Wednesday, May 28, 2014
How much do I love this? Way more than I should.
From What Would Tyler Durdon Do:
"I hate when people protest McDonald’s as if Indiana Jones just emerged from its bowels with secret findings about how disgusting the food is or how everybody who works there is making minimum wage plus two cents an hour for greasy complexion compensation. Yeah, you got them, Indy. Or protesting bitches at their headquarters in Illinois demanding Mickey D’s pay their workers more, as if those who work at McDonald’s are somehow born into indentured servitude like the pyramid builders. McDonald’s hasn’t changed in fifty years. They’ve still got unskilled burger flippers and fry cooks doling out meals at inexplicably low prices to pre-diabetics passing through their high speed turnstiles. What’s changed is everything else around them. Like heads of households thinking they can provide for a family with a job meant for high school kids with too much acne to work as grocery store baggers. I’m sorry you have a brood to feed and the six-figure french fryer jobs at the McDonald’s competitors were all taken. You’re supposed to be broke-ass when you’re a teen or make lots of babies or drop out of high school or predominantly speak one of those weird languages that always sounds like you’re fighting. That way you get to learn for yourself that being broke sucks and you ought to do something about that. Like, learn a trade skill, or I guess make signs and yell really loudly until somebody pays you to go away. The last time people protested McDonald’s, we ended up with cryo chamber apple slices and a talking big-toothed Minions character ripoff pushing milk to go with your quarter-pounder. We don’t need that shit. Leave McDonald’s alone. It’s absolutely perfect at being what it is. It’s you who needs to change."
My opinion: Should managers at McDonald's be making more than minimum wage? Absolutely. That's the whole damn point - you go in there entry level on the fryers, and work your way up. But to insist that a sixteen-year-old working six hours a week for video game money be paid twelve bucks an hour? Or fifteen? Or twenty? Bullsh*t. Look at it this way: How much do you pay your kids' teenage babysitter? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Look. I've been there. I worked fast food, for more years than I'd care to admit. Was I paid a "living wage"? Haaaaaahahahaha don't make me laugh. And I shouldn't have been. It was a part-time, unskilled job which I educated and worked my way out of.
Entry-level jobs are exactly that. ENTRY-LEVEL. And they should be compensated for as such.
Okay, okay. Rant over. Just don't f*cking insult me by insisting that some teenage fry cook should be making as much as a paralegal or a librarian. That's bullsh*t. And if you're thirty years old with three kids and two divorces and you're still a fry cook? Shoulda stayed away from the drugs, my friend.
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11 comments:
I disagree! You love it at least as much as you should. More wouldn't hurt.
That's my reaction, too. I've heard people say they couldn't support their families on those salaries, and my reaction is what are you doing in that job if you have a family? Don't have a family until you have the skills to afford a family!
Rent around here is ridiculous, and I'm tired of hearing that people can't afford a house or apartment on that money. Uh, no. You're supposed to share rent with housemates/roommates. That's what folks did when I was young, and nobody complained. That's what you did!
There are some jobs where unskilled workers should get high pay. Coal miner and oil field roustabout, for instance. "You want to do a dangerous job that no one else wants? Here, have a bucket of money." Then again, by that token, the fourteen-year-olds picking tobacco down in Kentucky should be making twenty bucks an hour.
I dunno. As far as these whiny fast-food dipsh*ts go, "the world doesn't owe you a living" keeps springing to mind.
My first comment was a lot more ranty than I really wanted, so here's my cooler-headed version:
I teach at a community college, so by definition, I'm seeing people who don't have much money who are also willing to work for a better life for themselves and their families. And what I see is frustrating and heartbreaking.
I have one student now whose parents worked in the fields, and when he was old enough, he also worked in the fields, not to buy a car or party every night but to help his parents support the family. A few years ago, he fathered a child. Was that stupid considering he didn't have much money? Maybe, but we're mammals, and mammals have sex. It could also be that during that time in his life he and his partner were a little more financially secure and felt they could provide for a family. But things change. People get laid off. They get injured. Or they decide to go to school to improve their situation in life. He works part-time so he can go to school, but that means less money for his family. If they can't make it work, then he has to drop out of school and work more hours.
He's not the only one. Lots of students are in the same position. Going to school to get themselves out of poverty is very difficult if not impossible because it means working fewer hours and making less money. In an area where a two-bedroom apartment is $1500/month and full-time jobs are few and far between, you'd better believe I'm in favor of a higher minimum wage than CA's $9/hour.
What I'm getting at is that the image of the unskilled, pimpled teen who just needs a job to take girls out on dates is misleading. Lots of people take minimum wage jobs simply because that's what's available. They want to work, and they'd rather not work those jobs, but it's all they have. It's not just a matter of having the gumption to go for it.
These are people who work hard and provide a necessary service. No one says, "Gosh, I love working for the service industry, but the pay is bad, so I guess I'll go be a lawyer." Everyone who works a crappy job like that wants to get out, regardless of the wages, but if the wages are too low, people can't pay for education and are easily crippled by unexpected expenses like medical bills.
