Essay 3
Minimum of 2 sources for your MLA Works Cited page.
Choice A
Watch Hasan Minhaj in The Patriot Act episode “Why the Internet Sucks” and develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the episode’s main theme.
Choice B
Watch John Oliver’s YouTube presentation about medical devices and develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the alleged abuses in the medical device industry.
Choice C
Read Ibram Kendi’s “What the Believers Are Denying” and agree or disagree with his contention that racism and global warming denial are rooted in the same psychologically flawed thinking.
Choice D
Read "It's Time to Confront the Threat of Right-Wing Terrorism" by John Cassidy in The New Yorker and "Does the banning of Alex Jones signal a new era of big tech responsibility?" by Julia Carrie Wong and Olivia Solon in The Guardian and agree or disagree with the claim that big tech companies are morally obliged to censor right-wing white nationalist trolls such as Alex Jones. For another source, you can also use “Free Speech Scholars to Alex Jones: You’re Not Protected” by Alan Feuer.
Choice E
In the context of Jasmin Barmore’s essay “The Queen of Eating Shellfish Online,” develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the alleged benefits of mukbang, the glorification of binge-eating on a webcam.
Choice F
Read “Is Dentistry a Science?” by Ferris Jabr and refute or defend his claim that dentistry is rife with venality (greed) and corruption that compromises a patient’s best interests. For this assignment, you can consult “Dentists Need to Up Their Game” and “Is Your Dentist Ripping You Off?”
Choice G
Read Nick Hanauer’s “Better Schools Won’t Fix America” and refute or support the author’s contention that structural inequality, not schooling, is the root of America’s crisis.
Choice H
Read Andrew Marant’s “Free Speech Is Killing Us” and support or refute his claim that free speech does not apply to private companies.
Choice I
Read Allison Arieff’s “Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That” and support or refute her contention that self-driving cars are not the solution to traffic dangers.
Choice J
Read Judith Shulevitz’s essay “Why You Never See Your Friends Anymore,” and support or refute the author’s claim that lack of regular friendship bonding is having far outreaching destructive effects on society.
Choice K
Read Tad Friend’s New Yorker online article “Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change?” and look at two opposing camps on the role of alternative protein sources as a viable replacement for meat. One camp says we face too many obstacles to accept non-animal alternative proteins: evolution, taste, and cost, to name several. An opposing camp says we have the technology and the proven product in Impossible Foods and other non-meat proteins to replace animal protein. Assessing these two opposing camps in the context of Tad Friend’s essay, develop an argumentative thesis addresses the question: How viable is the push for tech companies to help climate change by replacing animals with alternative proteins?
Excerpts from Tad Friend's Essay (parenthetical citations my own)
(Is 2035 the historical turning point for the end of meat?)
A sixty-five-year-old emeritus professor of biochemistry at Stanford University, Brown is the founder and C.E.O. of Impossible Foods. By developing plant-based beef, chicken, pork, lamb, dairy, and fish, he intends to wipe out all animal agriculture and deep-sea fishing by 2035. His first product, the Impossible Burger, made chiefly of soy and potato proteins and coconut and sunflower oils, is now in seventeen thousand restaurants. When we met, he arrived not in Silicon Valley’s obligatory silver Tesla but in an orange Chevy Bolt that resembled a crouching troll. He emerged wearing a T-shirt depicting a cow with a red slash through it, and immediately declared, “The use of animals in food production is by far the most destructive technology on earth. We see our mission as the last chance to save the planet from environmental catastrophe.”
(Meat is destroying planet Earth)
Meat is essentially a huge check written against the depleted funds of our environment. Agriculture consumes more freshwater than any other human activity, and nearly a third of that water is devoted to raising livestock. One-third of the world’s arable land is used to grow feed for livestock, which are responsible for 14.5 per cent of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Razing forests to graze cattle—an area larger than South America has been cleared in the past quarter century—turns a carbon sink into a carbon spigot.
