In high school, I worked at a fast food joint to make a little extra money. There were no expectations to pay rent or other essentials. But you'll say that it's not kids working these jobs, so we need to provide a livable wage. What about getting these people skills for better jobs? I'd rather attack that problem than make Wendy's sandwich maker a viable career.
You realize wages based on supply and demand are very accurate at measuring exactly how much value to “society” a job brings? You may disagree but economic equilibrium in the price of a common good such as an agile coach is telling you exactly how much value society believes that job brings.
>You realize wages based on supply and demand are very accurate at measuring exactly how much value to “society” a job brings?
If that were true, then DMV employees would have to pay for the privilege of working there.
In all seriousness, though, there are huge swathes of people working in bullshit jobs, and many of them are well-compensated. There are power dynamics, misinformation and far too much complexity at play to simply say "society places more value on the work performed by people in higher paying jobs".
That's a nice abstraction, but actual wages are determined individuals convincing other individuals they should be paid a specific wage. That's about their power to extract value.
Value creation can be used to increase that power, but there are many organizations (picture the NCAA or your favorite employer of H-1B1s maybe?) that have put in the hard work to make sure the work of value creation doesn't give individuals too much power to extract value.
Yet we have recently had the interesting experience of many low paid workers suddenly being deemed “essential workers”. I don’t think any agile coaches were essential workers.
There are many jobs that are low paid because they are low skilled and have low barriers to entry, but otherwise very useful to society e.g. refuse collectors.
This is not a great hill to die on, but I’ll bite a bit.
If I fundamentally disagree with fast food as objects of consumption than I might think every job in this field should not be viable. There are costs to society (“externalities”) that places like Wendy’s are not held responsible for (obesity epidemic).
All said, Sandwich Maker is a viable career, to me, if its in a boutique/gourmet shop where the food is prepared from scratch and with precision care. The prices will be higher, extra skill is involved, and then the Maker can command a higher wage.
The meme of whether or not fast food is a viable/respectful career is just a manifestation of more fundamental problems with growth optimized capitalism.
>There are costs to society (“externalities”) that places like Wendy’s are not held responsible for (obesity epidemic).
This is a valid point. Western society should be making an effort to ensure that there are cheap, convenient, healthier fast food options like what you see in Asia.
My comment was more in response to the parent, who was drawing a distinction between "real jobs" and "entry level jobs". I believe we should treat people in low-skill jobs with more respect, as they actually produce things we need and want as a society. Many people in "real jobs", on the other hand, produce (or facilitate the production of) nothing.
“There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound: choosing the right bread for instance. The Sandwich Maker had spent many months in daily consultation and experiment with Grarp the baker and eventually they had between them created a loaf of exactly the consistency that was dense enough to slice thinly and neatly, while still being light, moist and having that fine nutty flavour which best enhanced the savour of roast Perfectly Normal Beast flesh.
There was also the geometry of the slice to be refined: the precise relationships between the width and height of the slice and also its thickness which would give the proper sense of bulk and weight to the finished sandwich: here again, lightness was a virtue, but so too were firmness, generosity and that promise of succulence and savour that is the hallmark of a truly intense sandwich experience.
The proper tools, of course, were crucial, and many were the days that the Sandwich Maker, when not engaged with the Baker at his oven, would spend with Strinder the Tool Maker, weighing and balancing knives, taking them to the forge and back again. Suppleness, strength, keenness of edge, length and balance were all enthusiastically debated, theories put forward, tested, refined, and many was the evening when the Sandwich Maker and the Tool Maker could be seen silhouetted against the light of the setting sun and the Tool Maker’s forge making slow sweeping movements through the air trying one knife after another, comparing the weight of this one with the balance of another, the suppleness of a third and the handle binding of a fourth.
Three knives altogether were required. First there was the knife for the slicing of the bread: a firm, authoritative blade which imposed a clear and defining will on a loaf. Then there was the butter-spreading knife, which was a whippy little number but still with a firm backbone to it. Early versions had been a little too whippy, but now the combination of flexibility with a core of strength was exactly right to achieve the maximum smoothness and grace of spread.
The chief amongst the knives, of course, was the carving knife. This was the knife that would not merely impose its will on the medium through which it moved, as did the bread knife; it must work with it, be guided by the grain of the meat, to achieve slices of the most exquisite consistency and translucency, that would slide away in filmy folds from the main hunk of meat. The Sandwich Maker would then flip each sheet with a smooth flick of the wrist on to the beautifully proportioned lower bread slice, trim it with four deft strokes and then at last perform the magic that the children of the village so longed to gather round and watch with rapt attention and wonder. With just four more dexterous flips of the knife he would assemble the trimmings into a perfectly fitting jigsaw of pieces on top of the primary slice. For every sandwich the size and shape of the trimmings were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly and without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted perfectly. A second layer of meat and a second layer of trimmings, and the main act of creation would be accomplished.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
To be fair, both "sandwich" and "Wendy's" mean completely different things in Australian English!
Sandwiches typically contain fresh ingredients (we'd call a gresy heart attack patty between two buns a burger), and Wendy's is a completely different chain that sells dairy products and hot dogs.
General multitasking, team coordination, cash handling, basic restaurant dishwashing, stock management, industrial cleaning, pacifying unhappy customers, dealing with druggies and harassers, and a whole bunch of other things I've probably forgotten from when I worked fast food as a teenager.
The simplicity of each individual job means that nobody ever has just one job at a fast food place. Stick around for any amount of time and you'll get rotated through every available position.
Any of those skills can be picked up at basically any job, further they require no foundational skills to learn.
That's why the pay is low, because the skill set is widely accessible. I'm not sure why people insist that these kind of jobs are teaching valuable skills.
All that is happening is the basic process of working. They could learn it in any context, at any point in their lives. There is no justification to pay people starvation wages.
For someone that didnt go to college, seeing a 2yr stint on a resume as a fast food worker tells me more about that persons work ethic, reliability, and general sense of getting stuff done vs your avg grad.
Its not only skills but its the information being conveyed
I agree (I think), we need either free college or a livable minimum wage or both to solve this problem. Disagree that we need to have any low-paying jobs at all, but I suppose your high school could run a fast food joint for the students, if we really need that sort of thing?
