1. Select a chain restaurant that you are particularly fond of. (Stick with a chain restaurant for the purposes of this exercise.) What is that restaurant?
2. The first aspect of McDonaldization you will look at is efficiency. Discuss how the restaurant you have chosen establishes a division of labor that helps it act more efficiently?
3. Culturally, there is a homogenizing effect of these restaurants. Discuss at least three ways this restaurant chain tries to produce a predictable experience.
4. Describe at least three ways this restaurant uses technology to control its employees.
5. Let's return to our own household consumption here. Ritzer describes how the wrappings that fast food come in contribute to the "irrationality of rationality" as more waste is produced. How is food packaging waste related to the irrationaity of rationality?
6. Discuss how much food you have wasted (thrown away) this week, paying particular attention to why you threw it out.
7. Describe how much food packaging you have thrown away this week.
8. Describe and discuss at least three forms of waste that are produced in your morning grooming routine.
9. Discuss at least two kinds of waste that come from your grooming products before they even arrive in your household.
10. Based on these two issues (food and grooming), discuss how your consumption habits contribute to the accumulation of waste and pollution.
11. Based on the webisode "Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt," how have technology and mechanization both increased cotton yields and decreased the needs for human labor?
12. How has the standardization of the shipping container made global shipping more cost-effective? How has this speeded up the pace of globalization?
13. Using yourself and at least three people from the videos, discuss the macro-level structures and flows (refer to Ritzer's discussion of globalization here) that connect you to each other. What structures link you and organize these flows?
14. Ritzer discusses the relationship between "private troubles" and "public issues." This is taken from Mills's work in The Sociological Imagination. Drawing on the lives of the people in the "Planet Money Makes a T-shirt" as well as the pollution and "story of ...f" videos, discuss the relationship between the various private troubles and public issues that are involved here. You should use either Mills or Ritzer in this discussion (you may, of course, use both).
15. Also returning to the troubles/issues relationship, how is your own waste related to global pollution? What kinds of collective action might be possible to solve this issue, both in terms of using and reducing waste?