When the world’s one and a half billion beef and dairy cows ruminate, the microbes in their bathtub-size stomachs generate methane as a by-product. Because methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, some twenty-five times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide, cattle are responsible for two-thirds of the livestock sector’s G.H.G. emissions. . . . Every four pounds of beef you eat contributes to as much global warming as flying from New York to London—and the average American eats that much each month.
(Meat has other disadvantages, including health risks)
In the past decade, venture capitalists have begun funding companies that view animal meat not as inflammatory, or as emblematic of the Man, but as a problematic technology. For one thing, it’s dangerous. Eating meat increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and colorectal cancer; a recent Finnish study found that, across a twenty-two-year span, devoted meat-eaters were twenty-three per cent more likely to die. Because antibiotics are routinely mixed into pig and cattle and poultry feed to protect and fatten the animals, animal ag promotes antibiotic resistance, which is projected to cause ten million deaths a year by 2050. And avian and swine flus, the most likely vectors of the next pandemic, pass easily to humans, including via the aerosolized feces widely present in slaughterhouses. Researchers at the University of Minnesota found fecal matter in sixty-nine per cent of pork and ninety-two per cent of poultry; Consumer Reports found it in a hundred per cent of ground beef.
For another thing, meat is wildly inefficient. Because cattle use their feed not only to grow muscle but also to grow bones and a tail and to trot around and to think their mysterious thoughts, their energy-conversion efficiency—the number of calories their meat contains compared with the number they take in to make it—is a woeful one per cent.
(For decades, vegetarian burgers have suffered the justified stigma of being a horrible eating experience. Why?)
The existing plant-based armory was unpromising; veggie burgers went down like a dull sermon. But, Brown reasoned, this was because they were designed for the wrong audience—vegetarians, the five per cent of the population who had accustomed themselves to the pallid satisfactions of bean sprouts and quinoa. “The other veggie-burger companies were just trying to be as good as the next plant-based replacement for meat, which meant they were making something no meat lover would ever put in his mouth,” Brown said. To get meat-eaters to love meat made from plants, he had to resolve a scientific question, one that he decided was the most important in the world: What makes meat so delicious?
(Impossible Burger relies on science to replicate the meat-eating experience.)
Brown assembled a team of scientists, who approached simulating a hamburger as if it were the Apollo program. They made their burger sustainable: the Impossible Burger requires eighty-seven per cent less water and ninety-six per cent less land than a cowburger, and its production generates eighty-nine per cent less G.H.G. emissions. They made it nutritionally equal to or superior to beef. And they made it look, smell, and taste very different from the customary veggie replacement. Impossible’s breakthrough involves a molecule called heme, which the company produces in tanks of genetically modified yeast. Heme helps an Impossible Burger remain pink in the middle as it cooks, and it replicates how heme in cow muscle catalyzes the conversion of simple nutrients into the molecules that give beef its yeasty, bloody, savory flavor. To my palate, at least, the Impossible Burger still lacks a beef burger’s amplitude, that crisp initial crunch followed by shreds of beef falling apart on your tongue. But, in taste tests, half the respondents can’t distinguish Impossible’s patty from a Safeway burger.
Eighteen months ago, White Castle, the nation’s oldest burger chain, started selling the Impossible Slider, and sales exceeded expectations by more than thirty per cent. Lisa Ingram, White Castle’s C.E.O., said, “We’ve often had customers return to the counter to say, ‘You gave us the wrong order, the real burger.’ ” In August, Burger King rolled out the Impossible Whopper in all of its seventy-two hundred locations. Fernando Machado, the company’s chief marketing officer, said, “Burger King skews male and older, but Impossible brings in young people and women, and puts us in a different spectrum of quality, freshness, and health.”
Ninety-five per cent of those who buy the Impossible Burger are meat-eaters. The radio host Glenn Beck, who breeds cattle when he’s not leading the “They’re taking away your hamburgers!” caucus, recently tried the Impossible Burger on his show, in a blind taste test against a beef burger—and guessed wrong. “That is insane!” he marvelled. “I could go vegan!”
