This story originally appeared on TIME.com
The line snakes out of the door and into the Olympic athlete village in Rio de Janeiro, a United Nations of track-suits and warm-up gear: Algeria green, Bangladeshi blue, United Arab Emirates white. Some of the world’s fittest human beings have gathered on this Friday evening to endure thirty-minute waits for food that, in theory at least, could spoil their Olympicdreams.
At the end of the long queue? The same Big Macs, McNuggets and milkshakes that are available at many of the more 36,000 McDonald’srestaurants elsewhere in the world–and often with far shorter waits.