“Upstairs-downstairs” is a term frequently used to describe the social dynamics of period costume dramas like HBO’s new series The Gilded Age. It’s shorthand for the vertical architecture of the class divide between the aristocracy of the Victorian era and their servants. The former was aloft in its lavish mansions while their maids, valets, chauffeurs, cooks, and housekeepers dwelled in subterranean quarters. Quite literally, the rich were on top of the working class under the same roof.
Today, service workers don’t shack up with the aristocracy quite as much — they’re summoned with the chimes of smartphone apps rather than butlers’ bells. But the “upstairs-downstairs” arrangements of old aren’t totally extinct. At McDonald’s corporate headquarters in Chicago, there’s a clear altitudinal divide between the professional-managerial class on top and the frontline workers who serve McDonald’s products on the ground floor.
In 2018, the fast-food giant shifted its base of operations from a leafy eighty-six-acre campus in suburban Oak Brook to a 500,000-square-foot complex inside a newly constructed nine-story office building in Chicago’s West Loop, a once-gritty industrial neighborhood that has now been taken over by upscale restaurants, luxury condos, and shiny new developments. The move downtown to the former site of Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios was part of McDonald’s plan to “build a modern, progressive burger company,” a muddled phrase that’s code for attracting...
PHOTO: RSPCA VIA AFP LONDON - An animal welfare charity has revealed it rescued more than 250 dogs from one UK home, with a photo of the scene prompting “disbelief” and false claims that the image...