Research Hypertext

For my research hypertext, I have chosen to explore the low-wage life of restaurant employees. Similar to the style in which Schlosser wrote Fast Food Nation, I want to discuss not only the most obvious jobs but also the more discreet professions as well. My main focus will be on restaurant servers that earn minimum wage plus tips, but I also want to touch on dishwashers at the bottom of the food chain and on the contrary the kitchen staff that may make a higher wage. Like Shippler, I will include personal stories that servers I worked with told me about their lives. I want to focus on statistics in combination with true and personal stories of earning low wages in this current economy.
Although I do not plan on recording interviews, I would like to be able to include any videos I may be able to find on the web that further explore my topic. I feel that I have a strong personal connection to this topic because, like Ehrenreich, I have actually worked this job and understand the ways in which restaurant politics and finances work. However, I want to imitate Ehrenreich’s style by supplementing all of my personal opinions and stories with facts from previous studies and other research journals.
In addition to solely researching the servers’ point of view, I would like to consider other positions on the topic as well. For instance, the management of large corporations have a very different view on wait staff’s wages than the servers themselves do. Because I worked several different positions in my own experience working in a restaurant, I can also incorporate the experiences that I myself encountered working for minimum wage. Overall, I want to answer the question of whether minimum wage, even the highest minimum wage in the state of Washington, is actually a livable wage for one person, let alone an entire family.