Editing George Ritzer (section)

=== Education and early employment ===
Ritzer graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1958,<ref name=ritzervitae>{{cite web|last1=Ritzer|first1=George|title=Vitae|url=http://georgeritzer.wordpress.com/vitae/|website=georgeritzer.com|publisher=Word Press|access-date=5 October 2014|date=2012-05-02|archive-date=2023-01-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230123110524/https://georgeritzer.wordpress.com/vitae/|url-status=live}}</ref> stating to have "encountered the brightest people I have ever met in my life".<ref name="being-nothingness" /> While at Bronx High School of Science, Ritzer received a New York State Regents Scholarship which would follow him to whichever college he chose to attend.<ref name=being-nothingness />

Ritzer began his higher education at [[City College of New York]], a free college at the time. His scholarship in addition to the free college tuition proved to be a benefit to the economic positioning of the Ritzer family.<ref name=being-nothingness /> While at CCNY, Ritzer initially planned to focus on business, but he later changed his major to accounting. Ritzer stated in an interview that he was a student at CCNY when he first stepped inside a [[McDonald's|McDonalds]], which greatly juxtaposed the distinct culture of restaurants and stores in New York. This event unknowingly catalyzed Ritzer's study and major theory of [[McDonaldization]].<ref name=":2" />

After graduating from CCNY in 1962,<ref name="ritzervitae" /> Ritzer decided that he was interested in pursuing business again. He was accepted into the M.B.A. program at the [[University of Michigan Ann Arbor]], where he received a partial scholarship. While at Michigan, his official academic interest was human relations; however, he had many other intellectual hobbies, such as reading Russian novels. Ritzer reported that at Michigan, he was able to grow and improve as a student. However, during his time at Michigan, he remembers being heavily involved in global events occurring at the time. He reports memories of going to the Michigan Union to watch the happenings of the Cuban Missile Crisis.<ref name="being-nothingness"/>

After graduating from [[University of Michigan|The University of Michigan]] in 1964,<ref name=ritzervitae /> Ritzer began working in personnel management for the [[Ford Motor Company]], however, this proved to be a negative experience for him. His managers mistakenly hired three people, more than was necessary, for the one job, leaving him idle and unoccupied. As he once said: "[i]f we had two hours of work a day, it was a lot."<ref name="being-nothingness"/> Nevertheless, he was always expected to appear busy. He would constantly wander around the factory for hours observing people working, causing many of the workers and foremen to become hostile towards him. Moreover, Ritzer also found problems within the management structure at Ford. Most of the younger people with advanced degrees defied their less-educated authorities. Ritzer said, "I'd like to see a society in which people are free to be creative, rather than having their creativity constrained or eliminated."<ref>{{cite web|last=Ritzer|first=George|title=George Ritzer|url=http://georgeritzer.com/|access-date=2012-10-05|archive-date=2022-09-29|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220929034527/http://georgeritzer.com/|url-status=live}}</ref> This feeling of dehumanization is very relevant in his future sociological work of [[McDonaldization]].<ref name="McDonaldization20th" /> Furthermore, he found himself constrained and unable to do anything creative while working at Ford, encouraging him to apply to Ph.D. programs.<ref name="being-nothingness"/>

Ritzer enrolled in Cornell University's School of Labor and Industrial Relations Ph.D. program in Organizational Behavior in 1965, ironically returning to another business program despite his distaste for his time at Ford.<ref name=being-nothingness /> There, his adviser Harrison Trice suggested that he minor in sociology. After a conversation with the head of the department, Gordon Streib, Ritzer realized that he knew nothing about sociology and was then urged to read "Broom and Selznick’s Introduction to Sociology" and found himself enthralled with the subject matter.<ref name=being-nothingness /> He continued to succeed in sociology courses at the graduate level. As a testament to his interest and dedication to the subject, he received an A+ on a 102-page paper he wrote for a course on American society. His professor stated that the paper was "too long not to be good".<ref name=being-nothingness /> This experience as well as out-reading the other sociology students in a small seminar with Margaret Cussler allowed Ritzer to become more confident as a sociology student due to his ability to outwork the competition. He attributed his talent of being able to compete with well-read and experienced sociology students to his work ethic.<ref name="being-nothingness"/>

Ritzer never earned a degree in sociology but studied psychology and business. He began his sociological work writing theory connecting his minimal sociological education alongside the experiences that struck him when first experiencing the [[McDonald's|McDonalds]] chain stores.<ref name=":2" />  As he said in a later interview, "I basically trained myself as a social theorist, and so I had to learn it all as I went."  Despite this challenge, Ritzer found that not being trained in social theory was advantageous for him, because his reasoning was not limited to a particular theoretical perspective.<ref name="being-nothingness"/>