Amitai Working At Mcdonald's Analysis

Introduction.
In Working at McDonald’s, Amitai Etzioni brings to light his thoughts and feelings towards the employment of teenagers in fast-food restaurants. He presents this in the form of an essay with arguments based on analysis and personal experience. This paper will provide a review of Etzioni’s writing. It will focus on his main arguments and also look into any possible areas of weaknesses.
Summary.
Etzioni begins by expressing his attitude and feelings towards the employment of teenagers at McDonald’s. He further explains that as it is the American culture for youngsters to seek employment in order to earn small amounts of money, this tradition may be detrimental to them and their futures. The author goes ahead to describing various

advantages such employment opportunities hold. However, he counters the merits with providing undermining demerits of the same. Additionally, Etzioni seeks a few researches done on the working teenager to further reinforce his arguments.
Author’s Arguments.
Etzioni’s main purpose of writing is that working at McDonald’s is bad for teenagers.

His basis of this is developed through analysis, review of literature and personal experience. One of the key reasons to Etzioni’s remarks is that he believes working in fast food restaurants undermines school attendance and involvement. This is because teenagers are exposed to long working hours. A study carried out in 1984 by Bryan Shore Fraser and Ivan Charper reveled that third of the youngsters between the ages of 14 and 17 who are employed by such restaurants work for 30 hours every week. 20 percent work for less than 15 hours while the rest work between 15 and 30 hours weekly. Etzioni argues by saying “no way such amounts will not interfere with schoolwork, especially homework.” Montgomery County revealed that 58 percent of seniors in one of the high schools admitted that their part-time jobs interfered with their

studies.
Working in fast-food restaurants impairs very few skills to young minds. The Charper Fraser study argue that employees in such areas learn various skills such as operating a cash register and a fast food processing machine. However, Etzioni wonders what the significance of such skills is. Furthermore he compares such skills with those of a carpenter with a lathe machine and a programmer with a computer. It is quite clear the skills acquired in such employment are inferior and incomparable to those laid out by the author.
Evaluation.
Etzioni chooses to disregard that such jobs provide a tremendous amount of employment for the young. He overlooks the good that the money earned from working at McDonald’s does and only concentrates on the negatives. “Some use it to support themselves, especially the poor. More middle-class kids set money aside to help pay for college, or save it for a major purchase-often a car.” Spending in the ways described justify a teenager who opts to work in a fast food restaurant.
Another weakens in Etzioni’s writing is that he makes an assumption to prove one of his point.

This is an overreaching generalization. He makes statements that may be true to him but not necessarily true to the rest of the teenagers and their parents. This can be seen when he describes the work environment in these restaurants as areas where the values of delinquent teens dominate. To prove this, he explains his own personal experience where his son Oren while working in Baskin Robbins dishing out ice cream, was regarded as a sucker by his peers for failing to steal. As much as this may be true, it may not be the case for other teenagers across the country. They may be going through totally different experiences. Therefore, such an assumption makes Etzioni’s agreement to lack

validity.
Conclusion.
This critical review attempts to evaluate Working at McDonald’s by Amitai Etzioni. The arguments that the author presents against teenage part-time jobs are quite interesting and bear proof and logical foundation. They include the lack of useful skills and the interference of part-time work with school work. However, his texts bears a few weakness by being ignorant to the importance of the money earned to the teenager and an assumption he makes.