David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

Advice to fast food restaurant execs: stop ‘innovating,’ do the basics right

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Dear smart people who run restaurant chains:

I hope you won’t mind me telling you how to do your jobs. I know you have many years of experience running hamburger joints and chicken chains and sandwich shops. I’m sure you’re smart folks. Honest. But I constantly have one question when I go to your restaurants.

Are you people out of your minds?

I ask that will as much respect as I can muster, because I actually want you to succeed. I don’t want to assume you’re a bunch of idiots. I don’t want to assume you want your companies to fail. I actually want you to succeed, because when you do your jobs well, I have a better experience eating out.

So will you tolerate some advice from a customer?

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Romantic love is part obsession, part reality — and part madness

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I never understood obsession until I experienced romantic love.

They tell us obsession is unhealthy when it comes to love, but I’ve never experienced love without a large dose of obsession along the way. Maybe it’s different for some people. I can’t say. But I know my patterns and I know what I see from everyone I know.

Some form of obsession — at least in the beginning or the end of a love — seems close to universal, but it’s strongly heightened for those of us who feel emotions very deeply.

I’m thinking about this tonight because of a conversation I had with a friend who went through a painful breakup six months or so ago. My friend knows she did the right thing to end the relationship, but she can’t quit wanting the guy and obsessing over him. She even tried to date someone else for a couple of months, but she was just going through the motions.

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Time and maturity have changed
my mind on kids and discipline

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I might have called this little girl a brat if I’d watched this scene 15 years ago. Maybe even 10 years ago. This little blonde girl appeared to be about 3 or 4. She was with her parents in Chick-fil-A — and she was having a loud and sudden meltdown.

I grew up believing children should always be controlled and composed. That belief followed me into my early adult life. I expected children to be little adults in child suits, always in control of their behavior, always perfectly obedient — like little robots.

The little girl in Chick-fil-A seemed sweet. I had talked with her a little bit in line while her parents and I both ordered. She seemed loving and kind. But she was tired from riding in a car all day. Her mom told me they had left Myrtle Beach, S.C., in the morning and they had been tied up for hours on I-20 west of Atlanta by a horrible traffic accident.

The sweet and loving little girl was just tired and cranky. Where I might once have criticized her — and her parents — I now felt empathy for all of them. And it made me think again about how much my attitudes have changed about how to raise children.

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