Pat Brown had built a better mouthtrap. But would that be enough?
(Tech companies competing with Impossible Burger)
A number of alternative-protein entrepreneurs share Brown’s mission but believe he’s going about it the wrong way. The plant-based producer Beyond Meat is in fifty-three thousand outlets, including Carl’s Jr., A&W, and Dunkin’, and has a foothold in some fifty countries. Its I.P.O., in May, was the most successful offering of the year, with the stock up more than five hundred per cent; though the company is losing money, investors have noticed that sales of plant-based meat in restaurants nearly quadrupled last year. While Impossible depends on the patented ingredient heme, Beyond builds its burgers and sausages without genetically modified components, touting that approach as healthier. Ethan Brown, Beyond’s founder and C.E.O. (and no relation to Pat Brown), told me, jocularly, “I have an agreement with my staff that if I have a heart attack they have to make it look like an accident.”
Several dozen other startups have taken an entirely different approach: growing meat from animal cells. Yet even Pat Brown’s competitors often end up following his lead. Mike Selden, the co-founder and C.E.O. of Finless Foods, a startup working on cell-based bluefin tuna, said, “Pat and Impossible made it seem like there’s a real industry here. He stopped using the words ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’ and set the rules for the industry: ‘If our product can’t compete on regular metrics like taste, price, convenience, and nutrition, then all we’re doing is virtue signalling for rich people.’ And he incorporated biotechnology in a way that’s interesting to meat-eaters—Pat made alternative meat sexy.”
(The challenge of making alternative proteins is taste and mouth-feel)
It’s easy enough to replicate some animal products (egg whites are basically just nine proteins and water), but mimicking cooked ground beef is a real undertaking. Broadly speaking, a burger is sixty per cent water, twenty-five per cent protein, and fifteen per cent fat, but, broadly speaking, if you assembled forty-two litres of water you’d be sixty per cent of the way to a human being. Cooked beef contains at least four thousand different molecules, of which about a hundred contribute to its aroma and flavor and two dozen contribute to its appearance and texture. When you heat plant parts, they get softer, or they wilt. When you heat a burger, its amino acids react with simple sugars and unsaturated fats to form flavor compounds. The proteins also change shape to form protein gels and insoluble protein aggregates—chewy bits—as the patty browns and its juices caramelize. This transformation gives cooked meat its nuanced complexity: its yummy umami.
For alternative-protein companies, the first challenge is often producing a protein that’s utterly tasteless. A flavor packet can then make it delicious. A startup called Spira, for instance, is attempting to develop algae called spirulina as a food source. “The problem is that it’s a slimy goop,” Surjan Singh, the company’s C.T.O., told me. “And when you dry it and powderize it, it tends to biodegrade, so it tastes terrible. We’re hoping to break even, eventually, where we can extract a protein isolate that’s really good for you, but that tastes like as close to nothing as possible.”
Impossible’s first prototype burgers contained the “off-flavors” characteristic of their foundational protein, soy or wheat or pea. (Pea protein is sometimes said to evoke cat urine.) So the company’s scientists had to learn how to erase those flavors, even as they were learning the subtleties of the aroma and taste they were trying to emulate.
(Veggie burgers need "blood.")
Most veggie burgers are formed by an extruder, a machine that operates like a big pressure cooker, using heat and compression to replicate meat’s fibrous morphology. Brown suspected that the key to a truly meaty plant burger was an ingredient. He had a hunch about heme, an iron-carrying molecule in hemoglobin (which makes your blood red), whose structure is similar to that of chlorophyll (which enables plants to photosynthesize). David Botstein, a geneticist who sat on Impossible’s board, told me, “If you understand biochemistry, you understand that heme, more than anything else, is a central molecule of animal and plant life.” As Brown was beginning to experiment, he pulled up clover from behind his house and dissected its root nodules, to see if there was enough heme inside to make them pink. (There was.)
