Restaurant Workers Got Masks. They’d Also Like a Permanent Raise

Customers stand in line outside a pick up window of a McDonald's Corp. restaurant in the South Beach neighborhood of Miami Beach, Florida. Photographer: Scott McIntyre/Bloomberg

Bloomberg - continues

 

Restaurants aren't essential like grocery stores. My first real job was at McDonald's. It was hard work but no real skill involved. I quickly learned I did not want to work at McDonald's for the rest of my life. Fast food jobs aren't designed to support a family and if you're trying to raise a family on that type of work, you'll quickly learn it's futile. Learn a skill or trade that you can leverage for real money.

 

Alternatively, people who don't view restaurants as essential should go through life without ever going to them if they're so inessential.

When I take my girlfriend out for our anniversary & we want a really great meal, I want:

A host that can keep things running smoothly, help where needed, turn tables while making people feel comfortable.
A server that is experienced & skilled. Being good in a busy restaurant is more work than most office jobs paying many times more.
A kitchen filled with cooks that know how to cook food safely, hygienically, etc., that is a hard, physical job with hard, long, asocial hours.

Each of these jobs require real skill, physical effort, etc. They should be compensated as much.

You may view it as beneath you but that is an error on your part.

And before you assume I work in the service industry, nope, my employment experience post-bachelor's degree has only featured manufacturing & public sector work. Both white collar.

 

Sorry, I have to disagree with saying working McDonalds, or in any fast food restaurant environment is a no skill involved situation.
Right out of high school when I was young, I worked in the "fast food" restaurant environment, and though I would agree, for the most part the jobs available in this arena are not good "family support" jobs in terms of income possible, I would very much disagree that working these jobs are no skill involved situations.
In fact looking back over my entire life, and entire working career, I would say the restaurant work I did was some of the most challenging work, for the lowest pay, I ever did.

Trying to execute a busy drive-thru, taking orders while nearly simultaneously taking payment and making change, can quickly become akin to air traffic control, in terms of trying to keep everything straight, orders correct and customers happy. It ain't easy and takes listening, communication skills and constant alertness.
To me the very nature of restaurant work, means there really isn't an easy job in the whole place. Some places are run better than others, but the synergy and teamwork needed to get orders out to the crowds possible and frequent at a McDonalds? Require quite a bit of skill. Not to mention you're constantly dealing directly or indirectly with the public, which is always a moment to moment, person to person wild card.

Yeah, sadly you don't get paid much (usually). I wouldn't argue that. But to call it work not requiring skill, is unfair.
Now firmly in my middle age, I would honestly say, I get paid more, for "unskilled" sitting in some BS meetings doing nothing, that is a WHOLE lot easier than working at McDonalds ever was.

 

I worked pretty much every facet when I worked at McDonald's at 16. I worked cashier, drive-thru, cooking breakfast/lunch/dinner meals and I also opened and closed the restaurant. We were also off the highway so at times we'd get greyhound bus stop and unload at our door. So I'm familiar with what working at a busy fast food place means at the princely sum of $4.75 an hour. Nothing I did there required anything higher than a 8th grade education though and that's what I mean no skill. Sure juggling tasks in a high stress environment can be challenging, but if you're asking a 16 year old kid to do it for minimum wage, then why would I expect paying a 30 yr old person $15 an hour be a good idea. That 30 year old probably has to pay rent, car insurance, health insurance etc while the 16 year old kid doesn't.

As comparison, at $15 an hour (roughly 31k a year working full time), you're making more than an E1 who gets sent off to possibly die for their country. When my wife started teaching, she was making low 30s after graduating with a 4 year degree.

So when I do happen to stop by a Mcdonald's (which is seldom) for a quick bite, I'm always polite with dealing with the staff because I've been in their shoes. It was hard work, I'm not arguing that, but it still was/is a low skilled and thus a low paid job.

