Dina's Story (extra credit)

In the book Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser described several ways that allow owners and managers in the fast food industry to lower production costs and ensure higher productivity. One of them is deskilling the labor force. Deskilled labor is cheap and workers are easy to control as they are not directly engaged in the production process. Restaurants also hire illegal immigrants who barely speak English, but desperately need money and are ready to do any kind of work and be paid at rates below the minimum wage. Some managers take a different route and make their profits on young and naive foreign students like Dina.

Dina came to New York City as a participant of a "Summer Work & Travel" program for the summer of 2010. This program allows post-secondary students to enter the United States to work and travel during their summer vacation. Dina was excited about living in a megalopolis as she was coming from a small town in Russia. She thought that it wouldn't be a problem to find a job as a waitress in such a big city with thousands of restaurants. But when she started searching, she realized that it would be almost impossible to get a good job without required 2 years of NYC experience and fluency in English. 

That's why she was thrilled to find an ad in a newspaper that said that a busy pizzeria in Brooklyn needed a waitress, no experience was necessary - they were willing to train. She was hired immediately. All the instructions were clear. She was told that at the beginning all she had to do was cleaning - tables, floors, bathrooms and sometimes dishes. The manager said everyone does this for the first two weeks of "training". He promised that after those two weeks he would put her behind the register. He also noted that during those two weeks Dina would be paid five dollars per hour, because that was "training". Starting week three she was supposed to be paid twice that amount. Well-knowing that it was the first time the girl visited the country he added that she had to appreciate his kindness because in other places new workers were trained for free. 

After two weeks of waking up at 5 am, working 12-hour shifts for 6 days a week, Dina was called to the manager. She was sure he was going to tell her that she could start working as a cashier. But the manager sadly announced that the business was not going well, and they had no other choice but to lay off several employees. He said that they really liked how hardworking Dina was and would call her as soon as the business would do better.

Two weeks after that Dina was passing by the pizzeria and decided to stop by and ask if things got better. She was surprised to see a new girl that was doing the job Dina used to do. She saw that all other workers were still the same and apparently no one else was "laid off". She quietly asked the girl how long she had been working at the place. The girl said that for two weeks. She also said that starting the following week she was supposed to work behind the register...
As Dina realized the owner of that pizzeria was saving money on the cleaning staff by constantly hiring young and inexperienced foreign students. They are naive and don't expect their employer to fool them. They are also easy to control as they don't know the U.S. laws and just believe everything that the boss says is the way things are done everywhere in the country.

P.S. Dina changed her flight ticket and went back to Russia two months earlier than she had planned.