(We are hard-wired to bite into blood.)
In Impossible’s microbiology lab, Brown told me, “An interesting, extremely speculative idea is that there’s an evolutionary advantage to human beings in seeking out heme. It’s a cue that means ‘There’s a dense source of protein and iron nearby.’ ” The first time that Impossible made a burger with heme, he said, “it tasted like meat, and within six months we had compelling evidence that it was the magic ingredient that gives meat its flavor.”
(Veggie burger skeptics claim we are biologically and culturally hard-wired to eat animals, and this includes masculine muscle-flexing and class-status seeking.)
Even those sympathetic to Brown’s mission fret that taste and mouthfeel won’t matter if the desire for meat is hardwired by evolution. Maple Leaf Foods, a Canadian company, is building a three-hundred-million-dollar facility in Indiana to make alternative proteins. But its C.E.O., Michael McCain, told me, “The human body has been consuming animal protein for a hundred and fifty thousand years, and I honestly think that’s going to continue for a really long time.”
Climate change, which now drives our hunt for meat substitutes, originally drove hominids to turn to meat, about two and a half million years ago, by making our usual herbivorean foodstuffs scarce. Eating animals added so much nutrition to our diets that we no longer had to spend all our time foraging, and we developed smaller stomachs and larger brains. Some scientists believe that this transformation created a powerful instinctive craving. Hanna Tuomisto, a Finnish professor of agricultural science, recently wrote, “This evolutionary predilection explains why eating meat provides more satisfaction compared to plant-based food and why so many people find it difficult to adopt a vegetarian diet.”
An inborn meat hunger remains a hypothesis; meat is the object of many human urges, including the urge to construct all-encompassing theories. In the book “Meathooked,” Marta Zaraska writes, “We crave meat because it stands for wealth and for power over other humans and nature. We relish meat because history has taught us to think of vegetarians as weaklings, weirdos, and prudes.” The anthropologist Nick Fiddes goes further, declaring, in “Meat: A Natural Symbol,” that we value meat not in spite of the fact that it requires killing animals but because it does. It’s the killing that establishes us as kings of the jungle.
Ethan Brown, of Beyond Meat, suspects that nibbling plant patties doesn’t exude the same macho vibe. A bearded, gregarious, six-foot-five man who played basketball at Connecticut College, he has retained a squad of athlete “ambassadors” to help dispel that perception. When I visited Ethan at the company’s offices, in El Segundo, California, he pointed me to a 2009 study of Ivory Coast chimpanzees which suggested that males who shared meat with females doubled their mating success. “Men usually give women the meat first, at dinner, before the sex—you want to be a protein provider,” he said. “Do you think if you take a woman out and buy her a salad you get the same reaction?”
Suggested Outline
Paragraph 1, your introduction, explain the environmental crisis that compels us to look to alternative proteins.
Paragraph 2, defend or refute the claim from tech entrepreneurs that animal protein can be replaced by non-animal proteins in a way that is affordable and satisfying in the next 15-30 years.
Paragraphs 3-6, your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 7, your counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 8, your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.
October 15 Essay 2 due on turnitin. We will watch Patriot Act episode “Why the Internet Sucks” and develop and argumentative thesis. We will also develop an argument about medical devices based on John Oliver’s video. Homework #10 for next class. Read Ibram Kendi’s “What the Believers Are Denying” and in 200 words agree or disagree with his contention that racism and global warming denial are rooted in the same psychologically flawed thinking.
October 17 Go over Ibram Kendi’s “What the Believers Are Denying.” Homework #11 for next class: Read "It's Time to Confront the Threat of Right-Wing Terrorism" by John Cassidy in The New Yorker and "Does the banning of Alex Jones signal a new era of big tech responsibility?" by Julia Carrie Wong and Olivia Solon in The Guardian and in 200 words agree or disagree with the claim that big tech companies are morally obliged to censor right-wing white nationalist trolls such as Alex Jones.
