Its very sad how the American middle class is killing themselves with their propaganda driven view of economics.
If McDonalds workers made say 12 dollars an hour then there would be less people on food stamps and other government benefits. When you add the millions of people who are in food service alone that would be brought up from poverty to a financial situation where they pay taxes, don't recieve benefits and join the "consumer class" the economy of America would jump so high that the nickle or dime it cost a person per burger would be easily paid off by better wages for everyone.
The myth that low wages helps the middle class is the same myth that the job creators are wealthy people.
Its consumer demand that creates jobs. And its the availability of labor that determines wages. Increase demand and the demand for workers rise, raising everyones wages.
Techs, you're completely ignoring a very important aspect of people such as food service workers. These people tend to represent the lower class or people that are closer to the poverty level. This group of people have a very important role in the economics of society as they essentially define the bottom level of what services are worth. This base cost is factored into everything that we pay for. Essentially, I'm saying the same thing that everyone else has said to you... you would just cause inflation.
I've talked about this in P&N, but essentially, social stratification is
NECESSARY. We
need a lower class. Honestly, if you want wages to be much closer in parity, then you might as well just advocate communism. I'm not trying to pull at typical Fox News approach by spouting off crap like "communism" or "socialism", but the basic concept of communism is that everyone is equal -- whether it actually
ends up like that is a completely different story!
Our social programs exist because unlike some past societies, we prefer our lower class to not live like paupers. Essentially, social programs allow them to have a wage that's much closer to livable without actually having to adjust the bottom line. It's either that or being complacent about people living in hovels and barely scraping by.
Actually for Mcdonalds speed, currently they have 3-5 people on food prep.
1 cook, 2/4 people assemblying the cooked food. If you drop it to one, the time per food made would be too drastically increased, in that business would take a huge hit.
(Aka unsuccessful)
Excluding the very heavy periods of the day, which is usually lunch and maybe dinner, a single person on food prep was typically very doable. I used to work at McDonald's when I was a teen, and there were many times when I was the only person preparing the food (grill + assembly). Honestly, it's really not that hard, because grilling just involves pulling patties out of a freezer right beside the grill, smacking them onto the front of the grill (this loosens them as they're usually stuck together), tossing them onto the grill in a 3x3 pattern (for regs) and closing the clamshell. Then you just pull down a tray and put a liner in it so you're ready when they're done. That takes maybe a total of 7-10 seconds (depending on how badly stuck together the burgers are
).
Keep in mind that part of the wait in assembly is the bun toaster (about 10-15 seconds), which means the above grilling could easily take place during the toasting process. Assembling sandwiches isn't that hard as long as you know what goes on them, which means you aren't forced to stop and look (there's usually a cheat sheet above the assembly line). Even though I haven't worked at McDonald's in over a decade, I bet that I could assemble a double cheeseburger in probably around 7-10 seconds. What usually makes it harder (and take longer) is when people order things with changes made as that usually throws a wrench into the monotony.
But yes, they normally staff both sides of the prep table during heavy periods, and it is typically with one person or two people on each side.
Hmm thinking about it... I worked at McDonald's prior to going to college, and most college kids would take a break while in college. Well, I never actually quit after I left for college, but I never announced my availability (essentially, I never returned from my college leave). I wonder if I'm still technically employed there?
EDIT:
They can get in trouble for this.
However my short time working at McD between graduating college and finding my engineering career, I can tell you it happened all the same there.
I never saw this sort of thing happen, and you would actually be surprised at how much food we would have to throw out. Although, the one benefit of working the closing shift was you could sneak some leftovers that were destined for the trash.
They weren't bad or spoiled, but the only meat that we ever reheated was the bacon. A good manager's job is to help keep waste to a minimum, and a good general manager should ensure that the store isn't wasting food supplies (i.e. ordering too much and having it go to waste in the freezer).
Facebook
Twitter