 

1.) Other people being underpaid does not mean everyone should be underpaid.
2.) Ah, capitalism where the exploitation is okay & advances the efforts to not provide adults the ability to survive
3.) Most jobs are not skilled. If you think sitting behind a computer screen in a cubicle farm in a business is actually harder....maybe you're just less skilled now than you were at 16 in the drive-thru.

 

I'd have to agree with 2Rismo2 on this. As a person who went to a vo-tech school and went to college to learn a trade, a restaurant worker is not skilled labor especially at McD unless you are a manager of such. I worked in the food industry as my first job. Yes it's busy and stressful at times but requires no further training outside of what you can learn in a day. An accountant sits at a desk all day in a cubical but still had to learn and get a degree in accounting. They get paid for what they know. What kinda special training do you need to be a waiter, waitress or hostess?

 

Working on an assembly line doesn't take skills you can't learn on the job.
Working in an office doesn't take skills you can't learn on the job.

Every job I've had post-college (until my current position) required a degree in marketing, supply chain or business administration.

I have a degree in political science & never took a single business class bc I went to college to learn stuff, not to sit in a room & be walked through basic topics for a semester that I could learn in 15 minutes on the job.

I was promoted every year or so. Had I stayed at my last company I would've run my department before hitting 30.

I had no formal training in my field. I actively opposed receiving any.

A good server is way more impressive to me than any desk jockey in middle management.

More than that, not everyone has the opportunity to get a job better than something at a fast food joint.

 

You have a degree which means you are capable of learning which is what many places care about because like you said you will learn on the job. I have learned more on the job then I did in school.

Good servers can be hard to come by but they are not skilled labor.

If all you can do is fast food then you can certainly work yourself up through the ranks. Start at the drive thru. Step up to shift lead or assistant manager. Then move up to store manager and regional manager.

If school is not your thing, learn a trade. We need more people in the trades.

 

Getting a degree doesn't indicate you can learn anything.

The most ignorant, laziest, least intellectually curious people I've ever met all have four year degrees.

Yes or no: Should people who work assembly lines at a car factory be paid a living wage?

 

It's a fantastic time we live in right now if you want to learn a skill or trade on your own. There are so many free resources out there and if you're willing to put in the effort and time you can expand your skillset. I wanted to get into real estate so I borrowed a bunch of books from the library and learned about real estate investing about 11 years ago. After a while I bought, renovated a house and had it rented for about 10 years. I redid the bathroom and kitchen, learning how to do tile work by watching youtube videos etc. Right now I'm learning about stock investing and implementing it during the current stock market downturn. At work, I'm learning how to code in Powershell on my own.

Fast food work is supposed to be a jumping off point for youngsters to get started in the workforce. I can't help it if some folks don't have the capability to work more than fast food any more than I can make myself taller so I can be a highly paid basketball player or better looking to be a hollywood actor. Whatever your job is though, do it the best you can. For the small percentage that for whatever circumstance they can't do more than fast food employment, the US has welfare programs like Section 8, SNAP and Medicaid etc that help to fill in the gap. It's not a perfect system, but it's what we got to work with.

People's capabilities don't change the value that is placed on a job. When my parents immigrated to the states, they were college educated school teachers in their homeland. Dad's first job in the states was a janitor, it paid janitor wages. Mom's first job in the states was a seamstress and it paid seamstress wages. Did they stay a janitor/seamstress the rest of their working life? Nope.

 

Thanks for the thoughtful and insightful input on this. To be quite frank, after reading the article, I said to myself "we can do this". This can be done incrementally. I would say it will be a fair way of doing it, as all businesses would be doing it at the same time. The fast food industry would have time to adjust, and really the food should have a higher price on it.

 

You are correct. Getting a degree does not indicate you can learn anything but when you don't know the person and you are interviewing them for the first time it shows that there is a high probability that they have some aptitude. I know some very smart people that only graduated high school and I know some not so smart people that have degrees.

