One of the problems of "Behind the Counter" chapter which I really identified with was Elisa's. Elisa Zamot is a sixteen year old girl. She is the older sister of two (Cookie and Sabrina). Elisa wakes up every Saturday at 5:15 am to get ready to go work at McDonald's. For her is hard to wake up at that time but she takes a shower, puts her uniform on and goes to work. When she arrives at her job, the manager unlocks the door and lets her in. Sometimes the cleaning crew (a married couple) is there finishing cleaning. However, most of the time the manager and Eliza are alone on that empty restaurant. They start turning on the ovens, taking out all the frozen food out of the freezer and finally they open at 7:00 am. Eliza takes the order at the counter and hands of the orders at the customers from breakfast through lunch. While the hour pass the rest of workers begin to time in. After all of that Eliza finish her day of work and walks home with her sore feet because to be standing all day.
I choose this problem because as I was reading it, remind me to myself when I was working at KFC. I didn’t have morning shift but I got the night shift in which I have to from four o’clock at afternoon to ten or eleven o’clock at night and if I wasn’t lucky enough I had to stay until they closed the restaurant which it was at two o’clock at the morning. I worked 4 days a week (Wednesdays- Saturdays) and sometimes some of my free days too, if they call me. I didn’t have any choice to go work since at that time I really needed the money. After my classes I had to get on the train run to KFC get change and start my work, therefore all the team members have to buy from their check these special shoes which doesn’t make fall on the floor. My job was to take the orders and also pack the orders and give to the customers in any way the manager arrange the faster way to give out orders. The orders have to done maximum of 1 minute. Also, after all the rush every one of the team members had to go clean the lobby such as getting the rays, take out garbage, cleaning the tables and sometimes sweeping the floor. So when I got home I was so tired and during my classes I was sleepy which made me to fail my grades.
Some of the solutions to problem would be that the mangers should not exploit the workers or even pay us more than the minimum. Therefore, to give a break not make us ask for it and the most important of all respect our schedule and free days. Sometimes, I tried to talk to the manager some of points and he got really mad. I think he thought this job was all. I don’t judge him, since he worked most all of his life in that KFC. However, the only solution that worked for me was to quit and I don’t regret it, since now I got a job which is more flexible about my education and the best of all I don’t have to standing all day and not having a break. However, I need to get another job because I need more money than they pay me, but this experience make me look life from other perspective and I can get a good job as my education get higher.
