A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier • Hacker News Board

Re: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier

#151

Post by CharlesColeman » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #121

CharlesColeman wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you watch any episode of My 600 Pound Life, you will realize just how unwilling some of these people are to help themselves Please don't use point-and-gawk trash TV shows to make generalizations about the world. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9al-mpqXjc

You may disagree with the presentation, but it's still a documentary about real people's lives. If you watch the show you'll realize it's very sympathetic to the people suffering from obesity. I agree (as mentioned originally) these are extreme cases though.

And a Potemkin village still has real people in it. The point is: TLC [1] reality TV programs exist to entertain. They'll choose the most entertaining examples, not the most typical or illustrative. That bias means that's it's especially problematic to use them to show how "these people are."

[1] The network of "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" fame

Re: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier

#152

Post by hateful » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #81

outworlder wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 40% of American adults, including the woman featured here, are obese This is severely lacking in empathy. You know WHY they are obese, especially including the woman featured here? Junk food is dirt cheap. When you work your ass off for two weeks and have all of $200 dollars to show for it, you are not going to be cooking healthy foods and free range Chicken eggs. You are going to get the cheap stuff, the highly ca…

I don't disagree with empathy, but I definitely push back on the idea that McDonalds is cheap. People will always go to the grocery store and it's very hard to beat rice, beans, eggs, and ethnic veggies. That makes the cost and time proposition of McDonalds only okay at the right time of day.

A big part of why this isn't viable for most is that not only don't they have the time to cook, a lot of the food you buy is perishable. Meaning that you'll throw it out before you use it.

Re: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier

#153

Post by jonnycoder » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

excalibur wrote: post #133

Everybody seems to be latching on to the McDonald's part of her story, the author included. But it's the hospital part I find mortifying. McDonald's is pinching pennies left and right, it's their key to success. The hospital is not. How much would you guess they're charging per day for the average patient to stay there? I bet it's enough money to cover full-time employment and benefits for their food service workers.

Hopefully Trump's new federal policy of requiring hospital groups to disclose prices will help answer these questions and put pressure on that industry.

Re: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier

#154

Post by dls2016 » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 9:18 PM UTC

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #114

This is why I get annoyed when people praise the successes of the economy (aka artificially manipulated stock market) and our low unemployment rate. $9, $10, $11 may be a _survivable_ wage in Durham, SC, but prices and costs of living keep going up, and wages remain stagnant. In real wages this woman is probably bringing home only $6-$7 an hour, effectively making _less_ than she would have in, say, 2005 or 2010. I d…

> effectively making _less_ than she would have in, say, 2005 or 2010

I started working in 1998 at 16-years-old. I could make $9.50/hr washing dishes or more as a bus boy on a busy night. Shit's whack.

Of course as a suburban kid I had reliable transportation. The constantly rotating cast of dishwashers virtually never had this access.

Re: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier

#155

Post by jellicle » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 9:18 PM UTC

larrywright wrote: post #43

jdkee wrote: post #9

Unions, unions, unions.

There’s a compelling argument that unions, combined with the fight for $15 minimum wage, will do nothing but make the situation worse. Nobody is going to pay $20 for a burger and fries. McDonald’s would either have to go almost entirely automated or cease to exist as a company.

If you doubled the wages of every McDonald's worker, burger prices would have to go up by 30 cents or so to compensate, if I recall the math properly.

Re: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier

#156

Post by MisterOctober » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 9:18 PM UTC

thinkloop wrote: post #136

duxup wrote: post #112

I worked a pizza (among others) job through high school and college. I've been overworked at many professional technical jobs in different roles before. I'm paid a great deal more now, and yet I was never more tired or worn out or found it hard to study than when I worked the ovens at the pizza place. I often work with people who have never worked such jobs. They're upset that they're 'overworked' and spend their tim…

There is no bigger lie than hard work = prosperity. It is literally the exact opposite. Think of the hardest shittiest jobs and they are almost always the least paying. The richer you get the less hard work is, until you're able to reach the pinnacle of doing absolutely nothing but managing your money and taking advantage of discounted cap gains taxes. I grew up rich with every opportunity and never had one of these…

This is a damn good point. Whenever my friends, or kids of my friends, start talking about taking some foodservice or other really hard, low-paying job, I roundly encourage them to avoid it if remotely practical and build marketable skills and connections instead.

