Alberto C. Roman Professor: Dawn Garcia ENC 1101 5 October 2015 The struggles of working at restaurants In the Barbara Ehrenreich’s article “Serving in Florida,” she shows her experience while working at several restaurants as a waitress. During this time, Ehrenreich was a witness of the unfair conditions she and her colleagues had to face. From not having a place to sit and rest, to the stressful conditions imposed by her supervisor, she relates how it felt to work in this kind of environment. In general, working conditions at restaurants are unacceptable because they demand many continuous hours of work without rest, the hygiene conditions are questionable, and the compensation is overall low. The time allowed to rest at a waitressing job is not …show more content…
What many people working at these places have to deal with is from many perspectives unfair. Everybody should have time to rest after continuous hours of hard work. The fact that many people do not have the right to take a break from stressful conditions is very alarming. In addition to this, many workers have to deal with poor hygiene conditions. This problem affects not only the health of employees, but also the wellness of customers, and both, should be the most important elements in this kind of business. Finally, workers do not receive a fair compensation for the hard work they do. After having dedicated hours and hours of their time to deliver a good service, many times they only receive a minimum wage salary. Words Cited Gentile, Dan. "Things You Have to Explain to People Who 've Never Worked in Kitchens." Thrillist. Thrillist Media Group, 22 June 2014. Web. 05 Oct. 2015. "Estimates of Foodborne Illness in the United States." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 08 Jan. 2014. Web. 05 Oct. 2015. Bono, Tara. "Lessons Learned from Working at a Restaurant." Young Island. Libn, 23 Aug. 2012. Web. 05 Oct.
The tray carrying, for example, reignites an old back injury. Adding to her pain and stress of the job is Jerry’s’ lack of a break policy. Ehrenreich’s job is “to move orders from tables to kitchen and then trays from kitchen to tables”, only sitting to pee (35). Despite being physically active and in good health, Ehrenreich is a woman in her 50s and her agility is tested on her final night at Jerry’s. Describing it as “the perfect storm” (46), all of her tables fill up at once with demanding customers.
Time. 10:19 p.m. South Florida. The traffic light rests at red for an eternity, mocking me with its condescending gaze. I quickly turned my head both directions, not a car in sight for what it seemed to be miles.
Winnable Battle- Safe Food Objectives: Approximately 1 of 6 people in America get sick from eating contaminated food. Some people recover and few others may suffer from complication such as kidney failure, miscarriage or brain and nerve damage (10 Colorado winnable battles). In Colorado, there is at least 41% of foodborne outbreaks report and investigation each year. This is an enormous number that underscores the need for vigilance and highlights the importance of the food safety programs to identify foodborne illnesses (10 Colorado winnable battles).
There was one girl that worked in the culinary department for eight years, and she was let go. The hotel also took away health insurance benefits, pension contributions and cutting employee wages to save money so they can make a profit by making employees work next to nothing. Many workers said they felt their
Make a copy of this document and put in your AP Lang folder: After reading Serving in Florida by Barbara Ehrenreich, answer the following questions and submit into the Schoology Submission box before 7:30am on Tuesday January 17th. NO NEED TO PRINT YOUR RESPONSES. 1) Do you think Ehrenreich’s forays into the world of poverty were ethical? Ehrenreich’s methods of experiencing poverty were definitely ethical. She simply applied for certain jobs, worked at those jobs, and then provided a narrative that described her overall working experience.
When I Went To Florida I went to Florida after 4th grade in the summer. When we went to Florida, Jaxon my sisters, brother came with us. The night before we left he stayed at my house. When we left the next morning we left at 3:00 A.M. While we were on our way we both had to sit in the very back of the car because my sisters came with us. The ride there was not fun at all.
“Serving in Florida” is a piece of literature that comes from Nickel and Dimed, written by Barbara Ehrenreich that discusses her experience in as an undercover journalist trying to live a life working low-paying jobs. In 1941, Barbara Ehrenreich was born in Butte, Montana, a blue-collar mining town where her father used to work before he earned a degree in the Butte School of Mines and moved the family. Ehrenreich became a part of a middle-class family and attended Rockefeller University where she graduated with a doctorate in biology. However, throughout the years she became more involved with politics, such as advocating for the women’s health movement in the 1970’s and wrote Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. Eventually, she quit her teaching job at State University to become a full-time writer to create pieces relating to the
“Serving in Florida,” by Barbara Ehrenreich, an American author and political activist, went undercover from 1998 to 2000 to see the impact of the 1996 welfare reform act and to see in the lives of the working poor in the United States. During this time, she took on low wage jobs to see what it was like to survive, or if it was even possible. In 2001 she published her book called Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.
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.
In Tony Mirabelli’s writing, “Learning to Serve”, Mirabelli completes an ethnographic study of the service industry. Mirabelli writes on a topic he is quite familiar with, being a waiter. Mirabelli discusses the complexity of being a waiter, although most of these complexities are unknown to people outside of the discourse community. Mirabelli uses his ethnographic study to undermine criticism towards waiters. The main critique Mirabelli rebuts in his writing is that being a waiter does not require skill.
Despite being a teenager, Nuñez displayed a very high sense of maturity at work. She claimed that she enjoyed being employed at the fast food center, due to the fact that she was being exposed to new circumstances on a daily basis. The circumstances found within McDonald’s allowed for her to learn “how to be a responsible person”, for she was “meeting all kinds of people and learning a lot about them” (440). Although, she enjoyed working at McDonald’s due to these instances, there were some instances when Nuñez did not enjoy working at McDonald’s as much as she normally did. The main reason for this was due to the fact that she faced many problems with her customers while working her job.
When asked for what type of jobs this class trains, the teacher replies, “fast food places- Burger King, McDonald’s” (27). The conditions of the building itself are also described by the teachers as treacherous. One teacher states that the heating system has
Everyone at Jerry’s was chugging ibuprofens to relieve the physical strain put on their body. Throughout “Serving in Florida” there is minimal acknowledgement of the positives because Ehrenreich believes there wasn’t many to share, the staff wasn’t that great to make memories with, the customers were rude, and the work was difficult to accept and keep up. She thought that no one with a degree should sink so low to work at a place like Jerry’s because it was expected that you should be working at a fancier, quality job. Eighner’s experiences were different from Ehrenreich’s, his work was more difficult, yet he believes it to be privilege to be good
My Trip to Florida It was a cold winter night in Upstate New York. My mom and dad were enjoying a cup of coffee, my sisters were playing video games, and I was editing a few pictures on my computer. My mom brought up the idea of a vacation. She said” We haven’t been on a vacation for a long time”.
The staff here was sense that everyone who works here is Thai serves as a further ethnic symbol to local consumers and authenticates the Thai nature of this restaurant. The service of this restaurant is impeccable. As maybe be expected, the jobs are distributed differently among the sexes, the females appeared to have more of the jobs that involved distributing food while the males were mostly present in the kitchen since the task called for lifting heavy items. The floor jobs such as sweeping and mopping also went to males. Gender roles seem to play an important role in deciding each employee’s job.