Everyone at some point in his or her lives has eaten at a fast food restaurant. It is almost inevitable not to because they literally are on every corner of any major city. Take Athens for example, there are multiple fast food restaurants around town but they are even downtown and on campus as well. And let’s face it, most fast food restaurants are cheap and the food is always ready more quickly then you could make it at home, which is the point in their existence, but sometimes this industry can be detrimental to the people that work there. In Marx 's terms, fast food chains exist in order to increase efficiency in the production of food through industrialization which results in two things: employees being alienated from the work process
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Fast food chains have bought into this industrialization because they now use technology that essentially replaces human workers so that the food can be made correctly and as cheaply as possible (Ritzer, 1993). Some common technologies utilized in fast food restaurants are soft-drink dispensers that shut themselves off when the drink is full, French fry machines that cook the fries themselves and ring when they are done, and the cash register that essentially does all of the math and enters the orders for you (Ritzer, 1993). All of these new technologies take work right out of the hands of humans as workers and replaces these people with machines that can increase the level of production, which is a prime example of Marx’s industrialization (Allan, 2013). Production is increased because these machines are much less likely to mess up these simple tasks than humans are (Ritzer, 1993). If we leave people to filling the drinks up or to do the math to determine the amount of change one should get back, then production slows down, however if you have these technologies that will do all of this for you then the workers can get things done more quickly and efficiently (Ritzer, 1993). Although the increase in technologies do assist fast food restaurants with their existence being to …show more content…
As humans, we exist to be creative and when we cannot create or explore our imaginations, we become alienated from our species-being (Allan, 2013). This happens in the fast food industry because employees have no creative control over their work tasks because, as mentioned before, this could possibly slow down production and result in a loss of money (Ritzer, 1993). Fast food industries dehumanize the work and the work setting and it limits the potential to be creative because employees cannot demonstrate their own thoughts and skills because everything is routinized (Ritzer, 1993). Employees simply press buttons on these machines and that is the extent to which they can be creative because the machines will do all of the work from that point on (Ritzer, 1993). There is very little, if anything, that can be done as an employee in a fast food restaurant where your creativity can be demonstrated and this goes against our very existence as humans (Allan, 2013). So another effect that technologies in the fast food industry have on the employees is that they become alienated from their species-being because they no longer can demonstrate any originality in their
Fast food chains have bought into this industrialization because they now use technology that essentially replaces human workers so that the food can be made correctly and as cheaply as possible (Ritzer, 1993). Some common technologies utilized in fast food restaurants are soft-drink dispensers that shut themselves off when the drink is full, French fry machines that cook the fries themselves and ring when they are done, and the cash register that essentially does all of the math and enters the orders for you (Ritzer, 1993). All of these new technologies take work right out of the hands of humans as workers and replaces these people with machines that can increase the level of production, which is a prime example of Marx’s industrialization (Allan, 2013). Production is increased because these machines are much less likely to mess up these simple tasks than humans are (Ritzer, 1993). If we leave people to filling the drinks up or to do the math to determine the amount of change one should get back, then production slows down, however if you have these technologies that will do all of this for you then the workers can get things done more quickly and efficiently (Ritzer, 1993). Although the increase in technologies do assist fast food restaurants with their existence being to …show more content…
As humans, we exist to be creative and when we cannot create or explore our imaginations, we become alienated from our species-being (Allan, 2013). This happens in the fast food industry because employees have no creative control over their work tasks because, as mentioned before, this could possibly slow down production and result in a loss of money (Ritzer, 1993). Fast food industries dehumanize the work and the work setting and it limits the potential to be creative because employees cannot demonstrate their own thoughts and skills because everything is routinized (Ritzer, 1993). Employees simply press buttons on these machines and that is the extent to which they can be creative because the machines will do all of the work from that point on (Ritzer, 1993). There is very little, if anything, that can be done as an employee in a fast food restaurant where your creativity can be demonstrated and this goes against our very existence as humans (Allan, 2013). So another effect that technologies in the fast food industry have on the employees is that they become alienated from their species-being because they no longer can demonstrate any originality in their