The Sociology Blog with Joseph Dahl

In this chapter, it talks about the childhood of Clarence page in the 1950’s and all of the racism and discrimination he had to endure. This segregation he experienced wasn’t just in the south where they had whites only signs, but it was also in the north where they tried to hide it with “separate but equal policy’s”. He was denied using a public pool or going to an amusement park. Sometimes he said that he wished he was a white person. He was also never fully accepted by both races. Since he had white friends he was never considered black enough by black kids and he could never be considered fully white either.

The chapter also talks about his white friends don’t understand the reality that he has to face as a black person in America. The white friend was talking about his weekend at lesourdesville lake where he asks him if he’s been there. To his surprise, he realizes his friend has never noticed that it was all white people at the lake. Clarence page had to grow up in parallel society’s that was hard to understand for someone who was white. The point that page wants to make is that we shouldn’t be color blind but we should be more respectful to racial differences and other people’s cultures.

This article went in depth on the routine of every McDonald’s, how employees learn the ropes, to how managers are trained at hamburger university.

I’m employed at McDonald’s and many of the things mentioned about having a job at McDonald’s was true. Like how you will always be working part time. They didn’t mention that McDonald’s hires enough people so that nobody can work over 40 hours a week and get paid overtime. One thing this article talks about are the standards of quality and customer service. McDonald’s isn’t a five star meal but we always have to make sure that the food is satisfying to the customer. It can get very hectic at where I work because a lot of people can come to McDonald’s all at once and we have to get the food out on time.

I went into my nearby Starbucks on west lane to observe the atmosphere there. Walking in there it was relatively quiet yet had a neutral mood. The employees were nice when I ordered but of course they have to be for their job. One thing I always notice every time I walk into a Starbucks is someone is on their lab top typing out what I assume is something like a blog or a book. People usually go to coffee shops for the coffee and atmosphere so they can do whatever work they need for that day. No one really starts up a chat with random strangers unless it’s between a customer and employee. Every group stays within their own social group or comfort zone. I saw that some people had their phones out and weren’t even talking to their friends that they were with. It’s easy to just pull out your phone and check twitter because we all tend to become more anti social ever since the smartphone came out. Everyone has a different attitude towards others so I also noticed some customers were nicer to employees than others who were either very neutral or somewhat rude. Overall the feeling in there was just regular with not much conversation.

For this blog, I checked all of my clothes and items in my house to see where they were made and most of where my stuff was from was China. Although I did have clothes that were from country’s like Bangladesh, Honduras, Jordan, Taiwan, Malaysia etc. most household items like lamps, clocks toasters or whatever were made in china. Why is it that we don’t buy anything American? What makes all of these country’s where my clothes came from common is that they are poor country’s that would have limited labor laws and low minimum wages. Almost everything we buy is from China and this has impacted our society in many ways. This has taken jobs from Americans because why would companies pay for labor here when it costs $3.27 in China. There are 5 million fewer manufacturing jobs in the us since 2000. If everything was made here in the United States then everything would be more expensive. Because we like to buy things for a cheap price, many Americans would prefer to keep buying all of our items from there. We’ve pretty much become dependent on china. American businesses and consumers buy half a trillion dollars worth of Chinese goods every year. There is no other source of goods that we can buy from as cheap and as large as china. But what if we had everything made in china. Well it doesn’t take an economics expert to know that higher wages means higher cost in production which would also mean higher cost for consumers. For example, an iPhone that costs $600 is made in china. if it was made in the United States, it would cost over $2000 dollars. This is the same with clothes, the pair of denim jeans I own cost me $69 at JC penny. If those jeans were made in the US they would cost more than $100. Americans want jobs to be brought back to America but they don’t want to pay for everything. We really just want to have our cake and eat it too.

Nickel and Dimed is a true story about Barbra Ehrenreich. A middle class essay writer who went undercover as a low wage worker to find out how they make ends meet in that time of welfare reform. she starts working at hearthside where she works 8 hours and makes $2.43 an hour plus tips. all of her coworkers there are either living with some one else who also pays the rent they cant afford by themselves or they live in a van or motel. She realizes that these people are either barley surviving or not really surviving. after about two weeks of working there Barbra realizes she wont be able to pay the months rent unless she gets a second job. so she gets one at this restaurant called Jerry’s. she only holds both jobs for a short time untill she quits the hearthside because her new job pays better. She also discovers that everyone at Jerry’s only manages to get by through having a second job. so she begs the lady at the hotel attached to jerrys to give her a housekeeping job. At Jerry’s, Barbra was going through a very stressful shift because of four tables that had crazy demands and her boss yelled at her so she walked out and gave up on the experiment. in that month she made $1040 and spent $517 on food, gas, phone and other. rent was $500 so she would have had $22 left to spend. This does not include the children other people will have to raise, healthcare, insurance, and clothing. proof that in 1998 you could not live on minimum wage alone.

I could somewhat relate to this because i work a minimum wage job and it sucks. at one point in my childhood my family did live in poverty and we lived on welfare and child support. My mother would stress a lot about finances and i would too even though i was a little kid. its a shame that you can work 40 hours a week and still have the need to live on welfare. No one should have to live on welfare if they are working 40 hours a week. Welfare isnt successful with how many people are on it but how many people that get on it and then later dont need it.

