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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

#441

Post by nabeards »

scarface74 wrote: post #427
taurath wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s not the role of every job to provide a livable income. It’s the role of the economy for someone to get a livable income if that’s what they’re seeking. If it’s not working then it needs a nudge.

So should we force companies to pay a “livable income” for the teenager staying at home? The couple with two small kids and the mom staying at home to raise them? The single mom who has to raise three or four kids on her own? The single person in the story who needs expensive medical care to stay alive?

Sure, why not? There’s a ridiculous amount of money out there, but people are squabbling over pennies.

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

#442

Post by scarface74 »

grrowl wrote: post #408
whack wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very interesting that most people assume it should be the employer's responsibility to provide for the employee's wellbeing. Call me naive, but I think it should be society's responsibility. What about Hedge Funds, Technology companies, Law Firms and every other company that hires primarily 6-figure white collar employees. Should they be completely off the hook, just because their business model only requir…

> Minimum wage laws are fundamentally a tax on low-margin businesses "For the fiscal year 2017, McDonalds reported earnings of US$5.2 billion" Why are you making this sound like a bad thing? What's with the EITC drum-beating in this thread?

You realize there is a difference between revenue and profit?

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mcdonalds-reports-f...

Their net income was less than $700 million and it’s not corporate McDonalds that pays the employees in the stores - it’s the franchise owners.

Franchise owners make less than $70K a year per store.

https://work.chron.com/average-income-fast-food-franchise-ow...

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

#443

Post by scarface74 »

k-godwin wrote: post #235
whack wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very interesting that most people assume it should be the employer's responsibility to provide for the employee's wellbeing. Call me naive, but I think it should be society's responsibility. What about Hedge Funds, Technology companies, Law Firms and every other company that hires primarily 6-figure white collar employees. Should they be completely off the hook, just because their business model only requir…

> Should we be completely immune from minimum wage increases just because we can afford to pay for the finer things in life? You aren't immune. Minimum wage laws impact the supply chain that feeds Whole Foods and nice restaurants by increasing the cost of rural labor. https://www.indeed.com/salaries/farm-worker-Salaries A quick google will show you that farm workers are well below the $15/hour goal most progressives…

So if you aren’t a fan of subsidizing low margin businesses - like the mom and pop shops - are you also not willing to allow public pensions to invest in VC funds that subsidize money losing tech companies?

I think it’s kind of rich that the same people who are probably working for money losing companies backed by VCs think that small low margin businesses owners don’t deserve to make a living.

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

#444

Post by scarface74 »

ShinTakuya wrote: post #365
whack wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very interesting that most people assume it should be the employer's responsibility to provide for the employee's wellbeing. Call me naive, but I think it should be society's responsibility. What about Hedge Funds, Technology companies, Law Firms and every other company that hires primarily 6-figure white collar employees. Should they be completely off the hook, just because their business model only requir…

Low margin businesses fundamentally operate by exploiting low paid workers. What's wrong with making the playing field even by taxing them? The prices of food will go up, but that's okay. We do it here in Australia and nobody is crying over having to pay 12 AUD for McDonald's vs 9 AUD in the US.

Low margin businesses are also franchise owners and mom and pop shops. Who do you think is hurt the most if prices go up on fast food and at Walmart?

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

#445

Post by missingrib »

kabdib wrote: post #341
sebringj wrote: post #32

Before I had a programmer job when i was younger, i completely 100% empathize with her in having those types of thankless jobs and constantly being tired. I can't imagine being trapped in that going forward. I bootstrapped my situation but I had a nice parents, a middle-class upbringing and a decent school to start everything, and a knack for programming... but I know/met so many who do not have this leg up in whatev…

I worked as a dishwasher for a year. Every high-tech job I've had since then has been easy in comparison, even the crazy ones.

As someone who's worked in both, I don't entirely agree. Dishwashing was just tiring in a different way. But you could just entirely shut off your mind and zone out. I remember getting into a sort of meditative state while listening to music, it was kind of cool.

Tech jobs are just mentally stressful sometimes. I can totally see a good amount of people not wanting to switch places honestly.

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

#446

Post by scarface74 »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #228
whack wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very interesting that most people assume it should be the employer's responsibility to provide for the employee's wellbeing. Call me naive, but I think it should be society's responsibility. What about Hedge Funds, Technology companies, Law Firms and every other company that hires primarily 6-figure white collar employees. Should they be completely off the hook, just because their business model only requir…

Corporations are a part and a result of our society. The government should not be in the business of subsidizing companies who aren't profitable enough to pay a living wage, it should just mandate a living wage and companies who aren't able to meet it go out of business. 'Creative destruction' and all that.

How many YC funded companies have ever been profitable? VC backed tech companies “aren’t profitable enough” to pay a living wage.

Small businesses outside of the tech sector don’t have the access to capital that tech bro’s have.

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

#447

Post by Teddy_Kaz_Bruv »

minikites wrote: post #364
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

>127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. For example, consider motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were introduced, they appeared to increase man's freedom. They took…

omg so edgy!! I quote Unabomber!!! I'm so enlightened

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

#448

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

codedokode wrote: post #108
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not considering how far she works. We don't know how far she works. We only know how long her commute takes. Bus routes in cities without good bus infrastructure are often circuitous and don't represent the fastest way to get to any particular place on the route.

She doesn't live in the city because according to Google Maps Durham, NC is 15 km across and you can walk to almost any part of the city in less than 2 hours.

She can't live that far out of town, because the buses scarcely go five miles from the city center.

https://godurhamtransit.org/sites/default/files/godurham-sys...

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

#449

Post by Spooky23 »

freeflight wrote: post #430
jackhack wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 un…

> Everybody needs a &^%$ job once in a while to reset their empathy scale. Imho that's trying to solve a symptom, not the actual problem. Why does society tolerate &^%$ jobs in the first place? Why not strive to make jobs non-&^%$? Instead, it somehow has become completely normalized that these kinds of jobs exist, and anybody who doesn't want to work them is considered "too entitled", which all goes back to this not…

Because society has evolved to consider the economic aspirations of people who own stuff to be a higher order virtue than liberty or the public welfare.

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

#450

Post by scarface74 »

nabeards wrote: post #441
scarface74 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So should we force companies to pay a “livable income” for the teenager staying at home? The couple with two small kids and the mom staying at home to raise them? The single mom who has to raise three or four kids on her own? The single person in the story who needs expensive medical care to stay alive?

Sure, why not? There’s a ridiculous amount of money out there, but people are squabbling over pennies.

So now when you apply for a job they should base your pay on your household situation? If one person is single and the other is a single mom with three kids, the company should pay more?

Should they also get paid more if one has a medical condition and the other doesn’t?

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