How I lost it at McDonald’s

It’s true. I’m a virgin. A Big Mac virgin, but not anymore. Not after taking that fated field trip to McDonald’s Genosi meat-packing plant in Cavite one hot weekday afternoon.

Now, you might think that a 24-year-old pop culture writer and media whore would consider it so unhip to regress into her uneventful high school past and relive a field trip to a fast-food factory. Luckily, I got more immature with age, and instead of ditching the tour and watching Judy Ann Santos and Piolo Pascual’s kilig-to-death flick Till there Was You at the nearby Sta. Lucia East Grand Mall, 1 recharged my trusty digicam, put on my cutest mesh top (the ’80s are, like, so in) and prepared myself for a semi-interesting trip to the land of Golden Arches.

What’s really cool about the tour – besides the tasty nuggets and crunchy lettuce snacks – is the standard factory threads: Galoshes, a lab gown, a face mask, and a head cloth in the appealingly sterile shade of bleach white. Think Beastie Boys, think anti-SARS, think ninja girl a-go-go (well, on me anyway).

On this tour, you’re allowed to take campy pictures, linger inside the 20-degree freezer till your digits fall off, and do a Dee Dee while inside the Dexter-type laboratories (just don’t touch the meat, stooopid). We spent an hour watching beef, and I mean, a whole hunka lotta beef. Raw Australian and Brazilian meat were thawed, cut, chummed up, deboned, shaped into giant Haw flakes, poked, tested, cooked, and eventually, shipped to McDonald’s joints all over the nation.

We depart for Sta. Lucia mall for a hearty McDonald’s lunch, though no one takes me up on my gushy offer to watch the Judy Ann flick afterwards. Before we leave Genosi, the friendly McDonald’s staff hands each of us a big Styrofoam cooler filled to the brim with uncooked nuggets and burger patties. Won’t the perpetually hungry kids in the office be so pleased! And here I thought they were giving us the iced heads of the McDonald’s mascots.

We enter the McDonald’s at the Sta. Lucia mall, losing a little of our media glamour since we had to don hair nets. The McDonald’s kitchen is as hectic behind the counter as it seems to be from the front, especially now that there’s half a dozen journalists and photographers milling about and generally getting underfoot. Anyone who’s obsessive-compulsive or is a germ-phoebe should work at McDonald’s since everyone must wash their hands every 20 minutes.

Now the last thing you want to do after ogling meat the whole day is... eat meat. But there’s always a first time for everything, and I knew, when they set that huge mass of grilled beef patty in front of me, that this was my time.

I spend 20 minutes chowing on a burger that’s almost as big as my face. Two bites to go and I give up, forfeiting the completion of my first-ever Big Mac experience by a couple of calories, and snack on the crunchy fries and creamy ube sundae instead.

Looks like I’ll never be man enough to be a Big Mac daddy, but I am girl enough for a McDonald’s fast-food fix.