoslavs

Blame it on the communism still goes hand in hand with the era when the article was published, but today...? Really - "a Yugoslavian problem"?

EDIT (after your edit): Also - where do I say or assume that a lot of US citizens are not well-travelled? Please read again...

leviathant• 13 years ago

Counterpoint: http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppi/stats/stats_890.html

The US citizens you hang out with, sure. And certainly, a lot of US citizens I know now are well-traveled as well. But I moved away from an area in central Pennsylvania where there were families who had lived in the same county since the 1600s. Friends who had, by their mid-twenties, never gone so far as New York, let alone across a national border.

It's certainly a mistake to think that all Americans are ignorant and sheltered, and it's great to see that more and more Americans have passports, but it's still very accurate to say that Americans are mostly untraveled.

edw519• 13 years ago

According to a recent domestic survey, average Yugoslavs work efficiently for only half of their eight-hour workday. The rest of the time is spent reading newspapers, conducting private business or having interminable private chats with colleagues over coffee.

According to a recent domestic survey, average I.T. managers work efficiently for only 10% of their eight-hour workday. The rest of the time is spent reading email, conducting pointless meetings, or having interminable private chats with colleagues over "best practices".

dasil0033• 13 years ago

Yes, but how do define efficient work for an "I.T. manager"?

weland• 13 years ago

Shush, don't divulge their secret!

kamaal• 13 years ago

That's a mystery.

I've heard this 'Every body has a job to do' thing many times when I ask managers what they do.

But they never tell 'what exactly are they doing or they are supposed to do'.

danso• 13 years ago

I was just thinking, it's been a loooooong time since I've had a job that required eight straight hours of on-task work...the only jobs that fit the bill were in high school, working for a deli counter and as a roofer. Since then, it's been office jobs that were more like 6 hours of work, 4 hours of idleness/thinking time.

stephengillie• 13 years ago

Are you "paid to be pingable"?

skylan_q2• 13 years ago

Some disclosure:

I've been born and raised in Canada and my parents are immigrants from the former Yugoslavia. I've taken many extended trips back home and I have to say that "working efficiently for only half of their eight-hour workday" is overstating their efficiency. Socialism destroyed work ethic in Yugoslavia amongst other things. The villagers and farmers were the only ones who had any work ethic left as they were primarily subsistence farmers on the "receiving end" of socialism if you will. They were the ones who left to work and settle in other countries.

People with money aren't viewed as investors, but crooks. Anyone who turns a profit is suspected of stealing. Almost no one understands the concept of looking for work or creating their own job. It's sad.

Vivtek2• 13 years ago

Well, to be fair, anywhere the Habsburgs ruled is like this because that's the way their empire worked. You could only get rich by exploiting others or engaging in corruption - or be born into it because your ancestors did that.

klepra2• 13 years ago

"People with money aren't viewed as investors, but crooks."

Well, 90% of them are crooks.

lucisferre2• 13 years ago

I find it interesting how quickly you jumped to the conclusion that "socialism" is to blame.

malkia• 13 years ago

Closely related is the situation in Bulgaria.

ams6110• 13 years ago

Why pick on IT managers? When I read that sentence I immediately thought "that describes almost every American "office" employee I've ever seen or worked with." By and large most people see work as a means to enable a lifestyle, not something they do for its own sake. Therefore they do the minimum that they can get away with.

IvyMike• 13 years ago

I'd be curious to see how things are today at McDonald's in the Yugosphere.

skylan_q2• 13 years ago

Excellent, actually. I was just speaking with someone yesterday about how McDonald's is executing a long-term strategy very effectively. They appeal to children without offending adults. The population in the region places a high emphasis on eating home-cooked meals and domestic cleanliness. They've managed to make a name for themselves without having too much negative stigma being attached to them for being "fast food" which is casually viewed as an American malaise.

klepra2• 13 years ago

Mostly highschool kids or students with subvention eat there.

Prices aren't considered low and you can actually get a quality meal for same price.

bergerjac• 13 years ago

A 'premium' chicken sandwich is over $4. I can buy a larger fresh-grilled chicken breast sandwich with sauces and veggies of my choosing for less than $3, so I haven't had a reason to go inside.

Regarding the employees, the unemployment rate is relatively high, so there will always be some available.

Also, the wage of a younger non-skilled employee is less than $2/hour. (If McD's pays more than that, I don't foresee many quitting.)

It's common for people in their 30's to be living with parents.

Housing and food are cheap, while consumer goods are expensive.

