Profits, Not Unions

In Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser comments upon three seemingly disparate facts about the fast food industry. First, cattle are grown fast and large, and are sometimes fed cattle blood, chickens, chicken manure, pigs, sawdust, and newspaper. Companies feed cattle these bodies, feces, and trash due to the high cost of (subsidized) grain.

Once this meat reaches the retail fast food chains, it’s reheated by deskilled workers. These workers aren’t allowed to unionize for more benefits, higher wages, or more control. In the late 60s and early 1970s, McDonald’s went to great lengths to abort the presence of unions in their franchises. Sometimes in these restauraunts workplace safety became an issue, given the unregulated conditions. The leading cause of death among women in the restauraunt industry in the 1990s, for example, was homicide – murder. But restauraunt associations fought off more regulation and safety inspections from OSHA, the government agency charged with protecting workers.

These three examples discuss the importance of profits for fast food companies. Anything that could jeprodize profits, such as costly regulations, are thought to be destructive to the financial health of those companies. The companies themselves would probably say that two things are at stake: the ultimate price of the food products, such as burgers, and the ultimate amount of money the company can return to its shareholders, who own stock in the company and expect a return on their investment. The political philosophy underpinning this belief is one of “free markets,” or business freedom that is unregulated by government interference or laws.

Instant Gratification

In Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation he discusses the role that instant gratification plays in the consumption of food. First of all, fast food depends on visual cues to entice customers; Schlosser reports that “more than 70% of fast food visits are ‘impulsive’” (Schlosser 66). These visual cues are reinforced by the food itself, which more resembles “food products” than what we might consider ‘real’ food. Real food is food that doesn’t go through a process of mechanization and design to be eaten. It doesn’t contain chemical additives that are essential to it tasting good prior to consumption. It is hard to eat raw, uncooked food prodcuts, for instance, without heating them up. Likewise, it would be difficult to eat food products, such as Bagel Bites, if they did not contain all the additives that make them “taste” good to the tongue and brain, without actually being healthy for the body.

This manufactured taste plays an incredibly important role in food choice because it gives consumers an instant reward for selecting unhealthy food. This instant reward is "instant gratification." Even though the food is processed and specially designed to cover its flaws as a food product, the body cannot distinguish evidence of this process in the state. Instead, the taste is chemically satisfying and immediately gratifying. It’s a biological trick with alarming consequences for long-term health, both for individuals and for populations generally.

Stroking

In Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser discusses the concept of “stroking,” which is a psychological technique used by fast food managers to encourage positive emotions in employees. This is a necessary part of company strategy because these workers are otherwise alienated from their work, as it’s “deskilled,” repetetive, and low-paying.

Stroking can also be a useful way to understand an anecdote from a subsequent chapter about seling “success” to middle-management employees of the fast food chains. In this later example, Schlosser explains how celebrity speakers at a “Success Authority” convention tell platitudes to the attendees about achieving their dreams through hard-work and self-confidence. 

Both of these instances of stroking seem to imply that forging temporary emotional connections in workers is a necessary part of supplementing work that’s unattractive or not emotionally fulfilling on its own, no matter what position in the corporate heirarchy that variuos workers belong to. While the profit motive makes sense for companies as a whole, it’s often not enough to fulfill individual workers within the company.