Schlosser concludes chapter 8, "The Most Dangerous Job," recounting the trials of Kenny Dobbins. What is the effect of his placing the dramatic story at the conclusion of the chapter, rather than at the beginning? Do you see similar patterns of organization in other chapters? If so, which chapters?

Schlosser ends chapter 8 with the story of Kenny to humanize the slaughterhouse workers in a way that describing his own experiences visiting the slaughterhouses couldn't. By telling Kenny's story after detailing the environment in which the man worked, Schlosser creates sympathy and shock in the readers over what the company did to the man who worked so hard for them. If the author had put this story at the beginning of the chapter, the impact might have been less, because the reader would have left Kenny's story behind to read about Schlosser's visits to the slaughterhouses, which would have been the thing that stuck in their mind.
At the end of chapter 6, Schlosser tells that Hank, a rancher, took his own life. He uses this to explain the (higher than average) suicide rate among ranchers in the United States. The ending is a shock because it conflicts with the image the reader has of the man that Hank was in Schlosser's eyes earlier in the chapter.

Schlosser closes with Kenny's story to emphasize the disloyalty and ruthlessness of the meat-packing industry. This is a man who has always supported the company before his own health, and his various accidents--getting hit by a train, burning his lungs etc--show his absolute dedication. The sad irony, however, is that Kenny was fired, he can barely walk and he had to fight in court for paltry compensation for his afflictions.
Schlosser heightens the pathos (the sympathy the reader feels for Kenny) by including everyday concrete details like "Denver Broncos memorabilia" that adorn his living room. Finally, one could argue that Schlosser uses Kenny's story at the end because it helps dispel certain objections which regularly emerge about other lives he details throughout the chapter. Kenny is not an illegal immigrant. He speaks English, and was born and raised in the area around the slaughterhouse.

Fast food nation reads very much like a more contemporary version of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle which is considered the first example of investigative "muckraking" journalism in which the author attempts to shed light on poor practices often industrial in nature through the anecdotal experiences of those that are victims of it. Schlosser unlike Sinclair prefers a more literal reporting style. In each chapter he examines an element of the fast food industry that is deserving of reform. In he each chapter He offers multiple examples of failings in the industry usually each worse than the last building a slow crescendo in the reader of disgust. This is a very intentional practice by schlosser to leverage each anecdote for maximal emotional response from the reader. Kenny's story is served up last as it is the apex of exploitation. Kenny was a man of limited means that gave his company (Greely) everything short of his life, and was terminated as soon as his physical competence as an employee was in question. In this way Kenny's story serves as the ultimate anecdote in "The Most Dangerous Job" chapter.

Schlosser presents the story of Kenny Dobbins, a worker in a slaughterhouse who was injured several times and then fired by his company, at the end of a chapter about slaughterhouse operations and how they work. Schlosser puts this story at the end of the chapter to illustrate the personal effect that the industry has on workers like Dobbins, an illiterate man who destroyed his body working in a slaughterhouse. Chapter 4 is set up in a similar way. In that chapter, Schlosser speaks about the promises of fast-food chains, and then, later in the chapter, he includes the stories of people such as Dave Feamster and his employees at Little Caesar's franchises, who show how hard it is to make a living as a franchise owner. Schlosser concludes Chapter 4 with a speech by Christopher Reeve that shows the hollowness of what the fast food industry is trying to achieve (as Reeve emphasizes caring and other humane values). In a similar way, Dobbins's story shows the hollow promises of the owners of the slaughterhouses.