...The Sandwich Factory The assignment will begin with an analysis and interpretation of the short story "The Sandwich Factory" by Jason Kennedy. In order to put history in perspective to the assignment, there is included a discussion with an excerpt from the novel "Hard Times" - with a description of Coke Town by Charles Dickens. "The Sandwich Factory" by Jason Kennedy, written in 2007. The short story is about a man who in 1994 takes a job at a sandwich factory for a low income bracket. At the factory, he sees his insignificance, indifference and dissatisfaction. This gives us a picture of how his life is and how unhappy he is with his work. The Sandwich factory seems to be a typical food factory where mechanization is exploited to increase efficiency, including the proceeds of sandwiches. Employees at the sandwich factory works monotonously around their belts, and is constantly monitored by their managers who let their employees do all the dirty work that they do not even bother. The managers give awards to employees from bad to excellent. If the factory is behind in today's work schedule, they are not “released” until the job is done! It creates a bad atmosphere among employees. The employees feel trapped, trapped like a prison, it puts people under pressure, stress them and forcing them to work long hours, and faster. As a reader, you get a really bad insight of how things are done at the factory according to the narrator. The narrator is a first-person narrator...
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...The Sandwich Factory analysis The novel is written in 2007 by Jason Kennedy and tells the story of a nameless production line worker, in an industrialized world. The narrator is 1st person, and the story unfolds through the narrator’s point of view. The novel use high style language, the narrator uses a lot of irony, which makes it quite humorous to read at times. For an example “Dot lived in the Midlands, as she would’ve been an excellent pirate, giving blow jobs on the high seas” (L.36-37, p.2). His literal knowledge far exceeds the normal human being with no higher education. “In keeping with my station in society, and having been rejected by the bowling alley, I took a low-paid job at a sandwich factory.”(L.1-2. p.1.) The narrator has taken a job at a sandwich factory, where he is putting together the sandwiches. The narrator has possibly lost his old job, and therefore he seeks a new job. The “Bowling alley” rejected him, when he applied for a job there. Therefore he got a low paid job at the sandwich factory. He thinks highly about himself, and indicates that he holds a high status in society. His thoughts philosophize on many subjects regarding the factory and the people working there. His thoughts intertwining with his literary knowledge, creating strange metaphysical scenarios in this mind. “A whole factory full of workers who would bite your arm off to push a rock up a hill for eternity (so long as you gave us €4.50 an hour and the weekends off). I entertained...
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...The sandwich factory In the short-story The Sandwich Factory by Jason Kennedy, we are shown the negative sides of the work in a factory. We get an insight through an unnamed narrator. The narrator works, obviously, at a sandwich factory. The theme of the story is very vague, if existing at all. What might be a clue to the theme is that the work that is being done at the factory is something a machine easily could do, so something with the view of factory workers. It isn’t really the best job he could think of, but after being fired from the last one, he takes the job at the factory even though the pay is bad. The narrator seems like a rather intelligent person in contradiction to the ones you find at factories; he listens to Joy Division and read novels originally written in Japan, which tells me that he is too clever to be fit for the monotonous work the factory provides him with. This certainly isn’t his goal in life. As the story is told from the eyes of the narrator, it is also tainted with his views and thoughts. We know the narrator is a man as he says, “I had zero confidence with women anyway” in line 96, and the elderly lady at the factory, Dot wishes to find a girl for him amongst the female workers. Again we see the narrator differing from the rest of the workers, as he allows himself to be shy towards girls instead of looking down their tops (lines 109-110 ). He is more humane. I think we are given a picture of what happens if you should happen to stay in the factory...
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...The Sandwich Factory A: Write an Essay The central theme of the short story The Sandwich Factory is the mechanization of the workers/ humans at the factory. The story takes place in 1994 at a sandwich factory, where we meet the narrator who works there. Through him we get the impression that the employees are no longer considered humans or individuals, but almost nearly as machines, and he realizes that he doesn't want to be a part of this development. The narrator of the story is a 1st person narrator who restricts his own view to the factory. It is important that we hear his thoughts and his opinion, and that doesn't mean that we a 100% can rely on what he tells - in particular in some of the descriptions of the characters. The narrator mentions his Joy Division records, his Camuls novels and the novel Confessions of a Mark. This indicates that he is an intelligent man and in addition it also indicates that he probably is a student who has taken a low-paid job to make some money. Through the narrator we get a very negative impression of the factory. The factory itself seems like a ‘typical’ factory where the employees sit at the conveyor belt day after day, doing the same thing. This monotonous type of work is sure to affect a person at some point, for example Dot, who is a contrast to the narrator. Dot has been at the factory long enough to have lost a great part of her identity and human qualities. She has become a victim of the factory and this assertion is based on...
