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Example research essay topic: Fast Food Industry Fast Food Restaurant - 1,734 words

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The fast food industry has always had one purpose in mind, to maximize profits. Similar to any other fast food restaurant, McDonalds takes this goal to heart and is doing quite well in attaining it. Essentially, any fast food restaurant uses the concept that food nourishes the society just as it sustains the individual to legitimize many of their practices. However, how do fast food restaurants succeed? How do they interact with the customers so that one chain out does its nearest competitor?

The answer lies in the basic employee. He or she does the entire behind the scenes work in order to provide the customer with nourishment and establish a dining room away from home experience, while increasing the companys revenue. Employees are the gears that make the company work and produce, but similar to gears, they are easily replaced. The basic employee is an expendable part of the fast food industry and the company treats the employee likewise or even worse to maximize its profits.

McDonalds is no exception to the norm. In 1997, after an arduous trial dubbed the Mc Libel Trial, protestors belonging to London Greenpeace succeeded in unveiling McDonalds ethical shortcomings when it comes to the general worker. The fast food industry is a standardized hybrid of the general restaurant industry. In an age where people spend more money to meet the standard of living, an affordable food supply would lighten the financial burden of the monthly food bill. Furthermore, Americans are finding there is simply no time or energy left to cook a meal after all the work, personal improvement and social activities of a New Age day, leaving them in search of a quick source of food.

The fast food industry is the combination of speed and affordability at the cost of quality and personality. Standardization is the signature of the fast food industry and conversely the bane of the traditional restaurant trade. Although the personal attention paid to each patron of the industry is lost, efficiency, convenience, and profit are gained. In fact, the purpose of the stringent uniformity of a fast food chain is to increase the profit margin of the seller, not the convenience of the customer meaning that the thirst for greater profits outweighs the traits of a family oriented eatery. McDonalds is the pioneer and a prime example of a modern fast food industry's practices. Founded by Ray Croc, McDonalds is the epitome of fast food industry success grossing profits that amount to the GNP of many small countries.

Its practices and operational procedures are revolutionary leading to both applause and protest. McDonalds success is a combination of three terms: quality, service, and cleanliness. Quality refers to providing the customer with a standard menu that can be found at any of McDonalds locations. Service is the brief time it takes to serve the customer. Cleanliness does not refer to health concerns, but instead to the appearance of the workplace in order to promote sales.

The general idea is that everything that has to do with McDonalds corporation has an ulterior motive of maximizing profit. For example, franchising allows individuals to own a business and profit from it, but there is a catch. They do not own a part of McDonalds and they are trained and granted the business under the supervision of McDonalds. As a result of this individual ownership, McDonalds still profits from the sales, but does not have to deal with the daily routines of each business. Franchising is just one-way McDonalds promoted growth. Advertising domestically and overseas expanded the market for its product so much that it now has over 28, 000 locations in 121 different countries.

However, the corporations policies and treatment of employees account for a large part of the companys success. Overall, McDonalds success lies in its utilization of technology, routinization of work, and general deskilling of labor. Computers, machines, and automation drastically reduce the demand for skilled workers leaving subsets of one group, the unskilled laborers. This labor pool is essentially the cheapest and most available because it consists of just about anyone including women seeking employment, teenagers, immigrants, and other minorities.

There is no shortage of workers because there is always someone else to be trained and fill the void. However, this un-sculpted group of people needs to be trained and motivated to work to maximum efficiency without causing the corporation to be suspect of malignant practices. McDonalds uses a division of labor between the management and the worker. Management attends training at corporate sponsored locations such as Hamburger University and learns the intricacies of dealing with and managing the basic worker, as well as standard operating procedures. For example, they are told that the three most important things for workers are: first, appreciation of work done; second, feeling in the know of things going on; and third, sympathetic understanding of personal problems, where the first two relate to a worker feeling like a part of the companys success and the third dealing with problems that make the employee not work to his or her potential.

