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

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

#241

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

jhomedall wrote: post #139

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bike would possibly be the ideal solution for someone in her shoes. Of course, there's that lovely enhanced risk of dying you get for daring to brave the streets on two wheels in the US. But if she gets back significant time from changing it up, it might be worth it.

The average high in Durham is around 30C (86F) in the middle of summer ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durham,_North_Carolina#Climate ). Without a shower, she would be a stinking mess at work.

Ok, so cycling is not a 100% solution and won't work every single day. I did not mean to present it as such.

Even if only 50% of days are suitable for cycling, if it saves her an hour a day then, at her hourly rate, a decent bike will return it's investment in less than half a year. And that's assuming her bus rides are free. She/a person similarly situated would have to judge for themselves whether it is a useful tool.

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

#242

Post by tehwebguy » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 10:09 PM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #157

Aloha wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> There's no reason that machine couldn't make french fries with a few changes

That machine is, like, 5 machines including an oil moat. With all of them together it makes up something like half the entire store's footprint. It's only remotely viable because that shop mostly only makes one thing. No breakfast sandwiches in the morning, no burgers at lunch time, just donuts.

Plenty of employees are still required just to make the different types of donuts and donut-adjacent items (and also presumably to be there in case a monumental grease fire starts, or the dough machine blows a gasket starts spewing dough all over).

> Pizza making robots are already a thing

Presumably making the frozen ones sold at grocery stores, which might be a meaningful percentage of all pizza sold, but effectively 0% of any other pizzas?

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

#243

Post by smileysteve » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 10:09 PM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #214

outworlder wrote: post #73

Other than the low salaries, there are two compounding issues here: – Transportation. The US is very unfriendly to forms of transportation that are not cars. There are a few exceptions, but these are exceptions. Good public transport or even bike lanes would massively improve conditions for a lot of people. – Health care. Private companies are overcharging people and have made health care(hospitals and medication) un…

> Good public transport or even bike lanes would massively improve conditions for a lot of people. Bring up public transit or bicycling to people in nearly every non-urban part of the United States and you'll get a million reasons why it won't work. Car culture is so engrained in America that people have convinced themselves there is no alternative. "I'd get sweaty", "Oh but I have to carry...", "Walking to the stop…

A 80 year old man was remarking how Gen Z (and late millennials) aren't even getting their licenses as teens anymore.

It's amazing to think that he was the first generation of the ubiquitous automobile in the US and now can't comprehend how the generation before him got around.

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

#244

Post by Scoundreller » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 10:10 PM UTC

Humdeee wrote: post #200

Ancalagon wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow this is incredibly dystopian to think about. Just imagine, you're born into a country that by no will of your own becomes more and more expensive. You're given an inadequate education to function in this country, so you're forced to work menial jobs to make ends meet, and hope that by some lottery stroke of luck you will somehow develop the time or the money or the skills to have a good life. BUT if you don't get…

Can you imagine writing your 12th grade anti-deportation exam, and looking around the room and knowing that the lowest ~15% of your peers will be asked to leave the country? I don't even want to think of the new suicide rate in that world.

Canada might have this problem soon.

Study visas are virtually unrestricted. But there are more being issued than immigration pathway seats (which are restricted).

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

#245

Post by ameister14 » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 10:10 PM UTC

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…

You're missing a couple of things - first, it isn't zero sum. I don't care if I'm poor relatively as long as I'm not poor absolutely.

Second, the average benefit isn't $1,000 a month and in almost all cases the $1k per month is an increase on existing benefit numbers.

Third, since it doesn't come with strings, you don't have to worry about losing your benefits when you get a job or a kid leaves the home, when you relapse or when you get sick and can't manage the tangled web of government red tape.

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

#246

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #220

ceejayoz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That page indicates a Big Mac meal (which includes a drink, too) starts at $9.80, which is US$6.70. The cost for this meal appears to be US$5.99 in the US - quite similar. That's not close to $15 (or $20) by any stretch of the imagination.

If your going to convert to USD, you need to do the same for the wage. So about $13.60 USD per hr.

Fair enough. That still compares quite favorably to the US version's $7.25.

If unionization and a near doubling in minimum wage makes a hamburger, fries, and Coke cost $0.71 more, I think I can accept that.

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

#247

Post by logfromblammo » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

I'm seeing a lot of comments in here made from the perspective of people who have never had the experience of being caught on the poverty flypaper.

Preying upon the weak is an industry. The admonition to "work harder!" is propaganda disseminated by those who passively benefit from the labor of others. The fact is that wages have not risen along with productivity: it is mostly just ownership dividends that rise.

A food-service worker should be able to enjoy the benefits that have accrued to our civilization over many centuries of specialized labor, and still be a functional person in civil society after a day's labor is done--even though food-service work is one of our lowest-status specialties. Even the least of us are still persons in their own right, and in a nation of temporarily embarrassed millionaires, we are all far more likely to stumble into deeper embarrassment than to recover those grandiose estates that were so unfortunately lost when we erred in choosing our parents.

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

#248

Post by larrywright » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #196

larrywright wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re referring to that Huffpost article from a few years ago, that got pulled because their math was faulty. It was based on assumptions about costs that weren’t rooted in reality, namely that the ingredients were the largest expense in the cost of the food. It’s not, it’s actually the labor, which is why increasing the employee wages has a disproportionate impact on the cost of the menu items.

Pappa John's own previous CEO claimed it would cost 13 cents per pizza more to provide all his employees health insurance. He cited this as a reason to not give his employees health insurance

That’s not an apples to apples comparison, but I agree that this is stupid.

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

#249

Post by kortilla » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

kevinqiu1 wrote: post #230

Even though it seems like she lives in an urban area (or urban enough to be squeezed by rising home prices), the public transit is so poor that she spends 3-5x more time getting to work without a car than with one. Sometimes she can't even get home. That's crazy, the car dependence of America means that you need to pay for insurance + a car to even function in society. That is the opposite of freedom

> you need to pay for insurance + a car to even function in society. That is the opposite of freedom

I’m not sure what “freedom” is supposed to mean in that context. How is being dependent on paying for public transportation better? In countries where public transportation is amazing enough to obviate the need for cars, you just trade in the freedom to go wherever you want whenever you want.

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

#250

Post by jimbokun » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

maxaf wrote: post #115

tj-teej wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a UBI as it is not U. The McDonalds cashier is likely getting subsidized housing and food stamp benefits. Yang's plan would require that the cashier has to choose between the "UBI" or her existing benefits. I asked his campaign why they designed it this way and they did not have an answer, I was told to ask the candidate directly, which was disappointing.

> Yang's plan would require that the cashier has to choose between the "UBI" or her existing benefits. I'm neutral on Yang's campaign, but I like the idea of a UBI because administering it will be much cheaper than running existing benefits. Means-testing has a real and very sizeable cost. What will happen to all the guvment workers who will get laid off once existing benefits have been supplanted by the UBI? They wi…

> They will go home to merrily enjoy their new UBI checks.

Which might be cheaper for the government than paying them to do their current jobs.