Darrell Miller, 35, who said he left Kansas City, Mo., Tuesday night on a bus filled with other protesters, said he decided to join in because it was his dream to march like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and fight for freedom.So why is Darrell Miller working at McDonald's for minimum wage at age 35? Does he have a degree? Is he a displaced worker who could be servicing machine tools or writing technical manuals or programming robots, except that he can't find a job doing that, so instead he's flipping burgers?
His job at McDonald's, he said, gives him no control over his life or his independence because the $7.75 an hour he is paid barely covers his bills.
Or is Mr. Miller an uneducated man who smoked pot and fapped during high school, never tried to learn a trade or sought any further education, and now finds himself unable to find any skilled job?
Here's a news flash: McDonald's is good employment for unskilled labor, and it's excellent for high schoolers and others. It's a great place to start your career, getting work experience that will help you find a better job after a year or two. If you have a modicum of education and intelligence, you could even work your way into managing, and then take that experience elsewhere.
But such jobs are not meant to be a career for a head of household who has kids to support. You're not supposed to take a job flipping burgers and say, "All right, now I'm set!" and do nothing else.
People who want McDonald's to pay them $15 an hour to flip burgers are delusional, because all they're going to do is to price their labor right the fuck out of the market. We can build machines that will make burgers, and make them the same every time, and probably with fewer errors than humans do ("I said 'NO cheese', not 'EXTRA cheese'!") (And no spit in the food, either.) and if it costs $15 an hour to employ people to flip burgers and run a deep fryer, there are going to be a hell of a lot fewer of them. Especially if they unionize.
Idiots.
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At least today wasn't a total clusterfuck at work. I was only alone on the counter for about an hour. Even better, the console stereos weren't set on "WTF" today, and in fact for about an hour there was no music at all coming from anywhere in the store, so instead of "AMAZINGLY STUPID AND ANNOYING DANCE CLUB" levels of noise we merely had "HOLY CRAP IT'S STILL LOUD IN HERE" noise.
3 dB represents a doubling of loudness. I'd say it was probably 3 dB quieter without the music playing. WTF, I'll take it.
Still want to get a job working in a nice, quiet office. That would be splendid.