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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

#501

Post by Spooky23 »

scarface74 wrote: post #442
grrowl wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

McDonalds franchise owners make 3x that. The average is dragged down by low rent chains like Subway or Wendy’s

Keep in mind that the owners make that after leasing the building from McDonalds. It’s a turnkey business and there are many, many people who have gotten pretty rich on operating these places.

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

#502

Post by nsxwolf »

im3w1l wrote: post #470
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in cybersecurity now, but worked retail for 7 years, fast food (Subway) for 6 years, and a ride op at a major theme park (Cedar Point) for 2 summers. If I could work the ride op or fast food jobs at my current salary, I'd take them in a heart beat. Hell, I might even take the ride op job for half the salary because the job could sometimes be a lot of fun. But retail? Hell no. You could offer me double my salar…

What if, to make it more interesting, we throw in the perk of having a cool boss that allows you to be rude back to customers?

I worked for a mom and pop hot dog/Italian beef joint in the Chicago suburbs in the 90s and that’s exactly what it was. A totally un-PC Italian family that didn’t take any shit and insisted you didn’t take any shit either.

It was a blast.

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

#503

Post by BurningFrog »

ShinTakuya wrote: post #484
BurningFrog wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's wrong with making the playing field even by taxing them? This turns the low paid workers into unemployed workers. I'm fascinated that people honestly think it's better that people make $0/h than $10/h while "exploited".

Yes according to classical economics it'd result in a decrease in demand. But the reality is that these shops need the workers regardless. Moreover with a minimum wage people have more disposable income to spend at these shops, which can sometimes create more jobs than the increased salary destroyed. Most studies that have been done on minimum wage found no correlation to unemployment rate. The economics you learned…

Pretty much all changes in minimum wages are small.

This makes it very hard to measure the effect with any precision. You have to remember that wages are not 100% of the compensation for employees. So if MW increases from $10 to $10:50, fringe benefits may be cut from $2 to $1:50, and you end up with no measurable effect.

> But the reality is that these shops need the workers regardless.

If their expenses become higher than their earnings, the shops will close. Maybe that at least is an economic fact we can agree on?

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

#504

Post by rconti »

larrywright wrote: post #431
rconti wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing the franchisees are hurting as well? Or are you just arguing that the franchisees are also getting rich by paying people as little as possible?

I’m arguing that the restaurants aren’t especially profitable and their margins are thin. It’s a bit like a rental property, in the sense that you have to have more than a couple in order to make much money at it.

This has never been my understanding about the major ones, at least. The licenses are incredibly expensive to buy, but they are quite profitable. But I recognize we're both speaking totally vaguely and without sources, so I'm not sure why I'm replying when I have so little to add myself :)

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

#505

Post by Sebguer »

jijji wrote: post #460

the story of a 29-year old working in fast food sounds pretty disturbing. it sounds like a lack of planning more than anything. McDonalds is meant for kids in high school living with their parents. It's pretty disturbing that a 29-year old would have failed to plan for over 15 years wasting her time and working in a job meant for kids half her age. I would say she should start getting some real skills to get a higher…

The idea that these kind of jobs are meant for 'kids in high school' is a myth. The idea that the internet has leveled the playing field is perhaps not a myth, but wildly over-stated.

I hope that one day you find some empathy.

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

#506

Post by big_chungus »

whack wrote: post #215
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.

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…

I'm baffled that no one has suggested that an individual is responsible for himself. Corporate health insurance, for instance, started due to wage & price controls. This shielded consumers from direct price increases. Instead of increasing wages, employers silently absorbed most of the costs, as evinced by the data [0] [1] [2].

Consumers almost certainly have more elastic purchasing preferences for insurance as a group, as they are much more granular. Insurance companies love negotiating with companies, because fewer, larger customers with greater inertia and specially-negotiated deals enable greater price discrimination than a mass-market product compared directly to others. This has further enabled the rise in prices.

I firmly believe that the individual is better-equipped to make his own decisions than any central planner or procurement department. We've messed things up enough with centralization; it's time to shift back to letting consumers make their own choices. Rather than taking even more choice by further centralizing from an oligopoly to a government monopoly, give people a chance to make their own decisions. I picked health insurance as it is a particularly hot topic, but this reasoning applies to many other areas.

[0]: https://fm-static.cnbc.com/awsmedia/chart/2019/8/19/image%20...

[1]: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/10/08/50...

[2]: https://www.insurancejournal.com/app/uploads/2018/10/2018-eh...

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

#507

Post by scarface74 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #501
scarface74 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

McDonalds franchise owners make 3x that. The average is dragged down by low rent chains like Subway or Wendy’s Keep in mind that the owners make that after leasing the building from McDonalds. It’s a turnkey business and there are many, many people who have gotten pretty rich on operating these places.

From the cited article. So after investing $1-$3 million dollars, a McDonalds franchise owner makes about the same as a software engineer in a major US city and the software engineer didn’t have to spend $1 to $3 million and has a lot less risk.

Most franchise owners aren’t “starting a business” they are “buying a job”.

But a 2013 report from Franchise Business Review dug down into the numbers and came up with a net profit of $66,000 per franchise. McDonald's did much better with an average of around $150,000 per restaurant. But when you consider that a McDonald's franchise costs more than $1 million and can easily run more than $2 million, even McDonald's doesn't generate excellent average returns on investment. The fast-food franchise business is tough, and success doesn't come easy.

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

#508

Post by soulofmischief »

I’ve worked in the fast food industry for 14 years—about half my life

Can someone give me an anecdotal example of how this could come to be without some fault in Brown's decision-making process?

For starters, I've always heard that commute time is inversely proportional to career mobility. I made it a rule not to work anywhere farther than half an hour away. And that is the absolute maximum which was necessary when I lived rural area. Currently, I work remote, which has indeed provided more time for further career training.

My mother has worked at the same minimum-wage food joint for almost eight years. She tells me it's because she's "comfortable" and friends with everyone there. Personally, I think it affords her the time and lack of responsibility needed in order to engage in non-moderated drug use. This was certainly the reason she was usually unemployed and unable to provide the most basic resources for me as a child. If I bring up this or her other time-sucking addictions such as mobile gaming / simulated gambling, she becomes very defensive.

Regardless of the reason, comfort breeds complacency. Complacency leads to not making a meaningful change to your career trajectory in a 15-year period. As someone who grew up in relatively abject poverty, most of the positive things in my life have only come from within, due to my determination to succeed despite numerous setbacks. Sometimes I find myself having difficulty empathizing with people who seem reasonably intelligent but have been in the same situation for 10-20 years.

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

#509

Post by taurath »

scarface74 wrote: post #496
taurath wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She should get a living wage. The kids should take less hours so they have more time to do things other than being a wage slave. Everyone who works should get a living wage. If everyone has a living wage, the businesses will do better because people will have more money to spend. That’s the point of investment. Our economy is built off of the consumer, who has been stagnating for decades. We could be doing far better…

So since the living wage is different for a single mom with two kids than a single person living alone, should the minimum wage be different for one than the other?

No, she should get different assistance for her situation, or if not, then yes.

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

#510

Post by dang »

paulcole wrote: post #497
dang wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this here.

I think you meant to reply to this comment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21719010

Alas, HN gets more than one bad comment.

If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, even in a single thread—nor do we read the threads sequentially. If you assume that the state in your head matches the state in ours, your judgments are going to be off base.

Instead of making a false assumption and posting something snarky, you should just let us know in a straightforward way. hn@ycombinator.com is best for that, because we don't see everything in the threads (cf. previous paragraph) but we do see all the emails. It may take us a while though.

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