The joys of hospitality
When I was a young, naive country lad who had moved to Melbourne with dreams of making it big, I realised I needed a job to pay my way through university. And so I could purchase beer. I was only 17 and had little life experience so I thought to myself, “Where can I get a job really quickly without trying very hard or having an enormous amount of skills?” The answer was found under the golden arches. That’s right, the company that has poured billions of dollars into making us all fat, McDonald’s. I spent the first few years of my Melbourne experience asking customers if they would like to add a sundae to their order or whether they would prefer a large quarter pounder meal. (The answer was almost always yes to that last question by the way.)
I read the chapter of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed with great interest. I thought I did it tough in my tight grey pants serving drunken bogans and soon-to-be obese children, but this article gave me a greater appreciation of Australia’s labour laws. Ehrenreich’s article was an education on America’s labour laws, class system and underlying racism. More than once, I wanted her to just scream at one of her greasy haired bosses to “fuck off, you can’t treat me this way”, but this of course would have given the game away.
I find this form of journalism to be quite brave. I have not come across an awful amount of ‘gonzo’ journalism but I do appreciate what the writer does to expose an injustice. Immersing themselves into someone else’s life to tell a story is a truly effective way to tell a story. Although I do have a slight problem with the element of deception required in order to get the story. I understand why, it just doesn’t sit well for some reason.
In this particular article, Ehrenreich’s style is really engaging and I was immediately sucked into the story. Really fascinating, quite heart-breaking but very readable. Her humour is what drew me in initially and then the story flowed from there. I had very vivid images of each ‘character’.
This is very different to the Paige Williams article as there was little if any humour in hers and it was heavy on facts and figures. Ehrenreich would occasionally drip feed figures into the story through footnotes which did not overwhelm me. Too many stats would have detracted from the story.
Even though Ehrenreich believed she failed her experiment, I think she succeeded in exposing a fairly alarming side of America. I will never ever complain about my $12 an hour McJob again!
