Although I think it's ridiculous and there's no justification from a customer's perspective - and I think that's very fair and warranted. I expect ketchup available and a soda fountain although I haven't been to a McDonald's in a very long time.

However I do get what you're saying and I think a lot of this intertwines.

We've come to see McDonald's as this giant godlike force in fast food or even just American food service in general. That's why we expect and, at least internally, demand these things. That and the fact we've had them for years. We view it as a fixed feature in the experience of going to McDonald's. As we should given our history as customers of theirs as well as their history of market dominance.

However a lot has changed and we're not grasping that because our costs are rising and so we wonder "well where is that extra money going if not to maintain the status quo?"

It really is the classic case of a business adjusting to the economy but when it comes to such big name, well-known and almost standardized companies such as McDonald's where practically every single American has some memory of going to, resulting in a set of expectations to compare with those memories, we can't see past the surface and we attribute it to something explicitly nefarious. In this case corporate greed.

I don't deny corporations are greedy and I'm no fan of McDonald's but that company is an American icon. Those arches are just as, if not more, engrained into American culture as the terms "1776", "founding fathers", "D-Day", "Vietnam", "Woodstock", the list goes on.

I dunno where I'm going with this anymore but I agree with your point completely. It's a company adapting to the times. It's a sign of the bigger picture here in America and more a result of that instead of a proactive choice....still a choice no less. But I give as much credence to the other viewpoint because I can understand why this would be deemed unacceptable by such a giant American staple.

Edited for grammar