Premarital Sex
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Gould 1
Emily Gould
English 12
Professor Katherine Humel
4 October 2002
Fast Food Comes at a High Price for Workers
McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Wendy’s, and other popular chains have brought countless innovations to the restaurant industry, delivering food fast and at low cost year after year. Convenience and value have come at a price, however, and many believe that benefits to the public are outweighed by the costs that this giant industry imposes on its workers.
In his best-selling book Fast-Food Nation, Eric Schlosser shows just how much such popular chains revolutionized America’s eating habits. In 1970, Americans spent
$6 billion on fast food. By 2000, that figure had soared to $110 billion. Schlosser says Americans “spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music – combined” (3). Every day about a quarter of the U.S. adult population eats fast food in some form. Few, however, give much thought to the workers who prepare and deliver their meals.
Hiring teenagers to serve us food in a fast-food setting has become “so natural, so normal, and so inevitable that people often think little about it,” says Stuart Tannock, a lecturer in social and cultural studies at the University of California at Berkeley (qtd. in Ayoub A20). Nevertheless, while fast-food workers have become an essential component in the service industry, a fast-food job is usually viewed as undesirable,
Gould 2
dead-end work.
One-third of all workers under the age of 35 have gotten their jobs working for restaurants (Yum! Brands), and about one-eighth of all workers in the United States have, at some point, worked for McDonald’s (Schlosser 4). Yvonne Zipp of the Christian Science Monitor observes that such jobs have become “a teen rite of passage as universal as driver’s ed” (1). They are ideal for teens because they require no special skills, and many believe that such jobs provide the educational benefit...
Emily Gould
English 12
Professor Katherine Humel
4 October 2002
Fast Food Comes at a High Price for Workers
McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Wendy’s, and other popular chains have brought countless innovations to the restaurant industry, delivering food fast and at low cost year after year. Convenience and value have come at a price, however, and many believe that benefits to the public are outweighed by the costs that this giant industry imposes on its workers.
In his best-selling book Fast-Food Nation, Eric Schlosser shows just how much such popular chains revolutionized America’s eating habits. In 1970, Americans spent
$6 billion on fast food. By 2000, that figure had soared to $110 billion. Schlosser says Americans “spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music – combined” (3). Every day about a quarter of the U.S. adult population eats fast food in some form. Few, however, give much thought to the workers who prepare and deliver their meals.
Hiring teenagers to serve us food in a fast-food setting has become “so natural, so normal, and so inevitable that people often think little about it,” says Stuart Tannock, a lecturer in social and cultural studies at the University of California at Berkeley (qtd. in Ayoub A20). Nevertheless, while fast-food workers have become an essential component in the service industry, a fast-food job is usually viewed as undesirable,
Gould 2
dead-end work.
One-third of all workers under the age of 35 have gotten their jobs working for restaurants (Yum! Brands), and about one-eighth of all workers in the United States have, at some point, worked for McDonald’s (Schlosser 4). Yvonne Zipp of the Christian Science Monitor observes that such jobs have become “a teen rite of passage as universal as driver’s ed” (1). They are ideal for teens because they require no special skills, and many believe that such jobs provide the educational benefit...