I agree about fast food work being draining. Even on the hardest day, I've never left my software engineering job at the end of the day feeling half as exhausted as I did at my high school fast food jobs. From standing for 8 hours a day to the incessant churn of customers to the insults, condescension, and unreasonable demands that some of those customers would make, it is a demoralizing position.

If salary was determined based on the emotional and physical toll a job takes, I feel like a fast food worker would make more than I do as a software engineer.