What a massive dose of newstalgia for Boomers this past week! But not exactly what some of us would have preferred, I dare say… Who’d have thought ‘time payment’ plans for Fast Food would ever be a reality?
“If you have to finance your burrito bowl, it doesn’t scream golden age
of prosperity,” Internet personality Matt Buechele shared…
I don’t know what the prevailing reality is, in Scandinavia. But the idea of paying for your fast food fix ‘on layaway’ isn’t something the vast majority of folks have ever given a thought to here in North America…
Forward, into the past…
What a tangled web of nostaligia and social history the new deal between Door Dash and Swe-den’s Klarna presents for our consideration…
When I first saw the headline on the news release, an ancient and – until that moment – long-buried child-hood memory popped, unbidden, into my mind’s eye: Wimpy, the chubby, eternally-hungry sidekick charac-ter in the old Popeye cartoons, walking into the story suggesting: “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a ham-burger today!”
J. Wellington Wimpy, to me, always represented a cul-tured, middle-class fellow who had fallen on hard times during the Great Depression. And was reduced to begging for his supper. His situation was a daily reality for millions during the ‘Dirty 3os’.
I never dreamed I’d see the day, in my lifetime, that the world would be reduced to such a state again. But I was proved wrong, just this past week.
On the up side…
I was gratified to see an almost-universal outcry across the social media sphere, con-demning the ‘eat now, pay later’ plan as economically dangerous, exploitive of the lowest-income, most vulnerable members of our society, and just a bad idea all-round.
Noted online influencer Farai Bennet simply called it, “bizarre!”
“If you have to finance your burrito bowl, it doesn’t scream golden age of prosperity.” Internet per-sonality Matt Buechele shared. “If you have a four-installment payment plan for a McFlurry, you’ve lost the plot, my friend.”
“Never thought it would get to financing fast food,” another social media commenter observed.
“This can’t be real life 
,” sputtered a fourth…
My take
I often wonder where the fast food sector is headed. I’ve been saying, for at least a decade, that the sector is over-crowded, and prime for a shake-out. That the number of Fast Food brands would be drastically reduced by bankruptcies, mergers and strategic partnerships (such as Checkers & Rally’s) before this decade was out. So far, I’ve been proven right.
Even legendary ‘institutions’ such as Starbuck’s have been driven to their knees by a struggling eco-nomy, climate change and a ‘system’ on the verge of failure.
My questions for you:
Would you ever stoop so low as to use the Klarna plan, or something like it?
Can you imagine you or your family reaching a point of such desperation?
Is the re-emergence of ‘time payments’, for something as essential as daily sustenance, the ‘beginning of the end’ for society as we know it?
Muse on that!
~ Maggie J.