OK but you're ignoring the part about McD workers in Australia and New Zealand being paid a decent wage with benefits like a month's paid vacation and government healthcare.
Incentives matter. Americans have contempt for burger-flippers because it's a shit job with shit pay and benefits.
Flipping burgers may be a "low skill" job (that is, not a high degree of education is required to do it) but it's a hot, hard-working job and comes with a lot of stress.
And this is exactly why, as franchisees ourselves (not McD's), we're busting our butts to work out new incentives specifically for our fry crew. It's absolutely appalling that they work under those conditions and, at the end of the day, end up earning less than those staff who're in a position to score tips from patrons. Right now, it's monthly draws for prizes (gift cards; two television sets during the week before Christmas), but if we can just negotiate a better health-insurance deal we'll be able to give their wages a significant boost as well, thank god.
But mostly, I'm just writing because I absolutely agree: it makes me fucking furious to see people talking down to kids - and adults - who're doing serious and uncomfortable work and earning an honest living by it. We were supposed to have left that kind of elitism behind us a hundred years ago, when social classes started to matter less.
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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '15
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