For this assignment I chose to do an ethnographic survey of two local fast food restaurants. I had visited each of these restaurants, observing work ethic, the style of work in respect to Fordism and Taylorism, types of people that work at these restaurants, as well as customers that go to each of these restaurants. Both of the restaurants were in the same vicinity, in Hempstead. I visited White Castle and McDonalds. .
I visited the White Castle restaurant around 6 in the afternoon. This turned out to be a very interesting visit. When I arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see a very clean restaurant, with employees cleaning that tables and mopping the floor. As I sat and ate my 50 cent cheeseburger I realized that the work ethic of the employees was very poor. They only did what they were ordered to do by the manager. I heard the manager say to one of the employees, "Put a new bag in the trash." It seemed that the manger was ordering the employees around rather that asking them to do something. After about 20 minutes I realized how little the employees cared about their job and what had to be done. They were there to make their job as easy as it could be and get paid. They did not care about their job it was just something they had to do for money. As I watched what was happening on the other side of the counter, I saw the employees throwing packages of buns across the kitchen and I even saw an employee drop something on the ground and then put it on the grill.
In respect to Taylorism and Fordism, this restaurant was very unorganized and had no rhyme or reason to what was being done. They had about 7 employees behind the counter, two taking orders, one doing drive up, and one cooking food. All the others were just standing around, slacking off. Instead of having an assembly type line where one person cooks the burgers, another puts in on a roll, and the next person puts it in a box, one person was left to do all the work.