October 22 Go over "It's Time to Confront the Threat of Right-Wing Terrorism" by John Cassidy in The New Yorker and "Does the banning of Alex Jones signal a new era of big tech responsibility?" by Julia Carrie Wong and Olivia Solon in The Guardian and agree or disagree with the claim that big tech companies are morally obliged to censor right-wing white nationalist trolls such as Alex Jones. We will also read “Free Speech Scholars to Alex Jones: You’re Not Protected” by Alan Feuer. Homework #12: In the context of Jasmin Barmore’s essay “The Queen of Eating Shellfish Online,” develop an argumentative thesis of 22 words that addresses the alleged benefits of mukbang, the glorification of binge-eating on a webcam.
October 24 Go over Jasmin Barmore’s essay “The Queen of Eating Shellfish Online,” develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the alleged benefits of mukbang, the glorification of binge-eating on a webcam. Your homework #13 is to read “Is Dentistry a Science?” by Ferris Jabr and in 200 words refute or defend his claim that dentistry is rife with venality (greed) and corruption that compromises a patient’s best interests.
October 29 Go over “Is Dentistry a Science?” by Ferris Jabr and refute or defend his claim that dentistry is rife with venality (greed) and corruption that compromises a patient’s best interests. You can also consult “Dentists Need to Up Their Game” and “Is Your Dentist Ripping You Off?” Homework #14 is to read Nick Hanauer’s “Better Schools Won’t Fix America” and in 200 words explain the author’s argument.
October 31 Read Nick Hanauer’s “Better Schools Won’t Fix America” and refute or support the author’s contention that structural inequality, not schooling, is the root of America’s crisis. Read Andrew Marant’s “Free Speech Is Killing Us” and support or refute his claim that free speech does not apply to private companies.
November 5 Chromebook In-Class Objective: Write introduction and thesis paragraph.
November 7 Chromebook In-Class Objective: Write 3 supporting paragraphs, your counterargument-rebuttal paragraph, and your conclusion.
November 12 Essay 3 is due on turnitin.
Choice E
In the context of Jasmin Barmore’s essay “The Queen of Eating Shellfish Online,” develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the alleged benefits of mukbang, the glorification of binge-eating on a webcam.
Sample Thesis:
In spite her mixed motives of profit, self-aggrandizement, and a delusional Messianic complex, Bethany Gaskin serves a deep need in our digital society: a pit of loneliness, fear, and fragmentation that needs to be healed through sacred ritual, authenticity, familial connection, and relief from food shaming.
Sample Outline:
Paragraph 1, Define Mukbang and its rise in popularity in the context of loneliness and the wealth amassed by Bethany Gaskin.
Paragraph 2, your thesis, agree or disagree with the claim that Bethany Gaskin is performing a noble service to lonely people.
Paragraphs 3-6 are your supports for your thesis.
Paragraph 7 is your counterargument-rebuttal. (does it encourage binge-eating? obesity? Or is it a cure for anorexia? Or both?)
Paragraph 8 is your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Sources:
Harvard essay on Mukbang and "extreme eating"
Guardian essay on Mukbang and loneliness
Time essay on why eating alone may be bad for you
Overview from Above:
Mukbang means "eating show."
The epidemic of eating alone, especially among single people, is so unbearable that the lonely gravitate toward mukbang.
Eating alone is associated, especially among men, with depression, heart disease, and diabetes.
People with eating disorders are also drawn to mukbang.
Some observe that the danger of mukbang is that it is promoting binge-eating as a normal, healthy lifestyle when it is neither.
Excerpts (parenthetical headings my own)
(Alleged benefits of Mukbang?)
