Matt Walsh:
I was in high school the last time I made minimum wage. I earned my first pay bump by coming to work a few minutes early, wearing my uniform, completing the menial tasks assigned to me, and displaying a very slight, but sometimes moderate, enthusiasm for my mundane job. To really solidify my chances at a raise, I refrained from stealing, insulting customers (to their faces), or smoking weed behind the dumpster out back. I stayed heroically committed to this strategy for a while, and for my efforts I was elevated above minimum wage, never to return.
But that was the ancient past. Over a decade ago. Back then, there were only two ways for a minimum wage fast food grunt to change his financial situation: 1) Be a semi-functional, semi-punctual, semi-conscious human who does his duty and has a vaguely positive attitude, and get a raise. 2) Don’t be that, and get fired.
Note that the second strategy would rarely result in immediate termination. I worked with many people who were aggressively dysfunctional, yet managed to cling onto employment for months because they were, at a minimum, warm bodies who could cut a pizza into 8 slices without severing an artery in the process (usually). Sometimes even these types would get raises, although eventually they would quit when they realized more responsibility comes attached to more money. Most of these people are now on welfare or in Congress.
It never occurred to me to explore the third option, which has become quite popular in recent years: Ask that the government snap its magical wizard fingers and double the minimum wage overnight. Of course, even if it did occur to me, I wouldn’t have been able to pursue it. My dad would have, shall we say, reacted unfavorably if I told him I was ditching my job to hold a “Fight For 15″ sign in the parking lot. His colorful response, I imagine, would’ve involved many disapproving adjectives, along with a stern lecture about “hard work” and “discipline” and “character” (his favorite words), and a helpful reminder that if I’m old enough to skip work and protest, I’m old enough to start paying rent. And that would have been the end of my brief experiment with political activism.
But I don’t think this disincentive would’ve been necessary. As much a whiny teenage brat as I was, I still didn’t think I deserved 15 bucks an hour, or its early 2000′s equivalent, for an entry level gig at a fast food joint. I knew I was doing a job that demanded very little of me, and I knew all I had to do was tuck my shirt in and not openly scowl at the customers and already I would separate myself from 80 percent of my coworkers. It would’ve seemed absurd that I could make good money doing a job that requires no education except for a work permit from the guidance counselor, and no training except for a 45 minute orientation video that includes nuanced instructions like “wear pants” and “don’t light your hair on fire.”
I knew – and again, I was not an exceptional kid by any means, so if I could figure this out, anyone can – that if I wanted to make an actual “livable wage,” I had to climb the ladder a few rungs.
It seems many current minimum wage workers fail to grasp this fundamental concept. At least that’s the charitable interpretation. Less charitably, you might say they understand just fine, but are driven by laziness, selfishness and a fantastically bloated sense of entitlement. However you interpret their actions, again thousands of them abandoned their posts last week and took to the streets, demanding that the State hand them a massive pay increase, not because they’ve earned it, but because they “deserve” it.
Thankfully, not all fast food workers are on board with this new “Give Us Salaries Commensurate With What Paramedics Are Paid Because We’re Special And We Know How To Spread Mayonnaise On A Bun” movement. On Friday, a short but glorious video clip surfaced, showing a Taco Bell employee kicking a group of protesters out of her restaurant so she could carry on with her duties. “This is a job that I’m trying to do,” she said. “You may leave the building.”
I don’t know anything about this woman, but already I can say she deserves a higher salary than all of those protesters, most of whom should be fired anyway. She just wants to do her job, which is more than can be said for the people holding picket signs. And I doubt she especially enjoys her work. I’m betting that serving burritos to a hungry herd of impatient customers every day isn’t her idea of a rollicking good time. But it’s the job she was hired to do, so she does it. If you find that logic confusing, you need to grow up.
But one moment in her brief encounter with the protesters particularly stood out. At the very beginning of the video, one of them curiously told her it was “a day of action.” Then, when they were rebuffed, they applauded themselves and went back outside to continue the “action” of spending the workday doing nothing. Many media reports have used this same strange phrase to describe the protests – “a day of action.”
Calling that ”a day of action” is almost as ridiculous as calling it a “fight for 15.” The woman rolling her eyes at the protesters and trying to get back to the duties at hand is the one engaged in a “day of action,” a “fight” for something better. Chanting slogans and whining to news cameras is not “taking action,” anymore than my daughter is taking action when she cries for gummy bears in the checkout aisle.
Here’s my recommendation to these disgruntled fast food workers: If you truly want to take action and fight for a better life, follow this simple step-by-step guide. It’s the same guide that responsible young woman at Taco Bell is following. It’s perhaps not as fun as protesting, but I believe it will prove more fruitful.
