Getting Results

While fast food companies enjoy record profits, workers are struggling to get wages and hours that will lift them out of poverty. They’ve held strikes and pushed companies to let them unionize. The companies (and most of Congress and the remaining customers) of course couldn’t care less.

The other day in the video story I saw a copy of Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, which gave me an idea. Remember that film? To help sell candy bars, Wonka offered a limited number of gold tickets hidden inside candy bar wrappers. The people who by chance ended up with tickets got to visit Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Sales of candy bars soared.

This could help impoverished workers get some decency and respect from their employers, if they adopt what I’ll call the “Reverse Willy Wonka” tactic. It’s based on the premise that there’s a prize out there people really don’t want to win.

The tactic could be successfully employed by setting up a Twitter account and issuing one message directed at McDonalds:

@SickOfPoverty

Hey @McDonalds. We’ll be filling five Big Macs with arsenic each day until you start giving a shit about your workforce. We’re Lovin’ It!

Enough re-tweets and blog-shares will cause sales to plummet. The fast food companies will sprint to the bargaining table. And best of all, there won’t be any actual arsenic burgers. Nobody, of course, should die because a corporation doesn’t care. But the threat of that happening should be enough to do the trick.