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...Vietnamkrigen Studieretningsprojektet 2008/2009 Abstract The study examines the American involvement in the Vietnam War, and the different consequences that this caused. During the war in Vietnam, a lot of American citizens got more and more upset about the war itself, thinking that it was meaningless for American soldiers to die for a cause that they did not believe in. Also the Medias massive covering of the war enlarged the protests, and pictures and videos of dead or massacred Vietnamese civilians aroused great disapproval in the Western world of the American government. The paper also contains an analysis of how the book “The Things They Carried” shows the influence that the war had on the soldiers. The author of the book, Tim O’Brien, was a soldier in Vietnam himself, and in the book he tries to give a true picture, both of the war in general, and of the war that he experienced himself. The study discusses whether or not the USA has learned something from their failure in Vietnam, compared to how they handle the war in Iraq. It concludes that the Vietnam War had a great impact on the way of thinking for many young men and woman from that time, and that it had a horrible influence on the soldiers – who had very high suicide rates among them in the time after the war. It also concludes that there are too many similarities between Vietnam and Iraq, and that this can be a bad thing for the USA. Indholdsfortegnelse Abstract 1 Indledning 2 Krigen på hjemmefronten...
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...Tutorial Week 5: Case Study – Modern Leadership Theory Organisational Change in The Sandwich Factory The Sandwich Factory is a company operating in the Greater London area. The company was started by Kirsty Flower in 2005 when she and several colleagues left Mr Bakes, a medium sized bakery company supplying foodstuffs to offices in the Canary Wharf and City of London areas. Kirsty`s colleagues now hold senior positions on the Senior Management Team (SMT) (Human Resources, Finance and Production). The SMT are all female, mid-twenties and have no experience in company management beyond that gained in Mr Bakes where they all held junior management positions. Kirsty admits that the decision to `go it alone` was hers and that, given standard requirements for company set-up “done on a bit of a whim”. A recent interview she gave for Young Entrepreneur (London) Monthly uncovered some other interesting facts and issues around the establishment of The Sandwich Factory. First, Kirsty admits, is the heavy financial burden placed on the SMT who all own a share of the business. She comments “We didn`t want to be beholding to a bank and so scraped together the not unsubstantial monies required for start up from our own savings, grants and from our own families especially our parents”. Second, the appearance of fractures in the SMT`s friendships in the initial stages of establishing a market. “The original idea to start up the company was mine, but I needed people to come with me to make...
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...“The Sandwich Factory” is a short story written by Jason Kennedy and released in 2007. The story deals with a man who works at a sandwich factory. He is low-paid and is slowly getting tired of many things at the factory; the workers, the manager and especially the conveyor belt. We get an insight in his thoughts about not only the factory, but also his real life. The short story takes place in a sandwich factory in 1994. It seems like the typical factory, with a conveyor belt surrounded by a lot of workers, who seems to be working automatically, just like machines. At the same time, the workers are being controlled by spiteful executives. The managers are not treating the workers right though, and is rating and marking the workers, ranging from “poor” to “excellent”. Even the rating is not done properly by the managers: “Someone always has to be rated excellent; he always chooses whoever had the best legs“ (s. 2, l. 23-24). It’s very downgrading towards the workers and it is one of the things that the main character is annoyed with. It is the same thing every day, over and over again and the factory is similar to a giant mechanism operating non-stop. This is another thing that is aggravating our main character: “[…] where similarly bored and unhappy workers attended daily … “ (p. 3, l. 51-52). He seems very discontented about his job and is noticing everything that he thinks is wrong with the factory. Even the smallest things are annoying him. The hairnets, the cold tomato-slices...