High wages and good working conditions fall far below those guidelines meaning that the job always supercedes personal advancement. Ray Croc once said, Ive often said that I believe in God, family, and McDonalds - and in the office that order is reversed, which basically summarizes the point the corporation tries to get across to its franchisers, managers, and workers. McDonalds bases its worker control and efficiency on one principle: worker stupidity. Considering that most of the unskilled labor force is untainted by previous instruction and experience, this gives the corporation a perfect time to instill their work guidelines. However, the management must break the intrinsic nature of humans being prone to laziness and non-productiveness, under working, and to think freely and follow others examples when in the presence of other humans, soldiering, the corporation has developed a means to break down the individual into essentially a drone. In order to rid the workplace of under working and soldiering of employees, McDonalds implements the Frederick Taylor method of installing managers and a system of predetermined activities called task management.

Managers keep the employee at work by giving orders and enforce task management, basically cleaning, thus reducing laziness and individual thinking. Automated registers, grills, and other equipment help to reduce the need for individual thinking more to the point where all employee actions are machine-like. To further pulverize individuality, each worker is trained individually. The result is a workforce that can be as efficient as possible.

A strategy of competition quells any discrepancies of low pay. The corporation management convinces the worker that he must accept the low wages and benefits because there are always more people willing to accept an equal or lesser position, thus creating twisted sense of job security. Consequently, McDonalds can pay the bare minimum to the employees while increasing its own revenue. In the end, workers are similar to drones with false individuality in the form of a name tag. They put forth a mass-produced smile for the customer under the supervision of cameras, computer-tracking systems, and management.

With their actions and emotions controlled by the company, these workers labor amidst contradictory guidelines. They perform their duty in harsh condition during unpredictable work schedules, but are expected to provide the customers with consistency and convenience. With an infrastructure of worker control, McDonalds can now put forth its goals, strategies, and overall principles to help persuade others into helping the corporation expand. Essentially, McDonalds vision is to be the worlds best quick service restaurant by being the best employer in each community, delivering operational excellence to each customer, and growing profit-wise by expanding the brand of McDonalds via technology and innovation. The underlying message is that they want to be the best at maximizing profit at any cost and that includes possible worker exploitation and other devious means. Basically, McDonalds holds two values close at hand: people principles and social responsibility.

People principles refer to relationships between management and workers and the treatment of workers. According to McDonalds, there are five basic ideas: Respect and Recognition, Values and Leadership, Pay, Learning and Developmental Growth, and Resources. Four of these five are questionable. Respect and Recognition indicates that managers treat workers as equals and that each employee is valued and recognized for his or her work. As described in the manager and employee training processes, the corporation and management see the regular employee as a subservient peon that can be patronized and duped with a false sense employment security and individuality. Furthermore, since McDonalds has established a hierarchy of labor based on worker compliance, a sense of equality among managerial staff and the employees is difficult to implement.

Other misunderstandings come from pay, developmental growth, and resources. According to McDonalds, employees value their pay and benefits and receive work experience to develop both personally and professionally. Furthermore, McDonalds provides a so-called balance between work and social life. All of these assertions are a twisted version of the truth.

It is valid that employees do make pay at the local market value, but the average worker that needs to make a living to support his or her family cannot live off of the average pay or minimum wage. Instead of dealing with employees asking for higher wages, the corporation can merely hire other people willing to work for that amount or even less. Benefits for workers are almost non-existent. Home office employees enjoy a wealth of benefits including a 401 k, dental and medical insurance, and paid vacations. However, this only mentions office employees, such as corporate staff and managers, thus leaving out the masses of drones. As a result, McDonalds has a one of the highest worker turnover rates 153 % in 1984 and 205 % in 1985.

Granted that any work provides valuable work experience, but it is not quite vocational development the workers undergo at McDonalds. Workers are simply there to perform tasks managers order them to do. In addition, workers learn to exude the McDonalds experience: a fallacy of mass-produced friendliness, cheer, and basic good human emotion. In reality, the employees learn to obey and carry out orders given to them by superiors and blend into the background. How can someone develop the necessary skills if all they do is unskilled prescribed labor? Furthermore, one cannot expect any kind of growth out of...


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Research essay sample on Fast Food Industry Fast Food Restaurant

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