btw, I've been reading Katherine Newman's study of the inner city working poor, especially people who work at fastfood joints. It's called _No Shame in My Game_ -- primarily because, given the emphasis on respect/disrespect in urban areas, when people work at a fastfood joint, they are given a lot of shit from their peers. Unlike suburban fastfood joints populated by students and retired folks, in urban areas like Harlem, where Newman and her team conducted her study, people at FFJs are working there as the primary way to make a living, because they haven't found anything else, etc. Even when they're teens, they're taking the job in order to contribute to the family coffers, not just to afford spring break vacations or designer cloths.
Anway, one of the things she and her staff learn as they work alongside the employees is that they often try to avoid being out front when friends come in. They often even give each other support, spotting them for awhile when they go to the back to hide when peers come to the store. Even management recognizes their need to protect themselves -- since management are almost always folks who started out as FFJ workers.
It occured to me that part of it is not wanting to delegate the public cleaning tasks to employees lest they be seen by their peers -- for mopping the floors or cleaning the toilet (which in my experienc eis generally a shared "sidework" duty) at an FFJ would be worse than bagging up fries. And, of course, there's the budget issue: spending money on upkeep is probably sacrificed for the higher rents and costs of running an FFJ franchise in an urban area.
At 10:42 PM 3/9/2008, shag wrote:
>At 09:33 PM 3/9/2008, Michael Smith wrote:
> >On Sunday 09 March 2008 22:37:53 shag wrote:
> > > is it just me, or is every
> > > fastfood joint just a shithole of nastiness anymore?
> >
> >
> >Sounds like suburban FFJs are becoming what urban
> >FFJs always were.
>
>these have all been in cities, except for the ones on a military base. but
>i don't remember syracuse's west side (17th poorest neighborhood in the
>u.s., then) dickmonald's being such a shithole.
>
>
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>Wear Clean Draws
>('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)
>
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