Monday 20 December 2010

20.12.10 Fifty Cents

McDonald's in Amsterdam has the nerve to charge for a piss.  At the prevailing exchange rate, I was charged 42 pence [ie. 50 euro cents] when visiting a few weeks ago.  It seems that there's not enough profit on a coffee at nearly two euros, so Ronald wants to make money when customers piss it away.  Disgraceful.

Just for the record, I'd like to highlight the strange ratios for the various facilities provided.  There were, in the men's toilets: 4 urinals, 1 cubicle, 2 sinks and 1 hand dryer.  This was disturbing on a number of levels, and mathematically, the set-up was completely flawed.  Now, I appreciate that far too many people fail to wash their hands after doing their business, but the Dutch are certainly not helping in improving hygiene though.  First of all, the urinals to cubicle ratio of 4:1 suggests only 20% of users need either privacy or the chance to let go of more than piss.  Then, with only two sinks provided, there's space enough for only 40% of users (at capacity) to wash their hands.  With just a single hand dryer, there's only a 1 in 5 chance of drying one's hands if the toilets are busy.  All of this creates a flawed approach by Ronald McDonald.  50 cents is outrageous considering the profits achieved by the company, and totally out of order considering the impossible odds of having a piss, washing one's hands, and then getting to dry them!

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