One of the biggest corporations today is Apple. Everyone around me owns an iPhone while i myself own an iPhone. Apple has really changed the modern world forever with how we communicate to how we spend our time. We are all more drawn to our phones rather than to be apart of the real world. The iPhone changed the way we used the internet because we go onto social media on our phones where we share stuff about our personal lives. The iPod changed the way we listen to music by downloading thousands of songs onto a single device instead of having CD’s. In some school districts, particularly in areas where family’s earn a higher income, apple products like iPad’s and apple computers are used to teach children. Today apple is one of the most recognizable tech brands in the world with many loyal costumers who wait in line for the next iPhone. What makes apple products so successful is because apple focuses on presentation of the product and having it be simple to use instead of adding more variety than their competition. It has also become more trendy and fashionable to use apple products. Apple products have helped our society when they are being used by other companies or in schools. I have to use my phone in college because i will get text messages about events that are happening or it helps me communicate with other classmates so that we can help each other with homework. I use apple products because their interface easier to use than Samsung product’s.

what do you think about the fast food campaign demands for a $15 hour minimum wage and the right to unionize? what factors might encourage (or discourage) the unionization of fast food workers?

I do somewhat believe in a $15 an hour minimum wage especially in major cities like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles where the price of living there is so high. Its impossible to live in those cities if your making the federal minimum wage which is $7.25. Some places are more expensive to live than others in this country and fast food workers should unionize. I believe it is a right to unionize and every worker should be apart of a union. I think what has discouraged fast food workers from forming a union is that they are seen as easily replaceable. Another reason is that many fast food workers dont see their job as a permanent career. There are many people who are against 15 an hour minimum wage who are also everyday Americans like us as they see if the minimum wage goes up the prices at fast food will go up as well. The fight for 15 movement has made progress. Ive noticed my paychecks getting bigger since the year started. In the state of California the minimum wage will be $15 an hour by the year 2023.

This chapter of JBC is about the globalization of fast food restaurants, the effects they have on our society and the fight for a 15 dollar minimum wage. fast food has become a popular option in deciding what to eat for dinner. usually its easier, cheaper and less time consuming for someone to decide to run down to the nearest McDonald’s to get some burgers and fries than it is too make dinner at home. because its cheap delicious and fast we have seen fast food joints spread there franchises all over the world in the last several decades. These fast food giants like McDonald’s employs thousands of people worldwide and i myself are one of them. I work as a cashier at my local McDonald’s. in the chapter they explain how the number of unions has decreased in the past couple of decades and that there is no unionization for fast food workers because we are seen as expendable and easily replaceable by our corporation. when i first applied at my job, they were having opened interviews and they had many spots available and this was because a few weeks before that, a few employees at that McDonald’s walked out in protest and demanded better wages. Of course McDonald’s wasn’t going to do that so they fired them instead. In my experiences working there you arnt really treated fairly. they make us work on thanksgiving and Christmas and don’t even give you holiday pay. corporate acts like you dont have family’s to go home and see. if you try and call in sick or get out of work on those days they fire you. an argument that companies use to justify low wages and shorter hours is that most fast food workers are teenagers fresh out of high school but as the chapter states the median age for a McDonald’s worker is 28 years old. id say at more than half of my coworkers are over the age of 30 so its not all young faces and many of my coworkers have family’s themselves. these fast food jobs are definitely not enough to escape poverty and this is why there is a huge movement to try and change that. in the state of California, they passed a law that will raise the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour over the next few years so we can see that the fight for 15 movement has made progress.

In this article by Devah Pager, it talks about the consequences of incarceration when it comes to employment outcomes for black and white men. Pager conducts an audit for businesses in Milwaukee by having 2 pairs of white men and 2 pairs of black men. One pair has a criminal record and the other does not for each race. They apply for many jobs in the city and compare how many callbacks each pair has gotten. What i was really shocked about this article was that even the whites who had a criminal record got more callbacks than the blacks who had no criminal record. I thought that race wasn’t really much of an obstacle for job opportunities but that seems to be the case in Milwaukee. However i wonder if this study is relevant to the rest of the united states which in some places it must. But i really wonder if this is happening in my home state of California.

If i owned a business, would i hire an ex-con? for me that depends on what business i own, what there crime was and what there qualifications are. For example, if i owned a bank, and i interviewed someone who has the qualifications of a bank teller but has a criminal record that says he was arrested for something like grand theft, i wouldn’t feel comfortable hiring him regardless of race.

Can you think of a time that you purchased something because you wanted to fit in with a group? How did this item convey your membership in a group? Did this purchase end up satisfying your desire for belonging?

In high school, i was considered apart of the drama crowd. I did theater for all four years at my high school and i never really did anything else. Part of the reason why i stayed in my theater class was because all of my friends were in there with me. In our theater class we weren’t really just a class, we were also like a family as well. we have seen each other at our best moments and also at our worst. We would spend many hours together after school working on school plays that we would perform and this got all of us really close to one another. Even if we weren’t working on shows we would still stay after school just to hang out. Every Wednesday we would wear an orange shirt with the departments logo on it too represent the club that we were apart of. At the beginning of each year, our drama teacher would ask the students if they wanted to buy a shirt to represent the department. our teacher would buy the shirts online and the website would usually charge $12. The first year i was in the class i didn’t really know anyone well. I wanted to be more involved in the department so i saw this as an opportunity to fit in more with the group. So i gave my teacher the money even though we all weren’t required to buy the shirt. When the shirts came in, we all wore the shirts every Wednesday and it made me feel like i was apart of a second family. Because i bought the shirt it showed that i was more serious about being apart of this department and putting in the work. I eventually got closer to everyone and i got more involved in the work that we did and being apart of that group was one of the best times in my life.