According to a report by Shanghai’s Southern Weekly, the southern Chinese city has a bit of a McProblem. And that would be the McRefugees.

It’s a pretty heavy vibe.

Scores of (mostly) young workers are paid a pittance for standard eight-hour a day jobs, at around 1300-1500 RMB (roughly between R1200 and R1400). As you can imagine, these workers aren’t totally destitute, but often they have to compromise on feeding themselves and having a place to live.

Which is where McDonald’s comes in. See, at a 24 hour McDonalds you can both feed yourself – which costs something – and potentially have a place to sleep – which might not cost you anything at all, besides minor police harassment.

Apparently McDonald’s grand fromages don’t explicitly allow or disallow the practice. Although with one McD’s employee having been stabbed to death by one disturbed and subsequently irate McRefugee, they might look at reviewing their policy.

We haven’t seen any of those vibes in Greenpoint as yet, I don’t think.

Check out the full (and translated) report here.

[source : shanghaiist]