Is it true that the seating in fast food resturants has been engineered to make you feel uncomfortable after a measured period of time so that you will get up and allow other people to sit? Any help out there?
Yes. See The McDonaldization of Society by George Ritzer.
LOL website! The company that made the chairs for 2 McDonalds in Beijing.
http://manufacture.com.tw/~gauss/
I know I shouldn’t make fun, they’re trying so hard…
It’s not the chairs that make you uncomfortable…it’s the gas that develops after eating half a pound of oil-laden potato extrusions and a slab of mystery meat on a bun.
Fart on one! You get crazy-bad reverb!
–Tim
I would have to disagree; the reason fast food chains use hard plastic chairs is almost certainly because they’re the least likely type of chairs to get wrecked by kids.
If you want your upholstered chairs destroyed, just have kids around them all day. McDonald’s chairs and tables have to put up with abuse that a real restaurant’s furniture wouldn’t. If you go into Chez Snob you’re not going to have some frazzled soccer mom and her odious children jumping up and down on the chairs and rubbing their Big Macs all over the furniture; Mcdonald’s has to account for that, while running restaurants that are an absolute zoo half the day. The furniture has to be able to be cleaned and ready for the next customer with no more effort than twenty seconds with a rag and maybe a little Windex.
it some fast food places, the tables are so close to the back of the seat th at i can’t sit in them. Others are far enough apart so i can st but my boobs are on the table. I know they were not always that close. In an older non chain hamburger joint, i can sit comfortably.
Not only are the fast-food seats uncomfortable so you don’t want to linger, have you noticed the colors? Red, yellow and especially orange cause “edginess” in humans and make you want to move. Ideally, out of the restaurant. And, when have you ever seen an employee at a fast food place take a whole twenty seconds to clean anything? Usually, they’ll only take a half-second swipe if they notice ketchup on the seats.
Compate this with Denny’s, whose slogan is “Good food. Comfortable seats.” The food may not be a dietician’s dream, but they do have things that aren’t deep-fried. And yes, decent seats that aren’t plastic.
As a former McWorker, I am disappointed to report that I have no insight into this. It isn’t even in the training manual! 
But I think it’s a combination of factors:
- Universal Butt-Fit
- Easy cleaning
- Cheap
- Durable
- The My-Ass-Hurts-Let’s-Go factor.