If “lack of clarity” [1] is really what McDonald’s Hong Kong believes as a casue for apology after the Husi food scare, then what clarification its management might have intended to seek by staging a four-minute press briefing has achieved just the opposite, leaving us more confused. Clearly, clarity has never been on the fast-food giant’s menu.
McDonald’s Hong Kong held a four-minute briefing on Sunday (27 July), with an invitation sent out only two hours in advance. Well, you might have believed it was something important when you got it. Or you might even have assumed the fast-food giant had finally come to its senses and had something better than rotten meat to offer. Sadly, you are wrong.
The four-minute is a de facto reading session for the company’s head-honcho, Miss Randy Lai. Somewhere along her utterance she “deeply apologizes to Hong Kong consumers for the lack of clarity”, with a nod that seems to represent a bow, against a backdrop of five nondescript people who are widely believed as her management team. But she fails even to clarify if they are.
One thing we are clear, though, is that Miss Lai has once again mired us into confusion by refusing to take questions, leaving the roomful of hopeful press people behind, clearly too upset to stomach such McClarity.
Hong Kong Journalists Association’s chairwoman, Sham Yee-lan, has this comment: “dodging follow-up questions by the media is not a good way to handle an issue, but many corporations have adopted this approach.” [2]
This is definitely the one million dollar question – what would you have done if you were Miss Lai?
[1] http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1560443/
[2] http://www.thestandard.com.hk/
