Society's Next Robots

The essay entitled, “Working at McDonald’s”, takes a look at the issues regarding the fast-food jobs available to today’s teenagers. Amitai Etzioni, the author, believes that working at fast-food restaurants, specifically McDonald’s, is detrimental to young workers. He argues that “these jobs undermine school attendance and involvement, impart few skills…and simultaneously skew the values of teen-agers” (330). With a “highly routinized” schedule, there is no room for creativity. Etzioni also believes that the lack of supervision prevents the teens from having a role model and proper guidance.

The attempt to provide a solid argument is skewed by Etzioni’s lack of credibility and the presence of poor inductive reasoning. There are biased opinions that ruin his ability to argue effectively and to persuade the audience to believe in his point of view. Due to the numerous faults in his arguments, “Working at McDonald’s” fails to convince parents of his point of view.

According to the prologue of the essay, Etzioni received some of the information, which is used as evidence, from his son, Dari. After reading the first three pages, Etzioni uses his other son, Oren, as an example to prove one of his arguments. “When my son Oren was dishing out ice cream for Baskin Robbins …, his fellow teen-workers considered him a sucker for not helping himself to the till” (Etzioni 332). Because of the relationship between the author and his sons, the information provided can be seen as biased. Fathers usually believe that their sons can never do anything wrong, when in fact they can. Etzioni’s son could have provided false information. Due to the biased nature of the essay, it has lost all credibility.

The lack of credibility is not the only problem with the argument. There is a change in audience between the beginning and end of the essay, which is an example of inconsistency. At the beginning, Etzioni makes the audience the parents of teens by saying “McDonald’s is bad for your kids” (330). At the very end of the essay, the audience has become the teenagers themselves by demanding students to “go back to school” (333). Etzioni makes a mistake by not keeping a consistent audience throughout. The reader becomes confused as to who the author is trying to persuade.

As far as the poor inductive reasoning is concerned, Etzioni draws conclusions from non-credible facts. There are flaws in the logic that he uses as support. In one of the unofficial studies that he refers back to, “58 percent of the seniors acknowledged that their jobs interfere with their school work” (332). What he fails to mention is that a majority of fast-food employers will reduce the amount of hours worked if asked; therefore, the students should blame themselves for being overworked, not their job.

Next, there are numerous assumptions that are missing the necessary support. He claims that the jobs provided are “highly