McDonald Blog post

I learned a lot on the website from McDonald's Corporation. I learned that as a franchise they are extremely successful and are not looking to expand to areas that they don't think they would be successful in. Also I learned that the company is in the top 10 franchises every year since the company went public. The company is very strategic and they are extremely successful in making food and holding a high standard of customer satisfaction. The other company I looked into was Burger King and I would like to know how the company makes their food and why they are able to keep it so cheap.

3-2-1- Ted Talk

After watching the video the first example I saw was how the speaker used the apple. The speaker said how when we go to the store and buy an apple, the sticker on the apple will make it quicker for us to checkout and the counter. But once you get home and decide to eat the piece of fruit, you have to try and peel the sticker off and it gets very messy. The speaker mentions habitualion, which is how humans learn. After doing things over and over again it becomes a habit and the brain can store it as a habit which will allow you to free up your brain and learn more. This is when the speaker uses the example of driving and how as time goes on driving became much easier for him and he became less nervous. A third example he uses was the windshield wiper. He mentions that the creator of it noticed the tiny details, and acted upon them. After acting upon the tiny details, she was able to create something so innovative that cleaning windshield cars became so much easier and passengers in the car could stay warm all the time. 

One thing I remember that was not planned well was a toy my cousin opened one Christmas morning. He was so excited to see the gift but when he tried opening it he couldn't. I tried to help him but then I noticed the box was packed extremely tight. It required a few tools to get it open and it was frustrating because as a little kid all my cousin wanted to do was open the box, but he had to wait even longer now. Another example was my PlayStation 3. When I first got it, I was so excited to open it and start playing. However when I turned it on I had to go through a whole process of creating a very in depth account and waiting for a lot of stuff to download. If I created the game I would try to have it so there would not be as much loading and more straight forward steps so people could play faster. 

I see the iPhone designed well as a product because they take phones that are good as it is, and make them better. It is interesting to see how the company apple can create amazing products and each time a new iPhone comes out it gets better than the last. 

Enron Scandal

The Enron Scandal happened in October of 2001, and led to the Corporation of Enron Corporation. The company falsely inflated the company's revenues and hid billions of dollars of debt that they were in from failed projects. Jeffery Skilling was the man who was hired and created a team of accountants to create loopholes and special ways to hide the amount of debt they had. Many Enron executives were sent to prison and were indicated for a variety of charges. This led to the biggest plummet in any company until WorldCom's bankruptcy, but that did not occur until the following year.

Poorly Constructed Burgers

After reading an article about how a fast food restaurant, Jack in the Box, managed to kill four kids with their food, I was very surprised too see how this could happen. I did not know so much about how meat was processed and created in fast food restaurants. They make the meat so fast and use so many artificial and unhealthy ingredients that it can make people sick. What happened was the kids ate burgers that were under cooked, and they got so sick they died. I also did not know that the U.S Department of Agriculture had anything to do with how meat and food are supposed to be made. They put a zero-tolerance rule in that enforces certain laws fast food places must obey. I would like to learn more about how the chicken, beef, and poultry are made and why it is so popular to make them the way they do if so many people are getting sick.

Scavenger Hunt

During the scavenger hunt, having a partner helped in many ways. First, we were able to split up and look for different things that we were supposed to find. This helped because it made the process go a little bit faster. Also, having a partner helped because if one of us did not think of something, the other one might be able to come up with an answer. It was a good way of bouncing ideas off of each other.

Connections that I can make in my own life is that advertising is all around us all the time and even if there is not advertising somewhere, you can make it occur. We saw things like snack shacks and buildings that we see during everyday life and if you look at it in a different way there could be advertisement in it.