Yes, technology has helped sake huge strides toward success In the Industry, but if the employees felt more valued there would be even greater strides made. Therefore If employees felt more appreciated that feeling would then transfer into society as a whole and fast food restaurant workers would be viewed with more respect, instead of at the bottom of the labor market. While technology in the fast food industry is not a new phenomenon, the technological progresses have caused employees to suffer and feel worthless over the years.
In the personal essay, “McDonald’s-We Do It All For You,” Barbara Carson ascribes the engineering and machinery that causes employees at fast food restaurants, specifically McDonald’s, to feel low-grade. Carson explains that “Louse’s [the husband of the secretary of McDonald’s founder Ray Crock] computer took all the guesswork out of it,” when it comes to cooking the French fries (254). Louis Martina also created the perfect dispenser machine for ketchup and mustard. These inventions essentially “eliminate the need for a human being to make ‘his own interpretation'” and strip people of any basic creative process as an individual (254).
Taking away people’s individuality is what causes the feelings of worthlessness and under- appreciation; by removing defining characteristics, such as being able to determine how much ketchup and mustard can go on a simple burger, everyone Is the same and can be replaced. One employee of McDonald’s claims “It’s Like a humiliating feeling” having to work at such an Intellectually low level because the machines do all the thinking for all the workers, including the managers (258). Carson even interviewed a McDonald’s manager who claimed that “you can’t talk to a happy
McDonald’s manager because 98 percent are miserable” and then the employee proceeded to state that “there Is no such thing as a McDonald’s manager. The computer manages the store” (267). Technology Is Important for success but the consequences that can follow for human beings who are employed at the restaurants can be degrading and make them feel unwanted, which is why Albert Einstein once said ” it has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceed our humanity. ” In continuation with the employees of fast food restaurants feeling unvalued due
Work: An Empirical Perspective of Ideal Employees. ” Gould addresses the fact that fast food employees are expected to be a “conformist, uninterested in higher education, shallow, uninformed and content to accept the surface meaning of things they encounter” Just because the machinery is going to do all the work (3). Why should somebody who is working at a fast food restaurant be uninterested in higher education? It is expectations such as these that cause a chain reaction in society: thoughts that fast food workers are the lowest in the labor market.
Technologies such s the grill that determines when every food is done grilling or the predetermined amounts of pop dispensed in each cup or the predetermined amounts of ketchup and mustard that go on a burger are the epitome of what is degrading the fast food employees. They are forced to “repeatedly perform a few mundane tasks,” like press buttons and flip pre-timed burgers, due to the technology that has overrun the restaurants. Being a fast food restaurant worker does not mean that one is incapable of performing demanding tasks.
Rachel Macadam, Jay Leno, and even gold medalist, Carl Lewis all irked at fast food restaurants, which make it very clear that the employees of the restaurants are capable of achieving and performing demanding tasks. Fast food workers have to work to earn a living Just as everyone else in the world. They are Just faced with some different obstacles: forced to be stooped down to a low level of intelligence due to technology and looked down upon by society merely because of working in a fast food restaurant. Eric Closer elaborates on the problem in his novel, Fast Food Nation.
Within the novel, Closer makes it abundantly clear that the owners of McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KEF want the technology in their restaurants to be incredibly more intelligent than the employees. They stated: “make the equipment intuitive, make it so the Job is easier to do right than to do wrong” (71). Here, the real fault, for the employees feeling degraded because of technology, is exposed. The owners of the businesses want their machines to be so intuitive that the restaurants barely need actual human beings working there.
They expect their workers to be on intellectual level of children ND then treat them as such. The owners of the top fast food chains even stated, “rely as much as possible on photographs of menu item, and if there are instructions, make them very simple, write them at a fifth grade level” (72). The workers feel degraded and replaceable because they are. Working as an employee at a fast food restaurant is almost as being a cow on a dairy farm, as soon as the cow stops giving milk they are replaced in a blink of an eye; Just as any worker who stops working at a fifth grade level is replaced at a fast food restaurant.
All in all, it does not matter what type of restaurant one works at, all employees want to be treated with respect and feel valued at their work place. No one wants to work at a Job where they are mistreated and taken for granted. Employees of the fast food restaurants are Just the same as any other worker and should not be objectified by their bosses or by technology. Although technology has advanced the fast food of being treated like children, which should therefore cause some cause some concerns for the employers. After a while, who is going to want to work for their businesses?