Mukbang seems to have begun as an internet trend more than a decade ago in South Korea. The name is a mash-up of the Korean words for let’s eat (“muk-ja”) and broadcasting (“bang-song”). Korean live-streamers often schedule their mukbang videos to align with dinnertime hours, so their viewers eating alone at home feel like they’re sharing a meal with a friend.
Viewers cite other benefits too. Watching the videos can serve as an appetite-curbing exercise. And for a certain subset, the sounds of a person eating foster an autonomous sensory meridian response, or A.S.M.R.; viewers derive pleasure from the sounds created by extra-loud crunching, slurping and lip smacking.
Craig Richard, 49, a professor of physiology at Shenandoah University and the creator of a website dedicated to the study of A.S.M.R., said that while the phenomenon is not medically diagnosed, people who enjoy A.S.M.R. experience a sensation of “sparkling brain tingles” while viewing “trigger” videos.
(Is Mukbang a substitute for religious ritual?)
Before diving into her food, she said a brief prayer: “Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, I thank you for this food I’m about to receive. In Jesus’s name, I pray. Amen.”
(What is the appeal of Mukbang?)
Some of her fans send gifts. Others describe her as their “medication,” Mrs. Gaskin said, adding that some cancer patients have thanked her for helping them regain their appetites.
Reese Anthony, 34, from St. Louis, Mo., is a fan of Mrs. Gaskin’s fried chicken and shrimp dipping videos, and says that A.S.M.R. videos have helped him with his anxiety and depression.
“When I first started watching these videos, and some of my friends knew I was watching these videos, they thought it was weird,” he said in a phone interview. “But they don’t get it because they aren’t tapping into their senses.”
Mr. Anthony also alluded to the A.S.M.R. quality of Mrs. Gaskin’s screen presence. “The videos can put me to sleep and relax me,” he said. “It makes my hair on my arms stand up or gives me goose bumps because it’s so relaxing.”
Mrs. Gaskin credits her ability to appear authentic as a reason for her success. The other is her faith. “As long as my family and God are behind me, I’m good,” she said. “And I wake up happy every day.”
(Is she getting rich for the right reasons?)
Perhaps the noisy and bad-mannered eating is off-putting for most, but the genre has a lot of devotees, if Mrs. Gaskin’s success is any indication. Her primary YouTube channel, Bloveslife, has 1.8 million subscribers, and on Instagram she has a following of nearly 900,000, one of whom is Cardi B.
Through advertising on her videos, Mrs. Gaskin said she has made more than $1 million, providing screenshots of a report from YouTube.
Before becoming a YouTube sensation, Mrs. Gaskin, who has an associate’s degree in early childhood development, owned a day care facility. After five years, she sold the business and used the money to pay off loans and leases. She then got a job making circuit boards for the military for a year.
(Harmful consequences)
Though the chatter around mukbang videos tends to focus on their benefits, there are also some who see reason for concern. Theresa Kinsella, 42, a dietitian, said in a phone interview that these videos “glorify overeating,” promote disordered eating and ignore the possible risks associated with overconsumption.
“The short-term health risks are physical discomfort, gastrointestinal distress, lethargy and fatigue,” Ms. Kinsella said. As for the long-term effects, she cited weight gain, heart disease and diabetes.
Choice J
Read Judith Shulevitz’s essay “Why You Never See Your Friends Anymore,” and support or refute the author’s claim that lack of regular friendship bonding is having far outreaching destructive effects on society.
Sample Outline
Paragraph 1, your introduction, summarize Shulevitz's major points in her essay.
Paragraph 2, your thesis, develop a claim that agrees or refutes the author's claim that irregular and long work hours are crushing personal connection, marriages, children, and even democracy.
Paragraphs 3-6 are your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 7 is your counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 8 is your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Excerpts (Parenthetical Citations My Own)
(Irregular Working Hours Are Isolating Us)
Whereas we once shared the same temporal rhythms—five days on, two days off, federal holidays, thank-God-it’s-Fridays—our weeks are now shaped by the unpredictable dictates of our employers. Nearly a fifth of Americans hold jobs with nonstandard or variable hours. They may work seasonally, on rotating shifts, or in the gig economy driving for Uber or delivering for Postmates. Meanwhile, more people on the upper end of the pay scale are working long hours. Combine the people who have unpredictable workweeks with those who have prolonged ones, and you get a good third of the American labor force.
