Social Norms By Barbara Ehrenreich: Article Analysis

In the selection, “Serving in Florida”, Barbara Ehrenreich described her experience of working at the low-wage American workplace and the worker’s struggles with minimum wage. When she depicts the work as an outsider, she states “customers arrive in human waves, sometimes disgorged fifty at a time from their tour buses, peckish and whiny.” (Ehrenreich 395) It demonstrates the hardships of the workers when dealing with customers. Even though the customers are complaining for no reasons and being obnoxious, the workers have to deal with them with respect. It is hard to be respectful toward the person who does not deserved it. Sometimes there are nothing wrong with the workers but the customers take out their stress about something else on the

It's true that fast food workers are underappreciated, underpayed, and overworked. There's no pride in

“Paying your dues quietly is how to move up in a kitchen,” says Jonny Arévalo, who worked at several Boston restaurants, including Bennigan’s, for nine years. “Then some other poor guy takes your place.” Talking to another restaurant worker allows for the author to build on his editorial and be able to talk about the struggles workers can face in order to get by and earn a decent amount of money to be able to live

securing and increasing the hourly wage of workers in the restaurant industry, and uses her

Things are not normally as rough as they sound, though in this case, they are worse. Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation puts the unspeakable truths into a book, to show anyone strong enough to handle the terrible truths of the fast food just how bad it genuinely is. On page 177, Schlosser Shows the terrible truths of fast food corporations and the harsh environment that the cleaning crews have to endure after hours through cacophonous word choice, quotes from real employees, and syntactical repetition.

A restaurant worker’s work is never complete: many restaurant workers feel that they are public servants because they make harsh comparisons, generalizations and arguments. Barbara Ehrenreich’s piece titled “Serving in Florida” represents the condition in which workers are treated while working in a restaurant. Ehrenreich describes this condition as unfair because she must perform duties as if they are “strictly theatrical exercises” (130). By this she means that even if there is no work left to do, the managers do not want to see workers sitting. Ehrenreich believes that she is performing in a play while she is at work because she must pretend to be doing work at all times so that the managers, who sit around, don’t yell. Ehrenreich argues

Most people believe that corporate corruption is one of the worst things about the United States. Eric Schlosser, a famous author and journalist, can be considered to be one of these people. In Schlosser’s nonfiction novel, Fast Food Nation, he shows the extent of the corruption within the fast food industry. He claims that the executives at the top are some of the most powerful and greedy people that walk this Earth. They can get away with basically anything, even bribing government bureaucracies to lie about their data to make the processing plants seem safe. One of the worst aspects of the fast food industry, however, is how these executives treat their employees. This mistreatment of the employees is a major aspect of corporate greed,

“Why Tipping Is Wrong,” an article found in the New York Times discusses the issue of lower minimum wage for tipped workers. Writer, Saru Jayaraman, the director of the Food Labor Research Institute at Berkeley, argues for the reformation of the law that allows a lower minimum wage for tipped workers. She presents her argument by targeting those who go to restaurants, lawmakers, the waiters/waitresses, and even the restaurant itself. By targeting this specific audience, she is able to speak to those who interact with those working in the industry and those who will be able to make a change in order to fix it.

The author describes an image about the kitchen and the rest room. The author describes the kitchen with following quotes, “The kitchen is a cavern,” “The floor is slick with spills,” and “Sinks everywhere are clogged with scraps of lettuce, decomposing lemon wedges, water-logged toast crusts”. The effect of the imagery is to show the chaos of the kitchen, and to emphasize how bad the working environment is. Thus the audience can realize that how substandard and dirty the kitchen is, which beyonds audiences’ expectation due to the public impression that a kitchen should be the cleanest place due to its function of preparing and saving food. Later, the author continues to use imagery as describing the rest room. Ehrenreich mentions “The regulation poster in the single unisex rest room admonishes us to wash our hands thoroughly,” in her essay; However, there is almost no one following the instruction because “there is always some vital substance missing—soap, paper towels, toilet paper”. Although workers may want to follow the instructions, it is impossible for them to do so because they “never found all three at once ”. The effect of describing the deficient rest room is to highlight the fact that the owner of the restaurant is so stingy to the workers that the owner refuses to provide enough substance. Thus, the readers can better understand the terrible environment that the workers live in. In short, with mention the dreadful environment of the kitchen and the rest room, the audiences are able to know that lower workers work in a grubby environment and how they have been treated by the upper class. The description of the environment that workers work in is served to proceed the overall purpose that the public should pay more attention to the situation of lower class

For our group and our shared love of food we figured that a social norm that had something to do with that would be perfect for us. We decided that the norm to drive through a drive thru needed to be tested. Why should cars be the only ones with the fast access to fast food at their convenience? We believed that people should be able to walk through the drive thrus if it is more convenient for them.

Publix is an employee-owned supermarket chain that sells a variety of goods including groceries, baked goods and deli meats just to name a few. The store, located on Tiger Boulevard is a 64,000-square foot store that currently has 134 employees. Publix places an emphasis on customer service and satisfaction. The combination of extraordinary customer service and high-quality products, has made Publix the largest and fastest growing, employee-owned supermarket chain in America. I interviewed Mr. Wayne Martin, who is the store manager for the Publix located here in Clemson. Mr. Martin’s job duties include overseeing the success of the whole store and make sure that each department is working efficiently. Another responsibility of his job is that

When interviewing members of society about their jobs, we can see a division between the positions that are respected and those that are not. Society looks down upon physical labor and idolizes people who have office jobs. The people who have jobs that require physical labor are often treated poorly by customers and are put into less than ideal situations; however, these people find personal satisfaction through wages, their coworkers, and experiences.

Terri Babbage wrote an article called, “Dignity for the Workers”. She talked about the reality that workers in low earning jobs have to face, how difficult it is for them to meet all there needs. There wages are low and they dont get much time off. Terris’ essay shows sympathy saying, “We cannot allow this ruthless exploitation to continue, especially since the companies know they are doing wrong”. (Babbage 12) The big corporations know that the pay is to low but they are still meeting the minimum wage requirement so nothing will

Chapter three starts out by talking about the land use in Colorado Springs. The book tells us that in one part of town it looks old fashioned with many different types of small shops and unique looking houses and on the other side of town it is filled with an everlasting amount of fast food restaurants and houses that all look the same. I can somehow relate to this because the area that I live in has many shopping stores (Brand names that may be in a shopping mall), fast food restaurants, and in some neighborhoods similar looking houses. However in another part of the city, there isn’t as many fast food restaurants and some of the stores are family owned businesses.

Plato’s Diner is a family owned and operate business. The owners, Dean and Chris Papas are Greek immigrants and they believed if they worked hard and spend their money wisely they will become successful businessmen. Contrary to their beliefs the case highlights several issues at Plato’s Diner. These challenges derive from lack of strategic planning, management operation, human resources management, marketing strategy and non-compliance of labor laws, and taxes regulations. These challenges pose legal ramifications for their business. Dean and Chris, 22 and 24 years old, respectively, made their dream a reality in June of 2002 when they accumulated enough money to buy Plato’s Diner. Plato’s Diner is a 1950’s diner located upstate New York and