CWIZO2• 13 years ago

Which country are you talking about? I know it's not Slovenia, that's why I'm curious :)

popee• 13 years ago

As person from country that was in former Yugoslavia i can say that situation is not simple as Americans see it. Yugoslav variation of socialism (yeah, it is important to yell that it wasn't communism) had flaws and advances. In short:

1. Humans come first. Even before money.

2. But, but, lot of people exploited 1. due bad organization, nepotism, ...

Because of 1. people had, for example, health care and education for free (best universities included), but because of 2. -> system wasn't always in favor of people that actually work (even for others).

People, at one moment, voted for capitalism -> now we don't have free health care and education, but most of people from 2. are still here. Worst from both worlds :-( But when i look at Scandinavia it looks like they knew how to minimize 2. and also have 1. at the same time. So if i ever choose to leave current place it will be Scandinavia ;-)

mmphosis• 13 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Former_Yugoslavia_2008.PN...

Vivtek2• 13 years ago

That McD's in Belgrade is actually the place this American first tried a Big Mac. It was pretty good.

The trend of demanding more work for less money is hardly restricted to Yugoslavia, though - it's crippled America, for one thing, but Western Europe loooves to exploit Central Europe for cheap labor, even though Central Europe's cost of living has come up to Western levels now.

ivanhoe2• 13 years ago

Explanation is easy, but understandably it's very hard for an American to grasp such a concept of life. People in Yugoslavia didn't work a lot, it's true, but not because of some lazy Sloven mentality, but because they simply didn't have to. And it even didn't make much sense to work hard in socialism, because you could work a little or you could work a lot, at the end of the month you would still earn the same salary as everyone else. But it was OK for the majority. You had a decent living, no stress, health care was good. Country wasn't rich, but society was much more non-consumeristic back then and generally people had a lower expectations, so none of us who grew up there felt that we are missing something big. We were mostly part of the middle class and had our jeans and TVs and VCRs and music systems and ZX Spectrums and Commodores, watched MTV and listened to r'n'r, had long vacations and a chance to travel the world or spend summers in our parents' holiday houses on the Adriatic seaside. Social differences were not big, everyone was more or less equally poor (or equally rich). I know it sounds unreal from the todays world, but it was a really nice country to live in. Of course, such system was not competitive enough to be sustainable without external financing, so it all started to collapse in 90s, and then it progressed into wars and nationalism and now life is not like that anymore. Now people are happy with their 8hx7 work at MacDonald's, because there are other even worse ones...

jotm2• 13 years ago

But it's the people who want more who drive progress. Which is why the thing collapsed - take away the desire of those few to be and do better, and the whole system stagnates rather quickly...

mtrimpe3• 13 years ago

This rings so true from what I took away from living in another ex-communist country (Czech Republic.)

Very few people understand that for most people life was pretty good in Soviet times.

It just turned out people preferred the outcome of a having a little less comfort and a bit more progress, which is what really drove the Soviet collapse in the end.

It was kept propped up by purposefully (and often viciously) keeping the populace ignorant of the progress made beyond it's borders, but in the end the allure of the shiny and new behind the curtain won.

desireco422• 13 years ago

Zdravo druze

memla2• 13 years ago

A monthly paycheck for these employees that were determined to quit was $170. In other words: if you worked at McDonald's, you couldn't afford to eat at McDonald's.

refurb• 13 years ago

Why does that matter? I've heard that arguememt for other industries, that workers should be paid a wage that they can afford the product they are making. I've never understood it though.

CWIZO2• 13 years ago

That just can't work. Imagine every Ferrari worker being able to afford a Ferrari. What would that mean for a price of a Ferrari, eh? The price would have to go up, and then the wages, and then the prices and so on.

babuskov• 13 years ago

The article, and all the comments here are missing the main reason for this behavior. I'm 36 now, and I live in Serbia. When Socialism was ruling, all the companies were owned and run by the state. The wages were determined by the company you work for. Difference in wage for same position in some non-profitable company and a profitable one, would easily be 20x. So, the only thing that mattered was not your knowledge, but whether you could get a job at shoe company or oil refinery. Getting one in oil refinery was much better. The other thing is that people got fired really, really rarely. So, you get the job and you're settled for life. Even pensions are much higher and provided by the state.

Now, when a foreign company enters, esp. one with reputation of being a big, profitable business, people would assume that getting a job there is the same, or even better than working at a big domestic company.

Sadly, this is still true for many people today. We have a lot of foreign companies here now, and many people have got the job, just to quit days or weeks later. Main complaint being: there's too much work. People only stick and work in companies where wages are 40-50% above the average wage in domestic companies. We still suffer from low productivity.

This is slowly changing, and I assume it will be much better in 5-10 years. 7-13 year old kids who are in school now are growing up in a different kind of system, and their parent are also young enough to have sane perspective on state of things. They enter the workforce in 5-10 years from now.