I'm not saying that people don't deserve a living wage I'm saying that serving food and working in fast food is not a skilled job.

 

This is absolutely true, especially since most colleges will pass any twit that still pays their tuition. I have encountered many credentialed but intellectually uncurious people as well as many people educated beyond their intelligence.

That's not the right question. It isn't 'Should people doing X be paid a living wage'.

'Living wage' is a political, not a practical term. Especially because cost of living is highly variable and nobody can define what a 'living wage' actually means without devolving into philosophical vagueries about what people 'deserve' and begin to manufacture 'rights' out of whole cloth.

Labor has value. Staying in the context of physical labor, 40 hours per week of deep-frying potatoes does not have the same value as 40 hours of skilled welding.

The idea thrown about by demagogic politicians that "anybody that works 40 hours a week deserves a 'living wage'" is fallacious because the statement does not take into account the value of one's labor in any way whatsoever. People are paid what their labor is worth. Period. The attempt to frame it any other way is purely for intellectually dishonest political purposes.

 

You are correct. Getting a degree does not indicate you can learn anything but when you don't know the person and you are interviewing them for the first time it shows that there is a high probability that they have some aptitude. I know some very smart people that only graduated high school and I know some not so smart people that have degrees.

I'm not saying that people don't deserve a living wage I'm saying that serving food and working in fast food is not a skilled job.

 

I agree to a certain extent. I also have no formal training in my field.

I got a relatively worthless degree at a good private college. I loved it while I went to school for it, but it was not the most...practical degree.

Post-college, I've done a lot of very different stuff. Waited tables, sold cars, sold electronics, worked in highly skilled manufacturing (led my department), now work in technology.

For none of the above did I have any formal training. But the level of skill has varied wildly. My current level is a result of years of practical knowledge and experience and I'm paid for earning that and leveraging that.

It's not the degree or skilled/unskilled (traditional type) that matters in a lot of ways, but the amount of skill, knowledge, wisdom it takes to do a job well. That's what separates unskilled from skilled in many situations.

To wait tables, I mastered the necessary skills in a very short time. For my skilled manufacturing job, it took a few years. For my current position, it has taken many years of experience to gain the discernment I need to do my job well. Wages should be commensurate with the literal skill needed to perform the position. That should be obvious, but politicians don't seem to think so.

This is true and it hits home. My little daughter has special needs and I do have concerns about her earning potential later in life. She is smart, but very much behind her peers. It brings up the 'value' question. She has infinite value, but her labor will not. What she deserves in life, to me, is beyond measure, but what her eventual labor can earn is another matter. That's just how the world works and I have no utopian delusions that it can, or even should, work differently.

 

It can be, but that seems to be less true every year, lol.

 

Why? Just because you want the people making it to have a nebulous 'living wage'?

And object sold has a value that is the sum of everything that goes into producing it.

If those costs raise the price beyond the perceived value of the buyer, they will stop buying the product.

Personally, I'm not going to buy a $12 Big Mac out of the goodness of my heart. It's objectively not worth that.

Raise the price beyond the point at which the customers are willing to pay, then the company folds and nobody has a 'living wage'.

 

The raise is uniformed, so all the competitors are equal in that respect. I do remember reading a study that stated food prices would not go up all that much and would give workers a little more for actually spending in the market.......................... I actually found the article; MarketWatch.com, That's basically half the normal tax here in Cali. And I seriously doubt any company would fold cause it had to give workers a living wage. There were other problems long before this raise.

 

“Stay at Home of the Whopper” touts the ease of ordering BK at home, but the tougher issue is the safety of the person cooking and delivering it.

“Everyone out there in the hospitals and delivering food,” the false equivalence is stark. For those who entered the healthcare profession as a doctor or nurse, we can safely assume that saving lives is part of the reason they did it. Whereas absolutely, 100% NO ONE who works at Burger King had that vision when they first filled out that application, and the low compensation and lack of job security reflect that.

FastCompany - continues