Outline+for+Chapter+3


 * Chapter 3: Behind the Counter **
 * Setting the scene: Colorado Springs (many fast food restaurants)
 * Eliza Zamo: McDonald’s employee, hard worker, puts her job and long hours before her family
 * Many teenagers are employed by fast food restaurants because they are unskilled and little training is required when hiring them
 * “No other industry in the United States has a workforce so dominated by adolescents. About two-thirds of the nation’s fast food workers are under the age of twenty. Teenagers open the fast food outlets in the morning, close them at night, and keep them going at all hours in between. Even the managers and assistant managers are sometimes in their late teens” (68).
 * Teenagers are a main target for fast food employers because they do not have to be paid much since they are unskilled, “instead of relying upon a small, stable, well-paid, unskilled work force, the fast food industry seeks out part time, unskilled workers who are willing to accept low pay” (68).
 * Most machines in fast food restaurants are not run by the employees, they are on conveyor belts and the food cooks quickly so the customer is not left waiting
 * “At Burger King restaurants, frozen hamburger patties are placed on a conveyer belt and emerge from a broiler ninety seconds later fully cooked” (69).
 * Work seems to be easy for the unskilled worker as one former Taco Bell employee explains, “Everything’s add water…just add hot water” (69).
 * Many fast food chains are now hiring immigrants, “English is now the second language of at least one-sixth of the nation’s restaurant workers and about one-third of that group speaks no English at all” (70).
 * “Many know only the names of the items on the menu; they speak McDonald’s English” (71).
 * One positive aspect to teenagers working long hours at fast food chains is that they are staying out of trouble because they are always working…reward system
 * Ethos: some employers break law about working hours of teens
 * Logos: number of teens employed, stats
 * Pathos: teenagers, Eliza, working hours, working conditions, pay
 * Regimentation: the strict discipline and enforced uniformity characteristic of military groups or totalitarian systems
 * Altruistic: unselfishly concerned for or devoted to the welfare of others