Rhetorical Reading Response “Working at McDonald’s”
In Amitai Etzioni’s article “Working at McDonald’s”
(1986), he informs that working isn’t necessarily beneficial for teenagers and
advises that teens should stay in school. Etzioni develops the idea by
including facts, statistics, and various reasons how fast food jobs affect
teens. Etzioni wrote this work in order to tell students to stay in school and
that working possibly isn’t the best thing for them. The intended audience is
students who need guidance.
In the essay, Etzioni hazardously mentions the bad
influence of working in fast-food chains, he thinks that working in fast-food
chains as a student can cause academic problems. As a student who has an
experience of having a part-time job, I can say that working while you go to
school is a tough mission. Although I only must have worked during some
weekends, I strongly agree with what the author mentions in his essay. Work can
be really an exciting experience because we can get “our own money”. However, I
think that once we forget our purpose to go to school and precede part-time
jobs, we can easily lose our chance to get our dreams to come true.
Etzioni demonstrated his expertise by using logos in
his essay to further prove that fast food jobs are not good for high school
students. “Minorities are “over-represented” in these jobs (21 percent of fast
food employees)” (Etzioni). In this quote, Etzioni states the population of
teens in fast food places. He further states that these jobs provide no career
ladders and few marketable skills since they are low-skilled jobs. “A third of
fast-food employees (including some school dropouts) labor more than 30 hours
per week” (Etzioni). Here, Etzioni provides more facts about the long hours'
teens usually work per week. This adds to the fast-food theme because of the
small time frame the person has before the next order is requested. Eventually,
it leads to having no room for initiative, creativity or even elementary
rearrangements. More statistics are given as he then explains that 58 percent
of seniors know that their jobs interfere with school work (Etzioni). The
statistics let us know that the teens are self-aware of the harm jobs do to
their education. It is then shown that these jobs are “ideal” for lower-class
and “non-academic” youngsters. Furthermore, Etzioni gives an abundant amount of
statistics to argue on why fast food jobs are bad for high school students.
Works Cited
Etzioni,
Amitai. “Working at McDonald’s” LauchPad. Originally published in The Miami Herald, August 24, 1986. http://www.macmillanhighered.com/launchpadsolo/readwrite/7385790/Home#/launchpad/item/MODULE_bsi__2B8776E4__C845__493C__8BFF__4BCA15B8E06E/bsi__F4596593__FA1C__43C3__A395__DD50DE127AC9?mode=Preview&getChildrenGrades=True&includeDiscussion=False&readOnly=False&toc=syllabusfilter&renderIn=fne
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