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A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier

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

#201

Post by leetcrew »

derg wrote: post #144
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…

>I often work with people who have never worked such jobs. They're upset that they're 'overworked' and spend their time in the fancy break room with all the perks. Many I suspect have no clue. Not that it's a realistic idea but damn if everyone had experiencing working in the demanding, underpaid, crappy jobs in the service industry, we might be more empathetic and better off as a whole.

I'm not so sure about that. I worked in a takeout place for a few years, and it just made me a lot more cynical. the privileged and the poor seem to enjoy abusing service workers at about the same rate in my experience.

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

#203

Post by dba7dba »

Miner49er wrote: post #70
throwaway07Ju19 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the U.S. there is one presidential candidate championing a UBI of $1000/mo. It would be paid for by a VAT tax. Typically VAT tax is unpopular because it is regressive. But the UBI more than compensates for the extra tax burden.

Yang's implementation is very regressive. You have the regressive VAT tax, but then you also have the fact that you are cutting government benefits then giving everyone $1000. So the poor just end up net poorer. Example: Now: $12,000 a year + $12,000 in benefits = $24,000 $50,000 a year + $0 in benefits = $50,000 UBI: $12,000 a year + $12,000 in UBI = $24,000 $50,000 a year + $12,000 in UBI = $62,000 The poorer perso…

Your assumption is that Govt benefit starts coming your way the moment you need or ask for it. From limited personal experience AND from what I read, applying for and getting any kind of government benefit is very time labor intensive and involves long waits.

And many don't get it because they don't meet a threshold. And those who get it, have to not work (aka not make money), in order to keep getting it.

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

#204

Post by michaelmrose »

mulmen wrote: post #192
WorldMaker wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting reminder: kiosks don't eliminate the labor of the cashier, they pass the labor on to the consumer. The same amount of labor overall is still happening in that building, just more of it is unpaid.

I have always done the work of expressing my desired food item. Without a kiosk that desire gets repeated by another person to a computer. With a kiosk that repetition does not happen, the order is directly expressed to the machine. It appears to me there is 50% less labor with a kiosk.

This would be great if every store didn't have a different uniquely bad ui

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

#205

Post by MR4D »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #178
jonnycoder wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Hospitals could be fined $300 a day by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services if they don’t comply with the new disclosure rule, officials said." https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/15/trump-releases-rule-requirin... The stick is not big enough.

Clearly it is. The hospitals are suing the government to prevent the rule.

A massive amount is about to be spent on lawyers, so clearly they see this as a huge threat.

[0] - https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/12/04/55...

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

#206

Post by narag »

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.

At least the hospital could provide health care at a discount?

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

#207

Post by jackhack »

derg wrote: post #144
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…

>I often work with people who have never worked such jobs. They're upset that they're 'overworked' and spend their time in the fancy break room with all the perks. Many I suspect have no clue. Not that it's a realistic idea but damn if everyone had experiencing working in the demanding, underpaid, crappy jobs in the service industry, we might be more empathetic and better off as a whole.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. Everybody needs a &^%$ job once in a while to reset their empathy scale.

Walmart does something interesting for their software development process. Say a developer is working on a warehouse automation system -- that dev. is then trained and works in the warehouse for a month. Same goes for checkout/cashier, or customer service, or whatever. You WORK that job for a month and you'll understand just how trying it can be to struggle with lousy software on top of a sometimes difficult public. You'll know the trouble spots and the workarounds, and can take that education back to a nice safe quiet desk where you can then go on to help solve the problems.

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

#208

Post by tehwebguy »

jonnycoder wrote: post #153
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.

Hopefully it will be enacted in 2021 as planned. My money is on Hospitals making it a constitutional issue and dragging it out for a decade though.

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

#209

Post by monoideism »

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…

Having worked several years in both retail and waiting/busing tables (full-time, not just as a part-time college job), I have a great deal of empathy for folks stuck in these minimum wage jobs.

That said, if I could get a retail job that paid what I make as a dev, I’d definitely consider it. Retail was grueling, but at the same time much less psychological pressure, and much less mentally exhausting.

I always say I’m not going to let my next dev job take over my life, and maintain work/life balance, and things always start out well. But inevitably, pressure builds, I cave, and things get bad again. I realize that I share the blame for this situation, but at the same time, this situation seems to be more common than not among software devs.

I never faced this kind of pressure in retail jobs. Work was grueling and at time abusive, but when the work day was over, I was 100% able to relax and forget about work. I struggle to do that with a software job.

But at the same time, my compensation is considerably higher than most other jobs. So I’m both grateful for my job and yet still wish there were another way. Like a part-time software development job, which seem to be unusually rare.

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

#210

Post by mulmen »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #89
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" I know it's a cold, impersonal take, but when life sucks, having a child is going to make it worse and most likely just lead to a new generation of suffering." She could've had the child when her economics were in a better place. She could've been assaulted. She could've been denied the education to prevent the pregnancy. There are a bajillion and one reasons why a child might exist and she is responsible for it.

> She could've had the child when her economics were in a better place. She could've been assaulted. She could've been denied the education to prevent the pregnancy It's possible but not probable when you consider that 42.3% of births are paid for via Medicaid [1]. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_13-508.pdf

Surely you need data on the rate of assault and lost economic security to make this assertion.
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