I would, and currently do, work for less than the local Chic-Fil-A is hiring for. McDonald’s, Wendy’s, all the big ones around here will pay at $16/hour starting.
However, fast food work is a whole different beast. It is constant and involves hard labor and instant memorization. It requires you to be in the “lunch rush” mindset all day long, because the business model relies on training everyone to do everything so you can run the kitchen with a skeleton crew. It is humbling but demoralizing when dealing with both customers and managers, both of whom assume you are inherently beneath them.
I did my time, about 4 years of fast food. Pretty sure it knocked a decade off my life
I guess I was just comparing things like an elder care aid which also tends to require hard work / labor (possibly worse than fast food, lifting and turning 200lbs+ patients), dealing with literal shit every day (changing adult diapers etc), and similar being treated like crap. But doing that for $4 less an hour seems surprising to me.
That said, the closest I ever came to fast food work was a dining hall in college, and it wasn’t busy all day or particularly hard work. Nor was instant memorization needed, we had slips people filled out with their order. Which is basically what the fast food places do now with the kiosk / app / or counter ordering. Maybe it’s also location dependent, but around me fast food is just slow now, so I do wonder if the “unable to hire” is more “I don’t actually want to pay for 5 people on shift anymore”. McDonalds seems to be moving that direction by just eliminating order takers in favor of kiosks and using their app.
I agree, elder care is also in the very top tier of mind-breaking labor.
I respect your opinion on the fast food industry, but it comes across as reductive and dismissive when you word it that way. I’m glad your experience was better, I’m sure it has everything to do with who your leadership was. Now let’s fight to make that sort of experience the standard!
I don’t mean to be dismissive, though I can’t help being reductive given my “only as a customer” experience this decade. To me, and my interaction group, fast food jobs appear to be a bunch of stuff that seems like it should be a minimum baseline for logical people to accept.
no professional org limiting membership
no special credentials needed to be hired
no minimum educational requirement
extremely available geographically
lots of competitors / options for getting hired
lots of labor needed / advertised for anyway
Most of the negatives I’m aware of would apply to what I know of the jobs paying less than fast food. And going back to my college days, for someone in poverty / worried about paying for basics - working in food service often has a less advertised benefit - cheaper / free food while you’re on shift during your food break. I’m not claiming any job is for everyone, but I am suggesting if you could do elder care or work at Wal-Mart, you likely could work at a local fast food place and (now) make more money, so I do wonder why people don’t. At least as long as seemingly every fast food place is advertising for workers.
I fully understand not wanting to go after maximum earnings as the only consideration in a job - I could very likely make more money in a different job (I guess theoretically most people could), but would take major hits to work/life balance, flexibility, etc etc. But I’m also not in the market at minimum wage - and when I was working minimum wage jobs, I switched in a heartbeat when I could get a dollar more an hour across town. The one thing that would differ is if I could go full time vs part time at a slightly higher rate. And I don’t actually know if that’s what’s hurting the fast food companies filling their staffing needs. If they’re not offering full time to all the employees they already have when they have to close sometimes due to lack of staff - well, that’s another one of those illogical things to me. “Saving money” on benefits while not being open to make any money always felt like knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
I would, and currently do, work for less than the local Chic-Fil-A is hiring for. McDonald’s, Wendy’s, all the big ones around here will pay at $16/hour starting.
However, fast food work is a whole different beast. It is constant and involves hard labor and instant memorization. It requires you to be in the “lunch rush” mindset all day long, because the business model relies on training everyone to do everything so you can run the kitchen with a skeleton crew. It is humbling but demoralizing when dealing with both customers and managers, both of whom assume you are inherently beneath them.
I did my time, about 4 years of fast food. Pretty sure it knocked a decade off my life
I guess I was just comparing things like an elder care aid which also tends to require hard work / labor (possibly worse than fast food, lifting and turning 200lbs+ patients), dealing with literal shit every day (changing adult diapers etc), and similar being treated like crap. But doing that for $4 less an hour seems surprising to me.
That said, the closest I ever came to fast food work was a dining hall in college, and it wasn’t busy all day or particularly hard work. Nor was instant memorization needed, we had slips people filled out with their order. Which is basically what the fast food places do now with the kiosk / app / or counter ordering. Maybe it’s also location dependent, but around me fast food is just slow now, so I do wonder if the “unable to hire” is more “I don’t actually want to pay for 5 people on shift anymore”. McDonalds seems to be moving that direction by just eliminating order takers in favor of kiosks and using their app.
I agree, elder care is also in the very top tier of mind-breaking labor.
I respect your opinion on the fast food industry, but it comes across as reductive and dismissive when you word it that way. I’m glad your experience was better, I’m sure it has everything to do with who your leadership was. Now let’s fight to make that sort of experience the standard!
I don’t mean to be dismissive, though I can’t help being reductive given my “only as a customer” experience this decade. To me, and my interaction group, fast food jobs appear to be a bunch of stuff that seems like it should be a minimum baseline for logical people to accept.
Most of the negatives I’m aware of would apply to what I know of the jobs paying less than fast food. And going back to my college days, for someone in poverty / worried about paying for basics - working in food service often has a less advertised benefit - cheaper / free food while you’re on shift during your food break. I’m not claiming any job is for everyone, but I am suggesting if you could do elder care or work at Wal-Mart, you likely could work at a local fast food place and (now) make more money, so I do wonder why people don’t. At least as long as seemingly every fast food place is advertising for workers.
I fully understand not wanting to go after maximum earnings as the only consideration in a job - I could very likely make more money in a different job (I guess theoretically most people could), but would take major hits to work/life balance, flexibility, etc etc. But I’m also not in the market at minimum wage - and when I was working minimum wage jobs, I switched in a heartbeat when I could get a dollar more an hour across town. The one thing that would differ is if I could go full time vs part time at a slightly higher rate. And I don’t actually know if that’s what’s hurting the fast food companies filling their staffing needs. If they’re not offering full time to all the employees they already have when they have to close sometimes due to lack of staff - well, that’s another one of those illogical things to me. “Saving money” on benefits while not being open to make any money always felt like knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.