A response to the reading

The reading from Fast Food Nation highlights an economic and trend of the western world, most visible in the Fast Food industry of the US. Technology and atomization is replacing labor at the cost of the lower class and at the benefit of the managerial and owning class. Much like what Prof Marc explained to us in class last week, interest is created through the labor of others. In the spirit of cutting costs, improving profits, and decreasing the skill needed to work at a fast food restaurant, the corporations who own these franchises demand everything from their workers and give nothing to them in return. Schlosser uses Colorado Springs as a basis for his claims, pointing to the restaurant technology “designed to cut labor costs and serve fast food even faster” (Schlosser, 66). He talks of robotic drink machines, pressure sensors in the drive through asphalt to measure traffic, automatic ketchup dispensers, and fry cookers. More and more the fast food corporations are taking away the need for any skill to work in a fast food chain for the purpose of creating a high turnover workforce which can be paid minimally. What’s more, the worker is manipulated as seen by the tactics fast food managers have used to compensate for the low pay their employees receive. The methods of creating ‘team spirit’ and ‘stroking’ the worker are two ways managers create a non-financial value to working in a fast food restaurant which benefits the corporation but not the worker.

To be short, I was appalled at the chapter on the workers in the slaughter houses. It flat out made me sick to think that these conditions and events happen more than we’d like to think. I began to wonder at what point do people loose sight of everything and only focus on the economics? Yes it is cheaper to treat workers like shit and waltz your way around the judicial system, but what do you gain ultimately? In short, nothing. I hope that the people responsible for the mistreatment of workers like those described in this chapter of the book come to realize what they have done.