TRANSFORMATIONS IN WORK 271
ing procedures. Not only does this allow for training time to be kept to
a minimum, but it also means that all employees have no trouble with
these diff erent tasks because they have been made as simple as possi-
ble. This leads into the “McJob” concept, the second Big MAC: most of
McDonalds’ employees have part-time jobs, and the majority are young
and female; many of them also come from immigrant backgrounds (and
therefore have an insecure position on the job market). For the most part,
their hours tend to be fl exible and are adjusted according to customer
traffi c, but they are not paid overtime. As a result, there is a high level
of fl uctuation among restaurant workers. The third main pillar, “McSer-
vice,” stands for the major reduction in the kind of service that is off ered.
Employees do not serve tables, but rather they stand behind cash reg-
isters where they assemble meals—also according to a Fordist building
block principle—and collect payment or wipe tables between customers.
The fourth Big MAC, “McFun,” addresses customer acquisition and en-
tertainment, which has targeted children in particular. Other elements,
such as “drive-ins,” also factor into the McDonald’s-style model of pro-
duction. Businesses like McDonald’s have modifi ed the basic Taylorist
model defi ned according to F. W. Taylor’s principles in one way in par-
ticular, namely through calculated lines of waiting customers: not super-
visors but impatient customers make sure that employees consistently
work at the steady, desired pace.
The “McDonald’s model of production” has moved well beyond this
particular fast food chain and mass gastronomy in general. Typically, this
model is characterized by the employment of mostly unskilled workers
and a neo-Taylorist workfl ow in which customers themselves take on
some of the service functions and put together the goods they desire.
Since the 1970s, such practices have become the norm in supermarkets
and self-service gas stations, for example. The work of employees has
thus been reduced to monitoring and cleaning up as well as sitting be-
hind a cash register, skimming goods over a scanner at a regular pace,
which sends a digital message to the warehouse so that the supply of
goods is replenished continually and virtually automatically. Above all,
however, the “McJob” idea, meaning “a low-pay, low-prestige, low dig-
nity, low-benefi t, no-future job in the service sector,”^75 has contributed
considerably to the emergence of a steadily growing “secondary” labor
market dominated by precarious jobs since the 1990s.
Lastly, fundamental changes in structures of work in the service sec-
tor were sometimes induced politically by means of government deci-
sions. One example of this was the nursing care insurance system that
was introduced at the beginning of 1995. Especially in light of rising life
expectancy rates, it sprouted a new and rapidly growing market for pri-