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...Case Study Week 4: Organisational Change in The Sandwich Factory The Sandwich Factory is a company operating in the Greater London area. The company was started by Kirsty Flower in 2005 when she and several colleagues left Mr Bakes, a medium sized bakery company supplying foodstuffs to offices in the Canary Wharf and City of London areas. Kirsty`s colleagues now hold senior positions on the Senior Management Team (SMT) (Human Resources, Finance and Production). The SMT are all female, mid-twenties and have no experience in company management beyond that gained in Mr Bakes where they all held junior management positions. Kirsty admits that the decision to `go it alone` was hers and that, given standard requirements for company set-up “done on a bit of a whim”. A recent interview she gave for Young Entrepreneur (London) Monthly uncovered some other interesting facts and issues around the establishment of The Sandwich Factory. First, Kirsty admits, is the heavy financial burden placed on the SMT who all own a share of the business. She comments “We didn`t want to be beholding to a bank and so scraped together the not unsubstantial monies required for start up from our own savings, grants and from our own families especially our parents”. Second, the appearance of fractures in the SMT`s friendships in the initial stages of establishing a market. “The original idea to start up the company was mine, but I needed people to come with me to make my vision work for the betterment of...
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...published in 2005. It is titled Organizing migrant workers: a case study of working conditions and unionization in a London sandwich factory and published in Work Employment Society volume 19, on pages 463-480. Food-to-Go: the company and profile of the workforce Over the last decade the sandwich industry has become a global business with an expanding market currently (2004) thought to be worth around US$50 billion dollars a year (BBC, 2004). Food-to-Go (a pseudonym for the employer company), the factory where the union organizing place was taking place, is a multinational company supplying major high street retail stores, with 12 food factories in the UK, two of which specialize in sandwich production: one located in London and the other in northern England. There were considerable disparities in the terms and conditions of the company’s two sandwich factories, not least the composition of the workforce (see Table 1). Workers in the London factory were predominantly from BME groups, whereas at the northern factory they were mainly white. In London, workers had lower pay, no premium pay, less holidays, no sick pay – and no union recognition. Yet Food-to-Go had a long-standing relationship with the trade union, and all of the company’s factories in the UK had voluntary recognition agreements, except the one in London. Management at the London factory indicated that they would voluntarily recognize the union only if it could demonstrate 50 percent union membership. This contrasted...
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...The Sandwich Factory A) The short story "The Sandwich Factory" is written by Jason Kennedy and deals with a man’s experiences doing a low-paid job at a sandwich factory. It tells the story of how the man needs to be able to deal with a lot of things about himself and other people, to do the work and concentrate about it. We get a very good insight into his situation, but it is very much marked by his personal thoughts about it, and therefore it becomes more or less useless for us to relate to. It is very obvious that this man doesn’t like his job, and we even get the feeling that he doesn’t like his life either. To begin with the story takes place in the sandwich factory, where he works. He introduces us to some of the people he works with. In the end of the story we have a situation not happening in the factory, but in his car as he drives a girl home. At the end we are back at the factory. The main character seems to be a guy who doesn’t like his life. He is very pessimistic, which is seen in the way he reacts on different things in life, and in the way he doesn’t believe in himself: "I had zero confidence with women anyway […]" (l. 96) It is very obvious that he doesn’t have any self-confidence, as he speaks badly about everyone around him - even his job. The factory is described as a horrible place, and the narrator seems to have a lot of fun thinking about how he thinks the managers have been taught in ‘schools’: "Remember, never look confused. […] Instead use anger...
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...published in 2005. It is titled Organizing migrant workers: a case study of working conditions and unionization in a London sandwich factory and published in Work Employment Society volume 19, on pages 463-480. Food-to-Go: the company and profile of the workforce Over the last decade the sandwich industry has become a global business with an expanding market currently (2004) thought to be worth around US$50 billion dollars a year (BBC, 2004). Food-to-Go (a pseudonym for the employer company), the factory where the union organizing place was taking place, is a multinational company supplying major high street retail stores, with 12 food factories in the UK, two of which specialize in sandwich production: one located in London and the other in northern England. There were considerable disparities in the terms and conditions of the company’s two sandwich factories, not least the composition of the workforce (see Table 1). Workers in the London factory were predominantly from BME groups, whereas at the northern factory they were mainly white. In London, workers had lower pay, no premium pay, less holidays, no sick pay – and no union recognition. Yet Food-to-Go had a long-standing relationship with the trade union, and all of the company’s factories in the UK had voluntary recognition agreements, except the one in London. Management at the London factory indicated that they would voluntarily recognize the union only if it could demonstrate 50 percent union membership. This contrasted...