Step 1: Go to work.
Work, especially menial, mindless work, is tedious and unpleasant. I know. I was a telemarketer for a while. You haven’t known “tedious and mindless” until you’ve parked your butt in a chair at a call station for 8 hours and read a sales script to 117 prospective customers, 107 of whom treat you like you just broke into their home and drop kicked the dog. I was paid more than minimum wage for this job, but I only got paid when I was actively calling. If I got up to pee, get a drink, eat lunch, breathe, cry silently in the bathroom and beg the Lord to deliver me from this ungodly torment, etc., I was not paid. It was awful. I hated it with the burning fury of a thousand hypergiant suns, but it was my job.
Telemarketing companies will hire literally anyone. You don’t even need to be human. I actually worked with a ferret for a while before he was moved to upper management. Like many low income jobs, they have trouble finding people who will simply come to work every day. They have a core nucleus of reliable employees, and a revolving door of drifters who breeze in and out and sometimes back in again. Just come to work regularly and you’ll already be Employee of the Month.
The turnover rate in the fast food industry is just as high. The roster at your local Wendy’s changes by the day. Almost everyone is an extremely temporary employee, either because they’re working for the summer until school starts again, or because they’re working until next Friday when they decide to skip work to catch the new Avengers movie on opening night. Whatever their reasons, all you have to do to set yourself apart is show up consistently.
Step 2: Work well.
Back to my telemarketing days. Some of my coworkers did more than show up. There was no dress code enforced – you could come to work in a bathrobe and slippers if you wanted to – but they wore business attire anyway. And when they sat down at their desks to make their calls, they didn’t get back up. They never took breaks (except for the required lunch break), they never complained, and they never wasted time. They made three calls in the time it took me to make one. They took hold of this robotic, humdrum job and found a way to be good at it. And they earned more. And they deserved to earn more.
I’m not a terribly frequent fast food customer, but I notice the same dynamic at those restaurants. Often you get the cashier who growls and grumbles, barely exerting the energy to form English words. He messes up your very simple order and then cops an attitude when you ask for it to be corrected. He moves with the speed and purpose of a sedated walrus. He hates his job, he hates you, he hates life, and he wants you to know it. He’s still employed because, like I said, anyone can stay employed in this kind of job so long as they have a moderate attendance record, but he’s making absolutely no effort to perform his duties well. He’s making a negative effort, in fact. Almost like he’s trying to do it poorly. He’s like a vacuum of negativity and lethargy and resentment, and you leave the restaurant feeling like part of your soul has been sucked into his void and obliterated (or maybe that’s just the indigestion).
We’ve all encountered this type. He doesn’t deserve 15 dollars an hour. He doesn’t deserve 15 dollars a day. He doesn’t deserve a job at all, but he has one because the bar is so unfathomably low.
But then there’s the other type. A lot of them work at Chick-fil-A. He greets the customers enthusiastically. He seems happy to be doing his job. He might be faking it, but he fakes it convincingly. He speaks clearly. He pays attention to what he’s doing so he probably won’t get your order wrong, but if he does, he apologizes and makes it right. He operates with speed and precision. He puts a smile on the customer’s face. He makes you feel welcomed. You leave thinking, “Wow, I might have to come back here again.”
He’s doing his job well. If he combines reliability with this kind of quality, and if he does so consistently, it is an absolute guarantee that he will be in line for raises and promotions. He’s made himself undeniable. He will climb the ladder at his job, and in life.
So be that guy.
Back when we were in LB we lamented how the quality of fast food help was hurting the end product.
If it could go wrong, it did go wrong.
After the Chick-Fil-A bro-ha-ha we discovered that fast food joint.
What a remarkable difference.
Everything was right.
And the attitude was excellent by all concerned.
Here, in Utah, the fast food joints are filled with newbie employees.
It is always someone’s first day or week.
Always.
Mistakes are built into that pie.
But the attitude is to make it right.
The difference is that, in CA, the workers are there for the long haul, but with no interest in being better workers….ever.
In Utah, as these workers get the point, they either get raises or move on to better paying jobs elsewhere.
$15/hr is an invitation for more ordering kiosks and fewer human workers.
But the real agenda has to do with the pegging of starting UNION wages to the legal minimum wage.
It is the UNIONS who want the $15/hr minimum.
It means a huge wage increase for them.
As to workers cut out of jobs in the non-union fast food force, these union workers could care less.
They are the UNIONS ”useful idiots.”
Good work ethic is rewarded, which is as it should be.
