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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

#611

Post by cixter »

soulofmischief wrote: post #603
danans wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anecdotal example of how this could come to be without some fault in Brown's decision-making process? You've really never made 1 bad decision, or 10, in your life? I have plenty of bad decisions, total screwups even, in my history. Some of them were from being petulant, or naive. Some because I was depressed. Yet I'm a white collar educated professional, I'm part because I made some good decisions, and also because…

I make bad decisions every day. How does that have to do with anything? Ms. Brown has had 14 years to come up with a career trajectory. I don't think she has ever bothered in that time to visit a career consultant after realizing she couldn't figure it out on her own. Random fluctuations in decision quality average out over time to reveal a smooth function of decision-making prowess.

When would she have time to do this? Also (and I feel like I'm grasping at straws getting this point across), when your whole existence revolves around just getting to work and back, is it fair of us to require people to have the horizon and insight to understand how to progress their situation? The underlying problem is that exploitation of poor people by these massive corporations lines the pockets of the already extremely wealthy, while it keeps people like Ms. Brown in a constant struggle to keep her head above water.

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

#612

Post by shrimpx »

cixter wrote: post #577

Coming from Norway, this article is horrendous. I can never understand the mentality that lies behind all of the arguments most you guys are presenting here - defending the employers shit salary and rights. You guys know that McDonalds manages to run in countries with decent wages as well, right? And that maybe a company with a yearly global profit of over 10 billion dollars might be able to afford giving their emplo…

Americans are generally reluctant to allow rich social benefits that aren't "earned". People who don't earn are called "lazy". In reality they're unable. They're unable because they lack access to good education starting very early in life. They lack access because their parents also lacked access, and nobody with access is willing to give these "lazy" people a "handout". This sharp (and sharpening) class divide is the modern American tragedy and it has pretty much nothing to do with political affiliation. It's core culture.

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

#613

Post by Broken_Hippo »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #481
seem_2211 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the struggle for people in these jobs is mostly around the consistency in hours, and the miserly low pay. Both of which are deliberate choices by the firms that employ them. To some degree, serving the "customer" by cutting labour costs to the bare minimum (as a way to minimize the cost of everything), means we create an awful existence for the people who depend on these jobs for a living. The tyranny o…

I am with you on: * not having to cut labor to the minimum as a basic value * sooo many jobs would be unobjectionable at 8 hours per week. Almost any job. * professions should be designed to balance physical and mental labor, particularly to offer breaks from painful standing. I am not with you on: * Giving people 167% of the average hourly wage for an easy job like retail. As a society, we do not _want_ retail to be…

Actually, we do want retail to be a great career. Lots of great careers pay little: Pre-K teachers usually make just over minimum wage in the US, despite needing a 2-year degree to do the job. But it is rewarding and fufilling.

And everyone needs to shop. Retail isn't just interacting with people all day: You are filing shelves. Sometimes you are a pharmacist or a pharmacy tech. Sometimes you are doing payroll or managing. Sometimes you are ordering product.

You are also cleaning up the shit someone smeared on the wall of the bathroom and the puke the kid left in the isle. There is no real way around that.

Not everyone thinks it is more fun to interact with people all day long. I'd argue that most factory work - lots of which is paid fairly well, comparatively - takes no more intelligence or training or knowledge than retail. In both, once you have experience, you can get another job. Same for call centers... which again, are usually paid better than retail or fast food (yet still treated poorly). I don't know why retail should pay less than these sorts of jobs. Most folks just wind up with retail jobs because that's what they started with and it is hard to get out of the cycle.

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

#614

Post by devcpp »

dm319 wrote: post #594
cixter wrote: post #577

Coming from Norway, this article is horrendous. I can never understand the mentality that lies behind all of the arguments most you guys are presenting here - defending the employers shit salary and rights. You guys know that McDonalds manages to run in countries with decent wages as well, right? And that maybe a company with a yearly global profit of over 10 billion dollars might be able to afford giving their emplo…

I'm from the UK and I'm shocked at the discussion going on here. Most people commenting here are in vastly different situations to the person written about - probably both in terms of natural ability as well as education, not to mention actual salary or opportunity. Do we agree as a society we need people to work these jobs? Because if we do, it is not an argument to point out ways an intelligent person can manuveure…

I've been a Libertarian since long before I started programming, back when I used to earn next to nothing at the Army and realized the shortcomings of regulation. In fact, I started from the lower class, never had robots, computers, consoles or cellphones like my friends growing up. So no silver spoon here. You can keep telling yourself I'm a "temporarily embarrassed billionaire" but I have my opinions on economics.

I am now convinced that a free market is the best way for everyone, particularly the poorest. There are many who think likewise and we are not callous or selfish. To me, you're the selfish person by keeping us from having better lives. Money does not grow on trees and everything the State does is another opportunity to slow us down and make our poor poorer.

I am always ready to be convinced otherwise, but so far every bit of data I have seen points that way, with ease of doing business, deregulation and a low tax burden being major factors towards a more prosperous society.

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

#615

Post by taurath »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #527
taurath wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try at the very minimum matching to inflation, and adjusting the current wage to what it would be if it were. Then all you have to decide is whether the minimum wage should’ve been a thing in the first place.

