QTPC #28

QTPC #28

Readings

Fast Food Nation pg. 225-288

(1) “Future historians, I hope, will consider the American fast food industry a relic of the twentieth century – a set of attitudes, systems, and beliefs that emerged from postwar southern California, that embodied its limitless faith in technology, that quickly spread across the globe, flourished briefly, and then receded, once its true costs became clear and its thinking became obsolete” (pg. 288).

(2) Do you really think that the fast food industry will just go away?  Will we be able to return to the family farmer and family own business that know their neighbors, and care about the quality of their services?

(3) I really hope that we do move away from the fast food industry trend, and the use of technology in everything we do.  I agree that technology is great and without it we would not be able to accomplish as much as we do today, but when is enough, enough?  My connection to my quote comes from the Ecotopia book that I read.  I truly believe that in order for our country to turn around and start making sense to the general public we need to take a good hard look at how we are accomplishing things and see if what we are doing is right for the public.  We need to get in touch with nature, our roots, and what this country was founded on and created.  We as a nation have lost our humanistic outlook on life and that is creating these types of industries that feed on unaware people who are not given the proper information that they have a right to.  We need to wake up and look around and ask ourselves, is this really what we want people to remember us by?

QTPC #27

QTPC #27

Readings

Fast Food Nation pg. 169-222

(1)  “Sex, drugs, and slaughterhouses may seem an unlikely combination, but as one former Monfort employee told me:  ‘Inside those walls is a different world that obeys different laws’” (pg. 176).

(2) This book shows the good side of workers comp, but there is also a bad side.  For example many workers anymore use workers comp when they have an injury outside of work, and only report it once they are at work saying that they received the injury while they were working.  For every good part of a law or organization there is a bad part as well.  Until people learn to not abuse the system whether they are the manager or employee there will always be programs such as workers comp that will used in which ever way is best for that person.

(3) I have never worked in a slaughterhouse but I have worked in the food industry, so I understand the pressure from management to work extra hours and longer shifts just so they can use up their cheap labor force.  Because I was a student at the time working in the food industry I did not work over 40 hours a week, but many times I worked more than 8 hours on one shift.  I do understand that working 8 hours is not that bad but it is when you are a student and you homework and projects that need to be done, and you are working till 12 or 1 a.m.  Employers many times take their employees for granted and will use or abuse their work ethic any way possible, just like the managers in the slaughterhouses.

QTPC #26

QTPC #26

Readings

Fast Food Nation pg. 99-166

(1)  “They are independent and self-sufficient, cherish their freedom, believe in hard work – and as a result are not paying the price” (pg. 145).

(2) Why is it that our country has reverted to treating people in so many inhumane ways, and relies on the work of unskilled workers?

(3) There were quite a few connections that I made with this part of the reading.  One of them was with the movie “Open Range” which is about cattlemen there were called free rangers and allowed their cattle to roam free over the countryside.  As time went on cities and towns did not like free rangers so they began outlawing them, and causing problems with their cattle by scaring them off everywhere or stealing them.  This movie really connects with my quote, because the two main characters in the movie embodied the very essence of independence and freedom.  Another connection that made in this reading is with the decline of skilled butchers.  Because my dad has worked in the grocery industry for most of his life, he told me that one of the hardest group of people to hire is skilled butchers or meat cutters.  Anymore there are grocery stores like Walmart that buy their meat pre-cut just like McDonalds or any other restaurant.   It is very rare to find a grocery store that actually cuts its own meat in house, and therefore it is harder to find a skilled meat cutter that actually knows what he or she is doing.  This decline in skilled workers is due to the stronghold that major slaughterhouse and meat processing plants have on the meat industry and market.  We have allowed these big companies to take away the individuality of a worker just for the sake of low cost and higher profit.

QTPC #25

QTPC #25

Readings

Fast Food Nation pg. 1-88

(1) “Had the big auto companies been required to pay for the roads – in the same way that the trolley companies had to lay and maintain track – the landscape of the American West would look quite different today” (pg. 16).

(2) Recently I have been learning about Peak Oil in my earth atmospheric science (EAS) class, and that deals with the prediction of when the world will have used up 50% of the available oil in the world.  Many experts predict that the creation of suburbia and sprawled out fast food areas are to blame for the U.S.’s major dependence on oil, is this true and if so what needs to or should change?

(3) One great connection that I made in this reading was that the week after I began this book my EAS class watched a documentary called “The End of Suburbia”, and in that video they discussed how the GM deal with the trolley companies changed the way Americans dealt with cars and transportation to and from places.  It made me really frustrated that we are bailing out an industry that ever since the automobile became a major part of transportation in this country has not been taking care of business and being not only fiscally but socially responsible to the U.S.  To look back and see how the auto industry has used its influence and power to not only manipulate the government, but also the very people that buy and used these cars into thinking that by buying these American made cars we are supporting companies that claim to support Americans.  The only way the auto industry has supported Americans is through jobs which is monetary, but not through the community.  Companies whether it is the food, auto, financial, etc industries have seem to have lost their way and what it really means to contribute to the greater good of humanity, instead we have allowed our greed and lust for materialist possessions take over our lives.