Parents I know pay their neighbor kids $20/hour to babysit. So, yeah, times have changed. Minimum wage needs to keep up with the cost of living, and we have to stop stereotyping the people who are working those jobs.
Kate, thanks for your input.
A few things:
*I* could not afford to live somewhere where the rent was $1500/month, and I make substantially more than minimum wage. That's nuts. And $20/hour to babysit? Sign. Me. Up. I'm not even kidding. Couldn't the student you mention take some of these babysitting gigs? (I don't mean to sound rude, here, but COME ON. Twenty bucks an hour? Then again, if rent is $1500, well ...) And kudos to the dude for continuing his education. He may be flat f*cking broke for a few years, but it's virtually the only way out of his situation.
And I thought that financial aid was available for low-income students. Is that no longer true?
Everybody needs to make a living. But to insist that the fry cook be paid the same as an EMT to make things "fair" ... I'm sorry. I don't buy it.
If the rent is $1500 a month and full-time jobs are scarce ... how does anybody live there? I'm really curious. Being an upstate New York hayseed, I always wondered how people other than doctors and lawyers could afford to live in the really expensive places.
Thanks for your comment, Kate. Thanks for taking the time to provide a counterpoint - I appreciate it.
To put things in perspective, I bring home about $1,600/month from my teaching job. My one-bedroom apt. is $1170/month. In this area, most people are either military or retired, so they don't rely on typical jobs like the rest of us. Almost everyone else squeaks by for a while and then moves (like I'm doing).
When I lived where you live, I took home around $1,400/month for my teaching job. So, I get paid almost the same amount when clearly the cost of living in the two areas is much different.
I believe the people in the Seattle area (which is where they're raising the min. wage to $20) also deal with a really high cost of living, so their argument is not that they should be paid more than minimum wage for unskilled jobs but that the minimum wage should be raised so everyone's wages will be adjusted for the cost of living.
As for financial aid, sure, loans are available, but where does that money come from? Taxpayers end up footing the bill anyway. Loans also mean having graduates $30,000+ in debt. Scholarships are available, but there aren't enough to go around and to cover everything. Most students I see are trying to pay as they go.
I really want to continue this conversation, Kate, 'cause I feel like I could gain a lot. But the kitties are calling and I'm getting tired and I just want to throw this up here before I forget: Does unchecked wage inflation cause economies to start spiraling out of control? Does a twenty-dollar min. wage mean that MY wage will be sixty mean that my company will have to triple their billable costs means that pretty soon a banana costs five bucks ...
I'll be back ...
Okay, continuing from last night ... yeah, basically, I don't understand how you can raise everybody's pay dramatically, and not cause generalized inflation.
But if you're saying no, just raise the unskilled workers' pay, then that's not fair to those of us who have worked our a**es off to get where we are.
And final thought: If you are an unskilled laborer, maybe you need to be living someplace where houses don't start at a quarter-million.
Rebuttals? I'm all ears. Truly.
Oh, and because I can't shut up, what about Pell Grants? Over 5K a year in student aid that does NOT have to be repaid.
I took some time away from this post, but I didn't forget about it!
I misspoke about $20/hour--I believe it's $15/hour. From what I've read, minimum wage has not kept up with general inflation. "The [federal] minimum wage of $1.60 an hour in 1968 would be $10.86 today when adjusted for inflation." The efforts to increase minimum wage are intended to correct and adjust for inflation. It might seem like a big jump, but that's just because the minimum wage is way behind. And if you live in a state where the minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation and cost of living, then yes, your wages would go up too.
http://www.raisetheminimumwage.com/facts/entry/amount-with-inflation/
You are right about Pell Grants, and lots of students get this kind of aid. Although I'm no expert on all the aid that's available, it's only "up to" $5,000, depending on the cost of the school. At my college, one full-time semester would cost a little under $1,000 I think. Even if a student's tuition and books at a community college were paid for entirely by a Pell Grant or a scholarship, it's not a replacement for an income. They still need to work, but they'll have a hard time working the necessary number of hours to support themselves and possibly a family if they're also going to school full time. That often means their school work suffers or is delayed because they have to choose work over school.
And of course $5,000 won't go nearly as far at a 4-year university, but a 2-year degree can lead to a better paying job in the meantime ... in some cases ... in an economy that isn't so stagnant.
Also, I know that students often run into a problem with their situation with their parents--they don't get support from their parents, but because of their age, they are considered dependents and their parents' income disqualifies them from aid (that was true for me). Other students run into problems getting aid because they have felonies, drug charges, etc. because, as we all know, where there's poverty, there's crime. But even criminals sometimes want to change their lives. Also, what the federal student aid system considers "need" might be different from actual financial need in the real world.
I don't mean to throw a pity party. In many circumstances, people do have the means to get themselves out of poverty. However, they have a much steeper climb than the rest of us, and we should recognize that. It's not as simple as working at McDonald's during high school, then getting aid to cover all your expenses for college, and bam, you have a career and you're out of poverty at age 22.
Thanks for the additional info, Kate! I agree that it is tough, very tough, to get out of poverty.
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