People can be anything they want to be on the 'net! I'm sure a few think they are very important and superior.
McDonalds workers due to strike for £10 an hour...
- Thread starter dowie
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While I haven't worked for mcdonalds for 14 years or so, the idea that you can simply raise the wage doesn't really work. Labour costs are significant (something like 30-35p per pound of income), and the profit per item is relatively low, made up for by high throughput.
You are already seeing more automation in stores, such as automated tills and the like, if labour costs continue to increase, further automation becomes more and more attractive.
The idea that you could just increase labour costs by 30% without having a knock on impact on jobs, costs etc is fantasy.
You are already seeing more automation in stores, such as automated tills and the like, if labour costs continue to increase, further automation becomes more and more attractive.
The idea that you could just increase labour costs by 30% without having a knock on impact on jobs, costs etc is fantasy.
How's it snobbery to point out that a job is basic and can be done by a large portion of people thus doesn't require much more than min wage?
You say this but my experience is the opposite. The amount of people that we let go at the end of 3 weeks that just didn't get it was unreal.
I suspect a fair few people who sit on their fat arses all day pressing buttons on a keyboard at work would find it too fast paced and far too much like hard work.
It was mainly down to their inability to follow basic instructions, speed tended to come with time. Even people that just spoke enough English to get by got it right most of the time. There are only so many times you can tell someone:
"hold the spatula at 45 degrees, if you do it at 15 when your removing the meat from the grill you will tear it". Then proceeding to watch them do it again and again...
"Only use the red cloth for food surfaces and the blue cloth for everything else" then see them 15 mins later with a blue cloth on a food surface or see them cleaning a toilet with a red cloth...
"Please go and get a mop and clean the floor" and watch them bring back a mop bucket filled with old used brown greasy cold water and start trying to mop the floor. Anyone with any sense would at least put some new water in it!
Sounds like it hasn't changed much
The problem is people assuming anyone can do low skill work, that's not entirely true, what is true is that it requires no qualifications and it is easy to recruit as a result. It doesn't follow that everyone recruited is good at the job, or provides sufficient value to justify the cost of employing them, especially with the minimum wage.
I've worked with people where basic is too much for them, there's simply no teaching them; as pointed out by b0rn2sk8 above.
You can tell them 30 times and the memory retention just does not exist.
Even if you write out daily, ordered guidelines is just gets messed up.
It's also annoying having worked alongside these people, just makes you think why are they getting paid for me to pick up the slack.
Yet you'll still have plenty more where they came from so even with a high turnover there isn't a shortage of applicants to perform a task that doesn't require much in the way or formal education or training.
I don't doubt there are plenty of morons out there, while I've never worked in Maccy D's itself I've done "McJobs" in the past - working in the kitchen of my local pub for example preparing the starters and the salads etc.. I'd been there for a little while when I was supposed to train up some new guy who was there on a work placement from the local college, doing some NVQ thing he swore was "equivalent to A-Levels" (I was as the time an A-level student and this was my 3 shifts a week part time job yet I was supposed to help teach this guy as the chef and sous chef couldn't be bothered dealing with him). The guy was ridiculously slow, we'd ask him what he'd studied in college that day etc.. and he could barely recall anything, teaching him say which coloured chopping boards to used for fish, uncooked meat, bread etc.. then testing him the next week was a nightmare. Oh and it wasn't until he'd worked several shifts that someone had spotted that his hands were incredibly skanky and he revealed he had some nasty skin condition that meant he should have been wearing gloves at all times when preparing food.
Though in spite of the fact you'll get a lot of utter morons out there who will have a shot at and realise they're inept at what ought to be a rather mundane/basic job, it is still a mundane and basic job, there are still plenty of people who can do it and it probably doesn't deserve to be paid too much.
The reason that we won't see general price inflation is precisely because the money isn't coming out of thin air!
In the case of McDonalds prices specifically, their products are priced at what the market will bear, if you raise prices the fat cats will lose money as demand will be reduced. If the business is being run properly then there won't be any room for job losses as everyone will be working as max capacity already. And let's be honest it's McDonalds, they are already using the lowest quality ingredients.
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I've always thought this sort of snobbery is a bit silly. If you hold fast food workers in such contempt, stop enabling their existence by going to fast food restaurants. If you like fast food, then you need these people, and their jobs exist because of your demand. Same goes for anyone you might look down on... cleaners, taxi drivers, whoever. You need them, so you should respect them.
Soldato
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Yep,
BRB ******** on low wage workers, brb WHERE MAH BIG MACS AT? WHY MY BINS NO GET EMPTY?
It's not silly at all. Just because people like fast food and that validates people being employed to create it, doesn't mean they should be overpaid for it, now that's just silly. Why should somebody flipping burgers get more than somebody doing work of comparable difficulty/skill in comparable demand?
The second one is the much better option, sadly the Torys have tried to move away from it as part of their austerity measures, cutting tax credits and boosting minimum wages >.>
The snobbery is silly. A rational analysis of market forces is not silly. The two are not the same thing.
Regardless if you like or dislike fast food - it should be based on the skill level required and burger flipping is not a skilled position which explains the level of pay (because practically anyone can do it).
At the other end of the scale and unpalatable as it may seem, an MP potentially running the country should be paid more than they do at the moment.
At the other end of the scale and unpalatable as it may seem, an MP potentially running the country should be paid more than they do at the moment.
Caporegime
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Also, why is it preferable for the government to pay people? If the government determines that people need, say, £10 an hour to live but they set the minimum wage at £8 and make up the difference, how is that acceptable? How is that anything but the government subsidising big businesses for £2 per worker hour? Why is that a good thing? If the government says people need £10 an hour why not mandate that as the minimum wage? It's ludicrous.
Let's overlook the fact that neither a minimum wage nor tax credits even makes sense from a right wing Tory perspective.
Because they know a 20% increase in wages would potentially put thousands out of work and who'd get the blame for that?
Caporegime
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the demand for mc donalds is driven mainly by kids and mainly morons tbh. i don't think you will see many people earning £50K+ eating in mc donalds regularly unless they have kids.
it's not cheap because it's crap food, IMO overpriced for what you get. it will kill you (go watch super size me) and it doesn't even taste nice. once you have eaten a proper burger their tasteless thin junk doesn't compare. i'd rather spend the same money but buy myself some decent minted lamb burgers and make them at home.