IN PACIFIC Palace last Sunday, I did something rarer in my life than a white rhinocerous sighting: I approached a McDonald's ''point-of-sale''. McDonald's would have been proud of me describing it that way. Unlike a Filet-o-Fish, there is nothing as banal as a ''counter''in the McDonald's operation.
''We are a food factory,'' declares managing director Daniel Ng, with the thigh-slapping gusto of A Victorian Mill owner.
The production and sales figures, which regularly awe the snacking world, bear him out. In Hong Kong, 22 billion eggs were cracked and two million kilograms of beef were grilled in 1992. According to its publicity hand-out, McDonald's staff also served six million kg of ''French fires'' (sic), doubtless kindled by triad pyromanics in tricolour rosettes and danced around by karaoke public relations hostesses in frilly knickers doing the can-can.
It was the public relations tract that pulled me into McDonald's in the first place. It promised me an unusual concentration of happiness - ''McHappiness'' - and service from university graduates.
Some sort of force was needed. In a town of Hong Kong's snacking plurality, going into McDonald's felt like defeat to me. If it is, 600,000 Hong Kong people surrender every day, according to Mr Ng's scriptures. Since I cannot believe that almost 10 per cent of the total population, including toothless infants (no problems for them, come to think of it) and once exclusively stinky bean curd grannies, clock into McDonald's every day, I have to conclude that for thousands the capitulation is so craven, individuals limp from outlet to outlet several times a day.
This would explain why there were, last time I looked, 65 of them in the territory. Their numbers increase faster than a taxi meter on the Eastern Corridor.