reading

I just finished reading Morgan Spurlock’s Don’t Eat This Book, which chronicles the 30 days he spent eating only items from the McDonalds menu. There isn’t anything new in the book that wasn’t covered in the documentary Super Size Me, so you don’t necessarily have to read this book. Instead, I would recommend reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser or Fat Land by Greg Critser which delve into how government’s policies have contributed toward this national nutritional crisis.

I loved the first episode of 30 Days where Morgan and his girlfriend lived off of minimum wages in Columbus, Ohio. To save money, they lived in a sketchy neighborhood, walked to work, ate rice and beans for dinner, and frequented “free” attractions to entertain themselves. With Morgan working two jobs, they were barely making ends meet doing until they both needed to visit the emergency for an infection and sprained wrist ($1,000 bill).

Inspired by Spurlock, I’m almost done reading Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America by Barbara Ehrenreich. It sheds light on the plight of the poor who “work” to overcome low wages, healthcare deficiencies, unaffordable housing, poor nutrition, and lack of respect in the workplace. My only issue with Ehrenreich’s and Spurlock’s experiments is that they could always walk away from the experiment. I don’t think they’re able to tap into the survival instincts of people who do not have an escape from that lifestyle.

Closer to home: The starting wage for a bookseller at McBooks was $7.50 an hour (after 90 days) and while I had no problem with part-timers making that amount (mostly students and people with other full time jobs), it bothered me considerably when full timers came on board for that amount. The next level up paid a dollar more, so I encouraged all my managers to develop the full timers to that level. It might have only been another $25 to 30 in their take home pay, but at the very least it covered their commuting expenses.

Many of the employees took advantage of their employee discount and ate their meals in the cafe. When I was a bit more naive, I once told an employee, “You must really like that soup.” My Assistant pulled me aside and set me straight. “No one likes the soup that much.”

One of the proudest things my staff regularly did was to bring clothing they were going to donate to the store for other staff members’ perusal before taking them to Good Will. When I lost weight last year, I did the same and one employee took the whole bag home. It was weird seeing my clothing on someone else. I couldn’t resist, “Geoff, that shirt goes better with the blue Hilfiger pants.”

This started out as a commentary on last night’s episode of 30 Days, but two paragraphs in I ended up going down this avenue. I’ll write about the dieting thing later this week.