300 Word Proposal

For my research hypertext, I am going to focus on young men and women working as waiters and waitresses in restaurants. This job may not seem so difficult to the average customer, however there are many aspects of that job that the customer cannot see from their table. These young waiters and waitresses are working for different reasons, some including: having to support their families, having to support themselves, having to pay for their education, or even working towards living alone in their own life. All of these reasons force young workers to spend many hours working low-wage restaurant jobs which consequently can hurt their ability to accomplish most of the list above. Working long hours is taxing, especially for the little amount of money they receive. Management is also not there to hold their hands through the process, they are there to make more money so to get you to work longer hours for small amounts of money (Ehrenreich 25). Most of these young workers have dreams of moving up and getting promotions and eventually ending up in a high paying, successful, and important job. This dream, however, slips farther and farther away as they work longer and longer hours for little pay, hurting their education and chances for a brighter future. Theses dreams of moving up seem to become unattainable for many low wage workers (Shipler 45). I want to talk about the life-long consequences young workers have after spending long hours working low wages. High school and college years are very important years for kids to develop and succeed for their future, and low wage jobs greatly take away from their ability to do this. I want to talk about these effects low wage restaurant jobs have on high school and college waiters and waitresses for my hypertext.