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...The Day Sisyphus Escaped the Assembly Line The short story “The Sandwich Factory” is written by Jason Kennedy in 2007 and tells the story of a male individual’s time at a sandwich factory in 1994. We hear of the narrator’s low-paid, meaningless job where mechanization has made the workers’ task subordinate and absurd. He works at a conveyor belt that spits out two loafs of bread. The mission of the employers is then to place ingredients in the sandwiches while the product is moving past them. They even rank the different ingredients; “…if you were unlucky or new, it would be tomatoes.” (l. 48, p. 3) Their large attention on such a small subject illustrates the extreme relativism that characterizes the story. We follow an unnamed 1st person narrator, and the story is told through his point of view. We only know that he is a man because someone at the factory wants him to find a female partner (l.93, p. 4). The language of the short story is characterized by a lot of humor and irony, for example the description of Dot, who would have been an excellent pirate, giving both blowjobs and sandwiches to the seagulks (l. 36, p. 3). The character Dot has, like many of the other workers, lost her soul by the monotonous work at the factory and she is now giving blowjobs to strangers at the local nightclub. We also hear of another co-worker who looks afraid every time he interacts with our narrator (l. 42, p. 3) - he is not used to human contact and is alienated from his colleagues. The...
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...U.S. b. Who are the winners and losers as a result of the tariff on wood products? Consider foreign and domestic producers, the U.S. government, and consumers in your answer. c. Explain one of the arguments for the imposition of the tariff on wood products. d. Name two (2) negative costs that will result from the tariff. Question 3 (Multiple Choice Worth 2 points) The balance of payments includes all of the following except transfer payments for welfare. goods and services sold overseas. foreign purchases of domestic assets. imported goods and services. capital goods purchased by foreigners. Question 4 (Multiple Choice Worth 2 points) Which of the following would increase the U.S. financial account? a factory site purchased in Ireland by an American businessman. a sailboat purchased by a wealthy Japanese entrepreneur. $500 in interest earned on foreign stocks. the purchase of $500 of American bonds by a German investor. the purchase of an American car by a diplomat living in Jamaica....
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...HISTORY Perfect Food was established in 1981 in Alor Gajah, Melaka. The factory back then was small, operating a single oven line. In early 1984, two brothers, Sai Ah Sai and Sai Chin Hock, were invited to take over the factory as major shareholders. Sai Chin Hock's vision played an important role in the development of the company. He purchased a second oven line in 1989, a third in 1991 and a fourth in 2004. Before the participation of the Sai brothers, the company's biscuits were marketed through wholesalers. In 1985, Markins Corporation was appointed the sole distributor in the state of Johor. Gradually, over a period of six years, Markins grew and expanded to eight branches throughout peninsular Malaysia. In the first few years of Perfect Food's operations, it sold biscuits with no brand name other than the company's own. Then in 1987, Perfect Food began to market its biscuits under the brand name "Julie's". As a relatively new biscuit manufacturer, Perfect Food faced some resistance from supermarkets in carrying its products. However through persistence and constant sampling exercises with the now popular Peanut Butter Sandwich, Julie's earned its first supermarket entry at Pakson Grand, Johor Bahru in 1988. The following year, Julie's Love Letters (wafer rolls) gained popularity (also through regular sampling exercises) and soon made their way to become the most sought-after biscuits during festive seasons, particularly Chinese New Year. To expand the opportunity...
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...U.S. b. Who are the winners and losers as a result of the tariff on wood products? Consider foreign and domestic producers, the U.S. government, and consumers in your answer. c. Explain one of the arguments for the imposition of the tariff on wood products. d. Name two (2) negative costs that will result from the tariff. Question 3 (Multiple Choice Worth 2 points) The balance of payments includes all of the following except transfer payments for welfare. goods and services sold overseas. foreign purchases of domestic assets. imported goods and services. capital goods purchased by foreigners. Question 4 (Multiple Choice Worth 2 points) Which of the following would increase the U.S. financial account? a factory site purchased in Ireland by an American businessman. a sailboat purchased by a wealthy Japanese entrepreneur. $500 in interest earned on foreign stocks. the purchase of $500 of American bonds by a German investor. the purchase of an American car by a diplomat living in Jamaica....
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