Working at Mcdonalds

Teens and Jobs In the essay, “Working at McDonald’s,” Amitai Etzioni talks about his belief that working, especially at fast food chain restaurants can be bad for teenagers. Working, for teenagers under some circumstances can be bad for them but sometimes its good depending on the daily schedule of whomever is working. If the teen is still in school, working is bound to affect their involvement and attendance in negative ways. Though it’s true that while working you gain on the job experience, Etzioni believes it can’t really help if it comes at the cost of education while teens think the opposite. Fast food jobs do have an advantage earning money while also learning how to manage the money they make. It boils down to whether or not risks outweigh the benefits when working jobs like this which all depends on the current situation of the teen. To begin, the Etzioni writes how he believes jobs don’t go well with keeping up schoolwork and can get in the way of attendance. This is the same for nearly all extracurricular activities most are after school so it’s likely to get in the way. When I was in high school I had a friend John who tried to juggle a job, schoolwork and a football altogether but in the end he chose to give up football because he couldn’t make it to any of the practices. The author also takes into account that if students don’t have enough time to study their grades will drop without question. It comes down to the decision of which activity to give up to make room for work. More than half the time students will abandon the sport to find more study time like in my friend John’s case. Second, the author addresses the problem that I think has two sides to the coin. He believes that jobs generally don’t give any training that would help outside of the work they would be currently doing. This is true because most of the skills taught in fast food restaurants are for the simple things like running the register or working the fryer. Many of