GROUP+6

- Your article is the first one in this packet: "Service with a Smile"


 * Note to Group - You have a good start here, but if you should choose to revise this for your portfolio, please consider these things: One, try to eliminate quotes completely and rely on paraphrasing everything into your own language and 2) Get rid of any language that gives your opinion: summaries need to be unbiased and opinion-free.**

Written on July 12, 2004 the article "Service With a Smile, And Plenty of Metal" talks about a woman who is trying to understand why todays youth likes to express themselves in the form of piercings. She first looks at how she feels when she sees these people in the service industry and what she thinks the standards of appearance that the people that serve us should have as far as peircings. "Does anyone else feel frissions of revulsion, or is it just me? I like chatting with wait staff and servers as much as the next person. But if I cant look someone in the face because of his piercings, please take my place in line. Ill await the next cashier"(20). She also states how having hoops, rings, studs, and dangling miscalanious pieces of jewlry all over a person can be distracting. "The last time I bought a CD, the cashier chatted me up. A bar thing was threaded through her tongue. Another pierced her eyebrow. Her ear tinked metal each time she moved. Where was I suppose to focus when I was speaking to her?"(20). I also think that when you go for a job interview or something thats really important that you would know enough to take off them so that they arent a distraction to whoever it is taking to you. I do agree with what debra said about the whole thing "what am I supposed to look at when they have all that shiny metal" It really states what she is getting at and what kinds of thing people do today to. Despite the fact that she is repulsed by these people with piercings she does state: "My kids think my attitude is horrible and prejudiced. Its not. These young people are helpful, enthusiastic, efficient. They offer service with a smile. That smile, however, is often studded, pierced and hooped"(20). Next, she explores why piercings are so attractive to today youth. "At a time when bulwark institutions- schools, churches, and synagogues, parents--have lost much of the authority adolescents need to simultaneously rail against and draw comfort from, perhaps piercings provide a path to create meaning out of the profane, much the same way colors are used by gang members to stake out turf and identity, piercings have become a mode of group identification and the self validation that comes with it"(20). Shes sums up her article by saying "Some of these piercings have to hurt like hell, and the anesthetic eventually wears off. Perhaps there is pride in that pain. Then again, maybe its about nothing more than a Gen-XYZ trend"(20).

Outline: I. Pierced teens working in the service industry both the author. A. Guy in bookstore with nose pierced. B. She would rather give up her place in line than be waited on by them C. Says shes not prejudice, she just finds the piercings distracting. II. Thinks it might be a generation thing. A. Compares her generation to todays. III. She finds an article online about pain. A. Says that pain is a form of self sacrifice. IV. Talks about childbirth A. Compares that self sacrifice to piercings. VII. Discusses generations again A. Wonders if its a generation thing B. Or if she will ever know the real reasons.