The problem, however, is that our corporate-dominated economic system has created a permanent stratum of low-paying jobs as a means of maximizing profits, that large numbers or workers are stuck there with little hope of advancement, and that the profits had by doing this are, in fact, at the expense of the taxpayer.
Did you ever consider the extent to which various social programs might actually represent a taxpayer-funded subsidy of corporate America?
The High Public Cost of Low Wages
Why would people tell you this isn’t so, if it really is? Figure it out. The answer is fairly obvious.
@Greg:
Welfare programs are taxpayer subsidies of POLITICIANS and the people who are economically illiterate enough to believe that socialism can provide “free” medical care and “free” college tuition.
Until the leftists pushing the idiocy of government arbitrarily setting a $15 dollar/hr minimum wage can explain why 15 rather than 30 or 100 bucks an hour is what should be the arbitrarily decided minimum wage, this is cynical leftist political posturing with no capability of actually doing anything beneficial for the people the left claims to care about.
I believe the underlying concept is that a person who works 40 hours per week should be able to earn enough money to live on, without living on the streets and without requiring food stamps to keep from starving. $15 per hour represents a rough estimate of how much that might be. In practice, the figure would almost certainly vary with location.
People who work for substandard pay and have to struggle just to meet the basic costs of living have little difficulty understanding what is meant by “a living wage.” They understand what’s actually going on when jobs are moved overseas to be done by people who work well over 40 hours to earn $80 per week. They also understand that they have some bargaining power, because the sort of service jobs they perform can’t be so easily off-shored. That’s why corporate America would like to see unions utterly destroyed.
I had to laugh. My first thought upon beginning to read this article was, “But what about Chick-fil-a?”
I hope that the $15 minimum wage passes.
But then, I own a good chunk of a small company that is already manufacturing and selling fast food robots.
Yes, I’m an evil capitalist.
I love the sound of whining drones in the morning.
Sounds like… retirement!
Lesson: If what you produce isn’t worth the price you’re demanding, nobody will be buying.
That is true for your labor as well as your products.
That’s why I’ll stand in line for a human cashier at my favorite grocery every time, rather than going through any of the 4 automated check-out registers that I take great pleasure in seeing idle. If they make me wait in line for a human cashier long enough, I’ll go to a different grocery.
And screw the corporate chain that took the place over to begin with. I’ve lost count of how many local businesses have been driven into extinction in this town by big corporations over the 35 years I’ve lived here. They’ve turned capitalism toxic. They’re gradually turning the American economy into a hybrid gambling casino/shakedown operation. They try to sell this as the American way.
@Greg: #6
Most of it is quality of service. My favorite grocery store is an IGA way out in the middle of nowhere. The man who owns it is often there, the people who work there treat the customers well, and it has no automated lanes. It’s not as slick as a corporate store, but it’s nicer.
I don’t eat fast food because of poor service. Although there is one KFC that I go to because the owner is a tough old broad and makes certain that the servers are always nice.
These kids are pricing themselves out of a job because what they are offering is not worth $15 an hour.
We have enough pandering politicians that these kids will sooner or later win a great victory, which they can enjoy sitting on their porch with nothing to do and no money to do it with.
@Greg: Your concept it flawed. Define living wage? A single person can live on less than a single mother. Do you get an automatic raise if you have a child?
My living wage is 50k per year. Do you want to pay me that to mow your lawn, bag your groceries, or hand you fries?
Minimum wage is a starter wage not a living wage. If we had all the good paying jobs politicians have promised we’d never be having this conversation. But instead they make it harder to to business here and jobs move out of the country.
These kind of stories are just beginning to pop up.
http://menrec.com/beloved-upstate-restaurant-closes-cites-minimum-wage-chief-reason/
@Greg:
For what skills?
Good discussion. Liberals had to blame corporate greed instead if individual lack of responsibility or effort. Minimum wage was always an entry level wage and was never intended to be a living wage. Employees were expected to learn, show promise and get promoted to higher paying positions as they improved their value to their employer. Higher minimum wage like welfare and other government programs will encourage entry level employees to remain at that level instead of learning and developing an ambition to do better. We the consumer will then also be subsidizing dead beats with increase prices.
What higher paying positions can the majority of minimum wage service workers expect to be promoted to in their industries? They’re not trainees. They’re a permanently underpaid class.
@Greg: Typical liberal response. They are not intelligent enough nor motivated enough to be successful, so we liberals must take care of them!
What’s being suggested is that people who work full time should be paid enough to take care of themselves. If they were, they wouldn’t need to rely so often on food stamps or other social programs.
Corporate profits would be reduced. So would the burden on the taxpayer. In other words, the taxpayer would be called on to a lesser degree to subsidize corporate profits. Because that is what is currently happening. Taxpayers are subsiding a low-cost labor pool.