I feel like there's a lot of assumptions in that suggestion that I don't necessarily accept. The biggest is the assumption that the minimum wage sets the market rather than the market setting the minimum wage. I believe the market conditions during a period of time have heavy influence on the legislated minimum wage. Imagine if 50 years ago you could easily import millions of impoverished people willing to work for a…

The market doesn’t set the minimum wage. The market actively pushes wages down, as we’ve seen even with a very small unemployment rate wages haven’t gone up.

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

#616

Post by oarsinsync »

soulofmischief wrote: post #590
astronautjones wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I hope I don't come across as projecting. I am just sharing my own experience in poverty. I am still not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination and I have no support network. Obviously everyone is different. This is why I asked for other points of view for a better sample size.

I come from a poor family. My parents made a point of never spending any more than the bare minimum amount of money on me, and both had to work full time jobs. I would make my own way home from school every day from the age of 7. I would make my own way to school from the age of 11. School was a 90min bus ride one way, or a 30 min drive (60 min round trip, x2 for start+end of day).

That doesn't change that I had both parents and teachers who cared about me, educated me, disciplined me, and enabled me to succeed.

> 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.

There is nothing about my success in my adult life that has only come from within. Even my determination isn't mine and mine alone. Everything about my success is down to the opportunities that were afforded to me, to enable me to have that determination and outlook. My parents, my teachers, and my peers throughout my upbringing and adult life have all played a part. Nobody exists in a vacuum.

I am immensely privileged to have had the amount of support I have had. I expect the vast majority of commentators on this board have had similarly privileged lives. The people stuck (either by 'choice' or by 'circumstance') most likely have not.

At the risk of sounding like a , check your privilege, appreciate it for what it is, and try not to look down on those that didn't have the same opportunities that you did.

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

#617

Post by cixter »

apatters wrote: post #457
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…

You can tell who was born with a silver spoon in their mouth by their response to this. The "why can't we just make all jobs great forever" responses crack me up. It's classic virtue signalling by liberal elites: demand that life be a perfect fantasy land for everyone, then put forward zero realistic proposals to achieve it. Doesn't matter that it will never happen because you've already gained your social capital wi…

I'm suspecting that you're picking up the wrong attitude here. We're not saying that all jobs should be chill and easy and "great forever". We're saying that they should be compensated properly. As a CS engineer, I'm fine with my salary being close to that of a less educated person, if his job is really hard and physically taxing.

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

#618

Post by iliketosleep »

soulofmischief wrote: post #601
iliketosleep wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The woman in question seems neither comfortable or complacent. She needs the money to pay for her day-to-day expenses and has a long commute. With her type of work experience, it would be difficult to find a more lucrative job. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with her decision making process. She's simply been doing what is necessary to get by under difficult circumstances. I've met some capable an…

The sad truth is that some people simply just start off in a tough situation, work hard, and never get a lucky break. Your tone implies that I don't understand the disparity of the human condition. I lived my entire life very impoverished and at times homeless. I come from a very abusive household and grew up in a rural area with little prospects. I've never caught a break. I saw a way out, computers, and I took it.…

> Your tone implies that I don't understand the disparity of the human condition. I wasn't implying that at all.

> I saw a way out, computers, and I took it. I was able to pivot to a better career by building skills in my free time. To be able to pull that off requires a certain amount of natural aptitude that is not a given for most people.

I respect people who have been able to find a way out of tough situations, but I also respect those who keep pushing through tough circumstances even when they haven't been able to find a way out.

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

#619

Post by duelingjello »

shrimpx wrote: post #612
cixter wrote: post #577

Coming from Norway, this article is horrendous. I can never understand the mentality that lies behind all of the arguments most you guys are presenting here - defending the employers shit salary and rights. You guys know that McDonalds manages to run in countries with decent wages as well, right? And that maybe a company with a yearly global profit of over 10 billion dollars might be able to afford giving their emplo…

Americans are generally reluctant to allow rich social benefits that aren't "earned". People who don't earn are called "lazy". In reality they're unable. They're unable because they lack access to good education starting very early in life. They lack access because their parents also lacked access, and nobody with access is willing to give these "lazy" people a "handout". This sharp (and sharpening) class divide is t…

Stockholm syndrome meets conditions tantamount to slavery. Americans don't know how bad they have it. And what's worse, the pervasive American fallacy of "suffering equals merit equals reward." Too many suffering slaves accuse the slaves in the house of being lazy, and vice-versa. A divided-and-conquered people who will also buy into partisan right/left nonsense rather than see their true, common enemy who has systematically cheated them: the very rich - the ones who own the same corporations they work for.

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

#620

Post by cixter »

devcpp wrote: post #614
dm319 wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from the UK and I'm shocked at the discussion going on here. Most people commenting here are in vastly different situations to the person written about - probably both in terms of natural ability as well as education, not to mention actual salary or opportunity. Do we agree as a society we need people to work these jobs? Because if we do, it is not an argument to point out ways an intelligent person can manuveure…

I've been a Libertarian since long before I started programming, back when I used to earn next to nothing at the Army and realized the shortcomings of regulation. In fact, I started from the lower class, never had robots, computers, consoles or cellphones like my friends growing up. So no silver spoon here. You can keep telling yourself I'm a "temporarily embarrassed billionaire" but I have my opinions on economics.…

How would a minimum wage slow Ms. Brown down and make her poorer? To be serious, I would really like an anecdotal example on how medicare for all, minimum wage and a better social support system would be negative.
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