“I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave”
One. Describe the dystopia of the warehouse wage slave job.
A barrage of tests, invasive questions, and videos create the sense that the job applicant is a prisoner doing prison work. This sense of self-abasement is further reinforced by the dystopian inner city landscape of the interview office.
You’re ordered to do stretching exercises to counteract the abuse of overtime work shifts. There is an implicit message that the work you're doing is brutalizing your body, so stretch in order that we may exploit you all the more.
Inevitably, the repetitive work will do lifelong damage: arthritis, carpal tunnel, scoliosis, herniated disc, plantar fasciitis, shin splints, hernias, PTSD, etc.
One package distribution error (putting two of the same packages on the conveyor belt when the scanner says only one package) results in a disciplinary notice, which in short paints you like a criminal. "A package distribution error has rendered you a liability to the operation."
Your work is dehumanizing and defines you as a cog in a machine: You stand still at a conveyor line for a 10-hour shift while walking on concrete or metal stairs. Depression and madness are the natural results of this kind of work. In fact, to not go mad in this environment is to evidence another form of madness.
You want more?
Workers walk 12 miles a day on concrete.
You have to show up an hour early and wait for being sorted out and trained and this hour goes unpaid. Again, the implicit message is that you're worthless and we have you in our control.
The employees are warned “there is no room for inefficiencies” and directed toward Brian, a husband with children, who lost two weeks of pay because he screwed up on his job application. Brian is used as a warning and an example to the others. This sounds like a prisoner-of-war camp.
Bathroom breaks are discouraged because they diminish productivity.
There are penalties for “butt crack violations” when you're squatting or bending down, so you have to wear the appropriate belt and pants.
If you cry, you’re fired “because there’s sixteen people waiting for your job.” Crying is a sign of being critical and disrespectful toward your employers.
You feel like you’re an employee from an episode of Black Mirror. I can't show it to you because of its graphic nature, but it's very compelling.
This work hell is so bad that one abroad friend says on Skype, “Is this America?”
Essay Assignment Based on Prompt #6 from page 410.
McClelland not only chronicles the physical toll warehouse work can exact; she examines the psychological toll as well. How does her account of the psychological pressures she experienced on the job compare to the portrait of the unemployed Louis Uchitelle (342) presents? Do you find any similarities or parallels in the ways each essay explores this issue?
Sample Thesis
McClelland, Uchitelle, and Vice News show that the modern day business model has become more and more predatory toward the workers, exploiting them in new ways that result in new kinds of humanitarian crises that are morally bankrupt and contrary to the American Dream.
Mapping Components for Body Paragraph Topic Sentences
Triangular relationship between temp agency, employer and worker strips workers of their rights and conceals discrimination practices.
The New Economy has created desperation, a condition that the new employers are eager to take advantage of.
The labor and wage practices are analogous in many ways to a form of slavery.
The New Economy doesn’t give workers viable alternatives to these exploitive conditions and in fact traps them in a cycle not unlike that between an abusive boyfriend and his girlfriend.
Sample Thesis from Vice News Video
Intro: I would describe the acid that fell over a worker and how his employers did not dial 9/11.
Worksite conditions paint America as a dystopia evidenced by __________________________, _________________, ________________, _________________, and ____________________.
no accountability in a triangulated system among workers, temp agencies, and companies
human rights violations
de-investment labor model in face of globalization
stolen wages
enabling raiteros
abundance of desperate labor market in New Economy
Profits, sales, and stock value are up in these companies even as labor conditions decline.
In this workers' dystopia, white middle-aged Americans without college degrees are dying at alarmingly high rates.
"Our Baby, Her Womb" by Arlie Russell Hoschild
One. What is a typical surrogate mom situation?
A woman hits about 40 because she's worked during that time, she has a lot of financial resources, and she realizes she's too old to bear a child, so she seeks a younger, less financially endowed woman.
The dynamic of power is someone with money buying someone's body and that body belongs to a someone of modest financial means.
An aside: Just like the documentary we saw on temporary work, whenever we're short on financial resources we find ourselves vulnerable to sacrificing our bodies to survive.
I'd rather be a surrogate mother than work in a chicken farm.
The total cost is $80,000, and this includes psychological evaluations. However, in India, the total cost is $10,000.
Two. What are the typical steps at attempting pregnancy?
First, the husband and wife have a doctor implant their embryo in a surrogate's womb.
If step one doesn't work, step two is combining the husband's sperm with a surrogate's egg (a donor egg) and implanting into another surrogate's womb.
In the case of Dr. Patel, she increases the chances of success by implanting "about five embryos at at time, aborting fetuses if they numbered more than two."
Essay Prompt:
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that renting a womb or surrogate mother is unethical, exploitive, and anti-humanitarian.
Sample Thesis:
The payment of women to borrow their bodies during a pregnancy is morally bankrupt when we consider ______________, _______________, ________________, and ___________________.
Sample Refutation of the Above Thesis
While in an ideal world I would be opposed to the surrogate womb business, in the real world surrogate motherhood is the lesser of two evils for poor women because ____________, ___________, ______________, and _______________.
Possible Supports for the Above
Paternalistic do-gooders shouldn't be able to tell the poor what they can and can not do with their bodies.
Payment for a womb rental may help a woman feed her starving family.
Payment for a womb rental may help a woman get an education and break free from her cycle of poverty.
Comma Splices, FANBOYS, and Conjunctive Adverbs
McMahon Grammar Exercises: Comma Splices and Run-Ons
After each sentence, put a “C” for Correct or a “CS” for Comma Splice. If the sentence is a comma splice, rewrite it so that it is correct.
One. Bailey used to eat ten pizzas a day, now he eats a spinach salad for lunch and dinner.
Two. Marco no longer runs on the treadmill, instead he opts for the less injury-causing elliptical trainer.
Three. Running can cause shin splints, which can cause excruciating pain.
Four. Running in the incorrect form can wreak havoc on the knees, slowing down can
often correct the problem.
Five. While we live in a society where 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers are on the rise, the reading of books, sad to say, is on the decline.
Six. Facebook is a haven for narcissists, it encourages showing off with selfies and other mundane activities that are ways of showing how great and amazing our lives our, what a sham.
Seven. We live in a society where more and more Americans are consuming 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers, however, those same Americans are reading less and less books.
Eight. Love is a virus from outer space, it tends to become most contagious during April and May.
Nine. The tarantula causes horror in many people, moreover there is a species of tarantula in Brazil, the wandering banana spider, that is the most venomous spider in the world.
Ten. Even though spiders cause many people to recoil with horror, most species are harmless.
Eleven. The high repair costs of European luxury vehicles repelled Amanda from buying such a car, instead she opted for a Japanese-made Lexus.
Twelve. Amanda got a job at the Lexus dealership, now she’s trying to get me a job in the same office.
Thirteen. While consuming several cinnamon buns, a twelve-egg cheese omelet, ten slices of French toast slathered in maple syrup, and a tray of Swedish loganberry crepes topped with a dollop of blueberry jam, I contemplated the very grave possibility that I might be eating my way to a heart attack.
Fourteen. Even though I rank marijuana far less dangerous than most pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other commonly used intoxicants, I find marijuana unappealing for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its potential for radically degrading brain cells, its enormous effect on stimulating the appetite, resulting in obesity, and its capacity for over-relaxing many people so that they lose significant motivation to achieve their primary goals, opting instead for a life of sloth and intractable indolence.
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