Solid photo

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Courtney Boyd, an 18-year-old manager (she is 18 years old and is managing a McDonalds? double check the age) of the McDonalds on Martin Luther King Blvd, works eight to ten hour shifts in order to make her dream of finishing culinary school (we should work with the contrast of McDonalds and culinary school) come true. While being in charge of keeping McDonalds running like a well-oiled machine, she is also consciously invested in the well being of her coworkers and customers. “We are a tight knit group, like a family,” she said.

Boyd makes $10 an hour. She has worked at McDonalds for the past five years (this doesn’t make sense. That means she started worked at age 13) and after reaching the age of 18, she was promoted to a managing position. “I am a manager that has split shifts. Sometimes I work overnight, sometimes during the day, sometimes in the morning. I get thrown in because I have open availability,” Boyd said. At the time of this interview she was working at 1:30 am.

Courtney Boyd said that when one begins work at McDonalds as a crew member they make an hourly wage of $7.50 (this conflicts with the Arkansas minimum wage of $8.50) and then can work their way up to a maximum of $9.00 an hour. When Boyd was promoted to a managing position she began making the minimum hourly wage for a manager which is $10. Managers and crew members are able to be promoted yearly.

Comment on graphic below:
–Arkansas minimum wage is $8.50. Update.
–Other data is accurate

Boyd was undoubtedly grateful for her parents supporting her dreams. They fund 90 percent of her tuition at North West Arkansas Community College for culinary school. Boyd contributes the funds for 10 percent of her tuition to help out. “I am getting free rent at their house,” Boyd said that this is allowing her to save up for her own house.

When asked if she felt like she had to sacrifice anything because she was working so often and while also being a student at the same time, Boyd said that she absolutely feels this way. (revise sentence- awkward. state directly and in the affirmative: “Boyd said she has to sacrifice….”) She said that the biggest sacrifice she makes is not having friends because she is working full–time and even sometimes overtime in addition to the two five-hour classes that she is taking for culinary school. “I also have to sacrifice time with my family,” Boyd said. Boyd will go to her 11 a.m. culinary classes twice a week after her 5pm to 2am (AP style on times) shift at McDonalds.

I asked Boyd if it was worth it working such long and inconvenient hours at this age. “At the pay I get, no. But it’s McDonalds, so I definitely could go somewhere else. I choose not to because they are easy with my hours and if I needed a day off they can usually give me the day off then and there and I don’t get any consequences,” she said.

Boyd informs me that the people that live below the poverty line are the staff workers that work nighttime shifts. “I believe that people that live below the poverty line are the people that work the hardest. They really want to keep their job and succeed,” Boyd said. Boyd said that McDonald’s holds a manager class once a month in order to provide the learning opportunity for staff workers that want to move up to managing positions. This class is helpful because in addition to positive reinforcement to the hard workers, it provides tips to maintaining good hygiene and acting as a leader in a fast paced work place.

Comments on graphic below:
–This is a good looking map. I don’t understand the color scheme, however. It seems random. We need to use colors to highlight and explain the data. This is not a numerically consistent color scheme (29% are different colors, for example).