Our main problem now is current youth, who were raised during the war, whose parents could not teach them good value system, because all they could see on television was that criminals and people waging wars are idols for boys, and folk singers for girls. Also, many criminals earned a lot of money during the war and seeing them go unpunished was really a bad message to all children. Those children are 15-25 years old now, and a lot of them simply have no goals in life, see no perspective and either want to become criminals themselves or leave the country.

mladenkovacevic2• 13 years ago

A nice documentary about my former country. Created by Pan Am to entice tourists to visit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B6eBAuhvEY&feature=youtube_...

mladenkovacevic2• 13 years ago

Also this is the Serbian version of a "hamburger". Quite frankly I'm surprised that McD's is still in business. http://s3.amazonaws.com/foodspotting-ec2/reviews/1075384/thu...

Sandman• 13 years ago

Not directly related to the article, but it seems to me that a really big difference between McDonald's employees in the US and those in the countries of former Yugoslavia is that in the US, McD's employees are young people who either never went to college or who dropped out, or those who see it as a way to support themselves while they're in college (since I'm not from the US I might be wrong here, feel free to correct me). In the countries of former Yugoslavia (well, at least in my country) unemployment rate is so high that even having a college degree doesn't guarantee that you'll get a job. I have a friend who is a professor of history and geography, he's 31, and he makes a living flipping burgers at McDonald's. He simply couldn't get a job as a professor anywhere. He's not exactly thrilled with what he makes, but he doesn't have a lot of options.

lucisferre2• 13 years ago

This article has literally zero substance and seems to be entirely circumstantial. A single interview with one Yugoslav about a single business. A ridiculous claims this has something to do with watching dynasty.

Unless of course you put a lot of stock in the "according to a recent survey" part.

I'm actually surprised how many people appear to be discussing this seriously, or why this was even submitted. Can anyone explain what is interesting about this?

tokenadult• 13 years ago

I really liked this article. It's startling to someone as old as I am to realize that many Hacker News participants are too young to remember Yugoslavia as an intact country. In general, the transition from regimes in eastern Europe controlled by national Communist parties (whether part of the Warsaw Pact or not) to the current melange of national governments in a larger number of countries in that region is already a distant memory or unknown to many young people, while still remembered as an unimaginable future possibility to people my age.

On the subject of the first McDonald's restaurant in a country, my wife (who grew up in Taiwan) and I went (on my suggestion) to the opening day of the first McDonald's in Taiwan in early 1984. We waited in line outdoors at least an HOUR, and when we finally got into the restaurant, the workers inside all looked shocked at the number of customers still in line to order. People in Taiwan are used to working hard, but that was a level of intensity of desire for a particular restaurant's food that was baffling to the young new hires there. I think everyone in Taiwan who had ever been to any country with a McDonald's, both locals and expatriates, were there to see what a local McDonald's would look like.

After my newlywed wife had her first McDonald's hamburger, she asked her American husband why I went to the trouble of waiting in line so long for such indifferent food. That was sheer nostalgia on my part--by then I had been away from the United States for two years. Here in the United States, I can and do go two years at a time without eating a McDonald's hamburger, just because I can. But felt I had to have the hamburger in Taiwan at my first opportunity, just because I couldn't before. I think for a while that McDonald's store in Taipei had the worldwide record for highest weekly gross sales of any McDonald's location, eventually to be surpassed by the first-ever McDonald's in some other country. You can now get good service from diligent young workers in a McDonald's all over Taiwan.

mtrimpe3• 13 years ago

That reminds me of how one of my favourite memories of the Czech Republic was seeing young couples having romantic dinner dates in McDonalds.

It actually took me several weeks to understand that to them the McDonalds was a special place; an affordable restaurant with an air of foreign mystique ...

liquidcool• 13 years ago

Was that also in the 80's? I'm in Prague now and I don't think anyone sees McD as special. Starbucks seems to have that appeal, although I find Costa Coffee much better. But I spent May in Kyiv and they love McDonald's there. I was told it's seen as a very good deal.

desireco422• 13 years ago

I lived in Yugoslavia and are saddened to see it being destroyed, but, now living in US, it will be 10 yrs, I see a lot of things that remind me of old Yugoslavia. Americans are especially defensive when you point out those things, unlike people in Yugoslavia which had less illusions, yet enjoyed and were also aware of all benefits. It was great country to live in, I don't think in US you can't enjoy a level of freedom and carelessness like it was possible in old Yugoslavia.

I think only Asian countries can be good examples of working hard and good work ethics. US is not, it is excellent example of a lot of other good things. If you don't think this is true, just look at Yahoo to name one.

Yugoslavs Find No Paradise at McDonald's (1988)

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