(Not Having "Shared Life" Could Wreak Havoc on Society)
The personalization of time may seem like a petty concern, and indeed some people consider it liberating to set their own hours or spend their “free” time reaching for the brass ring. But the consequences could be debilitating for the U.S. in the same way they once were for the U.S.S.R. A calendar is more than the organization of days and months. It’s the blueprint for a shared life.
Remember the old 9-to-5, five-day-a-week grind? If you’re in your 30s or younger, maybe not. Maybe you watched reruns of Leave It to Beaver and saw Ward Cleaver come home at the same time every evening. Today few of us have workdays nearly so consistent. On the lower end of the labor market, standing ready to serve has become virtually a prerequisite for employment. A 2018 review of the retail sector called the “Stable Scheduling Study” found that 80 percent of American workers paid by the hour have fluctuating schedules. Many employers now schedule hours using algorithms to calculate exactly how many sets of hands are required at a given time of day—a process known as on-demand scheduling. The algorithms are designed to keep labor costs down, but they also rob workers of set schedules.
(Spouses Rarely See Each Other)
The inability to plan even a week into the future exacts a heavy toll. For her recent book, On the Clock, the journalist Emily Guendelsberger took jobs at an Amazon warehouse, a call center, and a McDonald’s. All three companies demanded schedule flexibility—on their terms. The most explicit about the arrangement was Amazon. While filling out an online application, Guendelsberger found the following advisory: “Working nights, weekends, and holidays may be required … Overtime is often required (sometimes on very short notice) … Work schedules are subject to change without notice.”
One Amazon co-worker told Guendelsberger that she barely saw her husband anymore. He worked the night shift as a school custodian and came home to sleep an hour before she woke up to go to work. “We have Sunday if I’m not working mandatory overtime, and occasionally we have Monday morning—if I don’t have to work Monday morning—to see each other, and that’s pretty much it,” she said.
(Unreliable Work Hours Hurt Children)
When so many people have long or unreliable work hours, or worse, long and unreliable work hours, the effects ripple far and wide. Families pay the steepest price. Erratic hours can push parents—usually mothers—out of the labor force. A body of research suggests that children whose parents work odd or long hours are more likely to evince behavioral or cognitive problems, or be obese. Even parents who can afford nannies or extended day care are hard-pressed to provide thoughtful attention to their kids when work keeps them at their desks well past the dinner hour.
To make the most efficient use of their scant time at home, some parents have resorted to using the same enterprise software that organizes their office lives: Trello for chores, to-do lists, and homework; Slack to communicate with the kids or even to summon them to dinner. Anyone raising a teenager knows that nagging is more effective electronically than face-to-face.
(Friendships Suffer)
Keeping up a social life with unreliable hours is no easy feat, either. My friends and I now resort to scheduling programs such as Doodle to plan group dinners. Committing to a far-off event—a wedding, a quinceañera—can be a source of anxiety when you don’t know what your schedule will be next week, let alone next month. Forty percent of hourly employees get no more than seven days’ notice about their upcoming schedules; 28 percent get three days or fewer.
(Fragmentation of Community Leads to Tyranny)
It’s a cliché among political philosophers that if you want to create the conditions for tyranny, you sever the bonds of intimate relationships and local community. “Totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals,” Hannah Arendt famously wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism. She focused on the role of terror in breaking down social and family ties in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin. But we don’t need a secret police to turn us into atomized, isolated souls. All it takes is for us to stand by while unbridled capitalism rips apart the temporal preserves that used to let us cultivate the seeds of civil society and nurture the sadly fragile shoots of affection, affinity, and solidarity.
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