Another bad thing about those types of jobs is that they can start to warp your mind after a while, to the effect that you start unconsciously considering your superiors / managers as role models, and start trying to 'move up the ladder' because the pay is marginally better, when in reality most of the time the _top_ of the "ladder" at such organizations are compensated less than entry-level positions for in-demand skilled workers --

I've been continuously employed [out of what I _thought_ was necessity] since I was 16, and until I was about 26 the majority of my jobs were in the foodservice / warehouse / gofer / etc hard-work-long-hours-very-low-pay category. If I had to do over again, I would have stayed away from those situations by any means available and used that time to build valuable skills [as I later did], which would almost certainly have resulted in better outcomes, sooner.

Re: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier

#157

Post by stickfigure » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #118

Slartie wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like they can replace human personnel that easy. Ordering kiosks are the low-hanging fruit, and then comes a long, long stretch of nothing, because it turns out that developing McDonalds-compatible robots capable of preparing burgers and packing up meals is about as easy as developing actually-working autonomous vehicles. And about as expensive. It's probably easier to automate the managers away. Meaning the…

I think people without any real background in the difficulties of automating purely human tasks (particularly manual ones), consistently underestimate the cost, difficulty and expense of maintenance for said automation. I used to work in a kitchen, so maintaining food service grade of cleanliness on robots, sounds frighteningly expensive to me.

On the other hand, you can walk into a Krispy Kreme and watch the machine work. There's no reason that machine couldn't make french fries with a few changes.

Maybe everything won't be automated all at once, but if the economic incentive is there, it will happen. Pizza making robots are already a thing. There's no reason the shake machine can't measure its output to the cup instead of pulling a lever; drink machines in many places already do this. Dispensing the cup too is not a big step.

Re: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier

#158

Post by jonnycoder » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #145

Miner49er wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that change my point though? Either way they end up net poorer. If you're poor and don't take the $1000, you are the same and everyone else is $1000 richer. This makes you effectively $1000 poorer. Yang actually says UBI will save money compared to benefits. So if you pick UBI you're even more than $1000 poorer, if he's right.

>If you're poor and don't take the $1000, you are the same and everyone else is $1000 richer. This makes you effectively $1000 poorer $1000 poorer relative to other person but not actually poorer in terms of my purchasing power.

What do you think purchasing power for common goods will do once millions of people are on UBI? My bet is that prices will go up.

Re: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier

#159

Post by SolaceQuantum » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

bradley_taunt wrote: post #147

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Pan frying an egg and some veggies (using food item examples above) takes less than 5 minutes." Which includes: 1) Owning a pan 2) Owning a cooking surface 3) Selecting, cleaning, and cutting vegetables 4) Dishes, or owning a dishwasher vs 1) access to food 2) access to disposal of wrapping material

So we are going under the impression that this person is homeless? Renters/home owners would have ovens, simple cooking equipment. If the person doesn't have access to ANY of those things - there are bigger issues than food.

It’s really common in some places to have underserved shelters. In nyc I was considered super lucky to have a stovetop with an oven. Also, subsidized housing has been historically undercared for.

Re: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier

#160

Post by OnlineGladiator » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

CharlesColeman wrote: post #151

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may disagree with the presentation, but it's still a documentary about real people's lives. If you watch the show you'll realize it's very sympathetic to the people suffering from obesity. I agree (as mentioned originally) these are extreme cases though.

And a Potemkin village still has real people in it. The point is: TLC [1] reality TV programs exist to entertain. They'll choose the most entertaining examples, not the most typical or illustrative. That bias means that's it's especially problematic to use them to show how "these people are." [1] The network of "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" fame

I agree with you we shouldn't generalize, but ironically you're doing the same thing about television shows. If you've watched the show, what do you find disagreeable about it? If you haven't watched it, maybe you shouldn't be so quick to judge.

Anyway, I concede it's a bad talking point for the point I was making.

EDIT: On second thought, my original comment is such a tangent I probably should not have made it. While I may disagree with some of the details of your reasoning, I agree with your overall point.