Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

Fast food restaurants make their appearance on nearly every street corner in every town. “Fast Food Nation” pointed out all of the flaws in these miserable grease pits, but there are some very small advantages of fast food restaurants besides the convenience and low prices.
The nation has about 2.5 million people employed in the fast food industry, this total is mostly made up of teenagers, the elderly, the uneducated, or the handicapped. Although working at a fast food restaurant may not be the most flattering job, it can help pay the bills or give teens some extra spending cash or maybe even money to pay for college. The fast-food industry has created millions and millions of jobs for these usually unappealing workers. The hours are generally flexible and most of the time the employee can choose how many and which hours a week they would like to work. The fast food industry has made it so that very, very few people have a quality reason to be completely unemployed.
When men were expected to be the main breadwinner of a family, fast food restaurants made it easier for women to maintain a steady income to help pay for a family's expenses. In the 1960s, only 30% of women worked compared to 65% of women working now. Jobs from the fast food industry have made a huge contribution to this. When fast food restaurants first became popular, women used them as a great opportunity to make money, and from that women expanded their horizons and started making an effort to work with their profession of choice.
The elderly have also become part of the work force for these fast food restaurants. Many elderly people are not able to continue with their chosen profession because of different reasons such as physical stress or they no longer have the mental capability, so the fast food industry becomes appealing to them. Working at a fast food restaurant does not generally take much physical or mental effort, which makes it a prime industry for...