McDonald's Reveals All Kinds Of Gross 'Blitz Box'

McDonald's started selling its "Blitz Box" to the Kansas City Market last Monday. What kind of dietary treasure trove is inside, you ask? Well, the box contains two Quarter Pounders with cheese, two medium fries, and 10 Chicken McNuggets with dipping sauces.

The box is connected with a local promotion with the Kansas City Chiefs, which is scheduled to run through the entire football season, according to McDonald's spokeswoman Lisa McComb.

Though USA Today describes the Blitz Box as a "multi-person boxed meal," it's not entirely clear whether the box is intended for a romantic football date night, or to feed a small alien family whose bodies don't absorb cholesterol.

"It's like they're throwing things at a wall to see what sticks," Sam Oches, editor of QSR, an industry trade publication, said to USA Today. "It looks like another move on McDonald's part to redefine value."

In an ironic twist, the box is priced at $14.99, which is just a cent lower than the salary McDonald's workers across the country are currently demanding. Employees of the fast food chain, along with hundreds of other low-wage workers at Walmart, Macy's, Burger King, Wendy's, and others, have gone on strike in more than 50 cities across the country for the last two weeks to demand pay raises and the right to form a union.

According to U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, fast food workers currently earn $9.03/hour on average. The workers on strike want their hour wage raised to $15 an hour.

Fast food workers suffer an excess of injustices. Eighty-three percent earn less than $10.10 an hour. Fast food employees are typically denied health insurance and other benefits.

What's worse is that fast food chains regularly break a wide range of laws that are in place to protect workers. For example, 84 percent of fast food workers in New York City reported some form of wage theft ("wage theft" describes practices that deny employees of wages to which they're legally entitled), including unpaid overtime, failure to provide mandated rest breaks, improper paycheck deductions, and late or bounced paychecks.

There is a strong possibility the strikes won't accomplish the desired pay raise or be able to successfully combat wage theft. As The Atlantic 's Derek Thompson explains, the strikes would have a chance of creating change — if fast food chains perceived either a threat to the supply of food-service workers, or the threat of consumers opting not to give the retailers and food changes business in support of the protests. Neither of these threats are likely to become reality.

Workers are, however, continuing to intensify their strike efforts.

“I’ve never in my 32 years in the labor movement seen anything like this before,” Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, told Politico.

But, uh, more importantly to McDonald's, is this: