Re:A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier
by jl6 on Friday December 06, 2019 @03:28AM
(#21720084)
The uncomfortable truth here is that foodservice/retail managers are also relatively low paid low skilled jobs and therefore have a tendency towards being populated by people without the skills to humanely manage their employees and employer.
One step up, the corporate managers putting the pressure on the local managers are themselves pressured by market conditions to cut cost and drive efficiency. And who drives those market conditions? You and I, my friend. We like cheap stuff. The consequence is that others suffer.
Re:A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier
by TeMPOraL on Friday December 06, 2019 @04:43AM
(#21720362)
That's why I don't believe unregulated markets are be-all and end-all. These feedback loops are stronger than any one of us, the lowly worker and the lofty manager alike, they'll eventually grind us all to dust if we let them. Brakes must be put, because humans can't survive a perfectly efficient economy.
E.g. flipping burgers at McDonald's isn't a shitty job because you're flipping burgers; it's a shitty job because you are paid badly, made to work much faster than it's healthy, and the management is shitty to you both personally and structurally, in how they plan the shifts, etc.
I'd argue that any shitty job could have a non-shitty variant with mostly the same tasks and responsibilities, and only the conditions changed. Which leads me to the answer to your question: anywhere between invention of agriculture and the industrial revolution, or perhaps even up to XIX century. Even when people toiled on farms, to then give most of it away to some nobles with swords, at least they weren't micromanaged day-in, day-out by said nobles.