I realize this is a difficult concept.
@Greg: They can no longer work full time thanks to AHCA, else the employer must provide benefits. Flipping burgers was never suppose to be a career, it was for high school kids to pay for gas and insurance on their first car. Take their GF to a movie once a week.
My sweeties daughter tried to move away from their small town moved to Louisville, she lasted a year, called daddy he put on his cape and rented a truck.
She was applying for jobs and did not consider taco bell, but took a friend there to get a job, they found out she was looking and hired her on the spot.
She never moved back to the house,(but her stuff is in the garage) she now found a factory job called daddy all excited she is making 12 an hour a steady shift, at full time. Through a temp agency, but she is hoping to get on there as a regular hire, it would be for more $. Enough for a tiny apartment. She is too smart to be a single mother. This is how people start out they are not born CEOs they work their way up and look for higher paying jobs.
@Greg: #11
“What higher paying positions can the majority of minimum wage service workers expect to be promoted to in their industries? They’re not trainees. They’re a permanently underpaid class.”
They are not any kind of underpaid class. Minimum wage laws have insured that they are paid more than their labor is worth.
The higher paying positions would be the ones that the service workers educate and train themselves for, if the company that they are working for does not provide training.
Minimum wage jobs are what you are supposed to have while preparing yourself for something better.
Your solution, Greg, would reduce the number of low-skills jobs, increase unemployment of those hardest to employ, and increase the cost of our various welfare programs. And no, the “Evil, Greedy, Corporations” would not lose money. They would lower personnel costs as automation becomes more cost effective and raise prices to us consumers.
@Petercat: Worker bee to assistant manager to manager, assistant district, district, if they save they could buy their own franchise. Oh first step is to show up every day as scheduled and do the job assigned. The fast food joints are franchises they are a small business, not corporate owned, they must in order to maintain franchise tow he corporate line, so my bigmac, whopper, KFC is the same everywhere I go. Greggie will never understand that most of the Fast food lifers are slackers that could never EARN 15 an hour.
@kitt: They hardly get enough to pay for their pot! They do not take care of their children, we do that!
@kitt, #14:
The Affordable Care Act was quickly turned by corporate America into an excuse for dropping employee health plans. It’s been used both as the cover story and a means. Unloading health care costs has been done in the same cavalier fashion that they previously dumped defined pension plans. Costs have been shifted to the taxpayer to inflate profits, plain and simple. Meanwhile, they’ve driven unions to near extinction, while exploiting cheap foreign labor as a means of keeping real wages frozen for decades. They dodge taxes, sometimes paying none at all, while simultaneously whining about the unfairness of it all.
Trouble is coming. I don’t know what form it will take, but most people know something’s seriously out of balance. Most of them are also smart enough to know that it’s not the poor people who robbed them, and that they’re not actually robbing themselves. The undocumented aliens cutting the rich man’s lawn or cleaning rooms in his hotel chain probably aren’t the culprits, either. A good rule of thumb is to follow the money and see where it goes. It isn’t accumulating in a government warehouse, or in some poor family’s piggy bank.
@Greg: And the geniuses that forced it on us couldnt see that coming, you must give them a lot of credit. How bout they stop helping us they are going to kill us with their good intentions. Oh and for those cut to part time and cant afford to pay the obama care with the pittance that is left over the government takes the tiny tax refund, good deal.@Randy: Really want a mind blower look at what the million student march are demanding.
@kitt, #19:
How about going back to the good ol’ days, when your insurance company could drop your coverage on some technicality after years of premium payments, or refuse coverage for a preexisting condition, or drop you cold just when you need your insurance the most because you’ve hit some lifetime limit?
Then there were deadbeats who wouldn’t pay for insurance as a matter of choice. There was no penalty for that. The costs of their care were either passed on to responsible people who did carry insurance, in the form of higher provider charges and higher insurance premiums, or they were picked up by the taxpayer.
Essentially, the system as it previously existed heavily subsidized insurance company profits. Companies were allowed to extend coverage to those expected to produce the largest profit margins, while the costs of care for higher-risk groups were dumped onto the taxpayer.
If you let private industry manage healthcare, what you wind up with is a nationwide, taxpayer subsidized shakedown operation.
@Greg: And it is not taxpayer subsidized now on a larger grander scale?
Are you nutz??? oops nevermind.
#14 Oh yes there is trouble coming when sanity takes hold and all the welfare without work or training, and a host of other unearned freebies comes to an end.
Wisconsin is thriving with conservatives in charge. Walker didnt get lured into the fraud of AHCA.