When you think of “big, evil” corporations, everyone thinks of Mr. Bezos and Amazon. But that isn’t the only “big and evil” corporation. In fact, people will still use them every day. In this article we go through the lesser known “bad” corporations. Specifically, Disney, Walmart, and McDonalds. But, this doesn’t mean you should no longer order a McCafe. It is recommended, but doesn’t mean you should.
McDonald’s.
McDonald’s’s CEO is Chris Kempczinski and has been since 2019. You may be thinking: “How is McDonald’s a bad company?” Well let’s start with the coffee incident.
In 1992, a 79 year old woman named Stella Lieback spilled coffee on herself she had bought at McDonald’s. This may not seem like a big deal, but the coffee gave Lieback 3rd-degree burns. She sued McDonald’s, and asked them to cover medical insurance. But instead McDonald’s decided to go to court, which costs more money then the 20,000 dollars Lieback wanted. And this isn’t the only case of spilled coffee. There were 700 other cases of this, with other victims suffering 3rd degree burns like Lieback. McDonald’s coffee is around 180-190 degrees Fahrenheit, and the company doesn’t warn its customers of the damage of spilling it. Lieback won the case, but the jury did say it was partially her fault. What is even worse is that McDonald’s ran a smear campaign against her. A smear campaign is when someone rewrites the story, but makes it worse. McDonalds said that it was definitely Lieback’s fault, and totally not them making the coffee dangerously hot and not warning her.
Walmart
Walmart has one problem. It's low, low prices. You may be wondering what this has to do with them being “evil”. The answer lies in why the prices are low. In a business, the owner has to pay their employees a fair amount. If the owner pays their employees $25 a day for example, and they have 30 employees, then each day they need to make at least $750. Let’s say for example it is a store that sells only cereal. If the store is popular, they can afford to set their prices lower because more people will buy. If it isn’t, then the store will need to set their prices higher. But Walmart wants a constituent price. And a low one too. So, because they are so popular, they set their prices low. But because they have so many employees and consumers, they can afford to pay their employees high. But the brains behind Walmart are money hungry. So, they keep their prices low and pay their employees low.
Disney
Disney is one of the most popular movie companies in the world, despite having quite a backstory. Disney has shown depictions of racism in many of its movies. And in later years, have shown gender discrimination. In Peter Pan, Disney goes so far as to call the Native American based characters the slur “Redskin”. In Aristocats, a siamese cat is made fun of and is depicted playing the piano with chopsticks as a form of racism against Asian peoples. It took Disney a whopping 86 years for their first black princess. Gender discrimination has been shown in the hit TV series, The Owl House, created by Dana Terrence. Disney cancelled season 3 of the show, because the protagonist was lesbian.
In conclusion, I’m not trying to say don’t eat at McDonalds and buy at Walmart and not watch Disney movies. You can still do it, just recognize they may not have the best morals.
Sources: McDonald’s Corporation, Consumer Attorneys of California, The Lancer