Injuries & Potatoes

Injuries

Something that I didn't mention in the previous blog post was the amount of injury that happens to teenage workers in the United States.  These injuries doesn't just happen at fast food restaurants, but all jobs that teenagers work at.  "Teenagers are far more likely to be untrained, and every year, about 200,000 are injured on the job" (83).  The high incidence injuries are from slipping, falling, strains and burns.  These weren't the only ways that teenagers would get hurt.  A lot of male workers would bring a handgun to work if they had to work the later shifts in case they got robbed or someone broke in after hours.

Robberies would occur either early in the morning or close to closing time.  Since the automobile industry boomed in the 1940's, more highways were built resulting in fast food restaurants being open near the highways.  Thus, a higher rate of robberies which made it dangerous for teenage workers to work late at night and during the day.  It is crazy to think that you have to protect yourself at work when you're trying to make a living.

Potatoes

Why do you think the french fries taste so good at McDonalds? Well, there is a whole process involved starting with the Idaho potato industry to the dehydrating company.  

J.R Simplot started his career by working at a potato warehouse then later became a potato farmer.  He started leasing acres of land to grow potatoes.  On the side, he also shipped onions and wondered why the company was buying so many onions.  He soon found out that they have been using a prune dryer to dehydrate the onions.  Simplot bought one of these machines and started drying potatoes.

Later on, frozen foods became popular to America, so Simplot created a way to make frozen fries that would taste just as fresh as freshly fried french fries.  World War I veterans enjoyed french fries while they were stationed in Europe then started becoming popular in the states.  Simplot built a new factory to make his french fries to be sold at McDonald's because that was the number one place where people ate their fries.  He created a system that made frozen fries and the employees would just have to deep fry the potatoes a few times to become the yummy, golden-crispy fry.  While the success for J.R Simplot was going up, half of the potato farmers in Idaho lost their farms.  The corporate potato farms were taking over land and took jobs from many farmers in Idaho.  Hearing about this and reading about it are totally two different things.  When you hear about it, it's not a big deal.  But when you read about this, it's very sad to know that farmers are losing their jobs to big companies.  This is their life and how they make a living to support their family.  When companies take away jobs, they are taking away so much more than just a job.  

Reading this book reveals all the dirty little secrets about fast food restaurants.  Fast food employees and customers will never know how these restaurants came to be.  How the food is processed and which families are suffering because of the selfish business owners.