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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

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no job where you're paid little and expected little of. You'll just be paid little and you'll do some "low value" physical labour instead.

Right now the leading candidate on my list is to be a school bus driver. The responsibility is not trivial, but the work doesn’t seem too bad :)

You might enjoy this article about a professor who became one: https://stevesalaita.com/an-honest-living. The job seems more complex and more rewarding than I had imagined.

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

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is a really out-of-touch perspective. One's ability to gain knowledge and skills is determined by the amount of free time they have when not working She spends something like 4 hours a day on most days on the bus. That's plenty of time to read. >Lifting oneself out of poverty is not easy to do here My family came from poverty. It's easy to do if you come from a culture which values self improvement. I know it's…

> I know it's unpopular to say, but most poor people are poor for reasons related to their genes, personality and upbringing, not because of the system. Some kind of implied false dichotomy here. Is upbringing unrelated to the system?

whoa

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

#383
For people who have worked these kind of jobs: how much difference in your day does it make when people are pleasant or friendly? I get takeout pretty often and I am always super friendly and pay a tip of $2 when I'm picking up -- they still had to do the work of packing up the food, right? And honestly, they probably need the couple bucks more than me. I assume it is appreciated but I always wonder how much of a difference it makes for the person. Whether it's just a drop in the bucket or if they go home in better spirits or whatever. I'm also always curious if it goes into a pool so the cooking staff get a cut as well, cuz they deserve it as well.

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

#384

This by far not a popular opinion, but some jobs aren’t worth $15 an hour. We shouldn’t force social policy on private corporations. Sure she needs more than $9.15/hour to live as an adult and pay for insurance but a teenager staying at home doesn’t. I am strong believer in a social safety net but I think that should be the role of government. She shouldn’t have to depend on private corporations for insurance, that s…

Here's a counter-argument: if people are taking jobs that don't cover their cost of living, and the government is having to step in to subsidize them, then that's effectively a subsidy from the government to the company's bottom line.

In general, we Americans believe in the free market, but we also believe that we need limits on what people can legally contract for. For example, we don't let people sell organs. We don't let people sell themselves into slavery. We don't let people put their pre-teen children to work. And we do indeed have a minimum wage. Do you feel like we should abolish the minimum wage altogether, or just that it shouldn't be $15/hour. If so, why?

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

#385

This by far not a popular opinion, but some jobs aren’t worth $15 an hour. We shouldn’t force social policy on private corporations. Sure she needs more than $9.15/hour to live as an adult and pay for insurance but a teenager staying at home doesn’t. I am strong believer in a social safety net but I think that should be the role of government. She shouldn’t have to depend on private corporations for insurance, that s…

> This by far not a popular opinion, but some jobs aren’t worth $15 an hour. We shouldn’t force social policy on private corporations.

Some jobs aren't worth doing, thats for sure. We decided that if a job isn't worth paying someone $15 an hour to do, it's not worth someone doing. The market can figure that out.

We're forcing the policy on the worker as much as the corporation, they cannot sell their labor for less than $15 an hour either. We, as society, are saying "if the market says you aren't worth >$15/hour go to school until you are" as thats the best use of everyone's time.

Arguing that teenagers deserve less protections against exploitation of their labor is arguing we should go back to pre-industrial revolution policies.

I'm also not sure what your point about the EITC is, it gives different amounts of tax credits to adults depending on if they have kids or not recognizing that parenting costs money. You have to be aged 25-65 to claim it if you don't have kids yourself, so teenagers who work do not benefit from it directly. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit

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

#386
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 un…

Working a shit job only produces empathy if the external consequences are similar: no savings, no disposable income, poverty, etc. You don’t need that extreme to have high empathy, such as understanding context and limitations. Some people just aren’t good at empathy and even that scenario wouldn’t help. This is also complicated in that many people cannot differentiate empathy from sympathy.

* empathy - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

* sympathy - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy

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

#387

This by far not a popular opinion, but some jobs aren’t worth $15 an hour. We shouldn’t force social policy on private corporations. Sure she needs more than $9.15/hour to live as an adult and pay for insurance but a teenager staying at home doesn’t. I am strong believer in a social safety net but I think that should be the role of government. She shouldn’t have to depend on private corporations for insurance, that s…

I think this is probably correct but it seems entirely incompatible with modern American society.

As an outsider it seems like the way Americans think is "If you don't earn enough its because you didn't work hard enough" And any of your suggestions go against the idea of personal responsibility that is held so strongly.

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

#388
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These are things a cashier is still needed for. Is a cashier needed, or just an on call tech who oversees a dozen restaurants? I would imagine working on the kinks in the kiosks and improving their reliability to be doable.

Is a cashier needed, or just an on call tech who oversees a dozen restaurants? And while the store waits a couple of days for the $75/hour tech to show up, $10,000 walks out the door. Better to pay for a $15 cashier.

Doesn’t that imply automation isn’t worth it? If you need full human redundancy, why bother? I think you’re a bit pessimistic on the tech’s response time too.

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

#389

This by far not a popular opinion, but some jobs aren’t worth $15 an hour. We shouldn’t force social policy on private corporations. Sure she needs more than $9.15/hour to live as an adult and pay for insurance but a teenager staying at home doesn’t. I am strong believer in a social safety net but I think that should be the role of government. She shouldn’t have to depend on private corporations for insurance, that s…

Here's a counter-argument: if people are taking jobs that don't cover their cost of living, and the government is having to step in to subsidize them, then that's effectively a subsidy from the government to the company's bottom line. In general, we Americans believe in the free market, but we also believe that we need limits on what people can legally contract for. For example, we don't let people sell organs. We do…

Hence a universal basic income.
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