What would you consider a bad job? In relation to my current not actually a job job where I do computer shit, I would consider my menial, back breaking, minimum wage first job to be bad.
Sorry, but nearly any skilled job could end up in the "bad job" sector, if your benchmark is "cushy IT job". Even Doctors. They may get paid handsomely, but considering the many years they have to spend grinding away studying and taking exams, and the overtime they have to do (in the public sector) plus the on calls and dealing with many sick people, that aint no cushy job.
The easiest cushy job I could think of is tram driver in my city. Don't need to think about steering, just watch the lights, and either hit the gas or the brake pedal, then push the buttons for opening and closing the doors.
It's one reason why I didn't opt to be an airline pilot. Trying to be alert during hours and hours of doing nothing but constantly checking things would be very hard. I felt sorry for the crew that fell asleep and overflew their destination by an hour. They were promptly fired after they landed. While I know they had to be fired, I have a lot of sympathy for them.
As opposed to flying combat fighters.
If the pilots you talked to enjoyed it, that's great. It's just not for my father, nor for me.
You are vastly underestimating how difficult it is to drive a tram or any rail vehicle.
It doesn't have a simple throttle and brake like your car has. There are two or three independent braking systems and the throttle needs monitoring of the current going into the motors.
And on top of the complex systems you are responsible for managing the inertia of tens of tons of steel rolling up and down hill in the middle of traffic.
Driving a bus would be much easier.
Really it’s hard for me to imagine any job cushier than working in software in the comfort of your own home. The work can be mentally stimulating when you want it to be and usually isn’t very difficult if you know what you’re doing, and it’s well paid. Thank god most people don’t have the mind or patience for it, else we might be paid far less.
A few of my partner's friends do "social media" operations for a large company and I think they work less than 10 hours a week while getting paid a
In my experience yes but I live in small country in western Europe that's never on the radar of recruiters from the US, unless they're looking for a holiday destination :).
I never found US tech jobs open for remote candidates that were not some off-shore sweatshop kind of slave work looking to undercut the local US market wages with candidates willing to work longer hours for less pay than the local talent.
The good US tech companies never put their crown jewels in the hands on remote workers from abroad they haven't already known before or gotten through some internal referral.
I'm sure there are a few exceptions and glad to be proven wrong though but that's what the market looks like from my PoV.
That is their point. McDonald’s is a bad job because of the bad quality of life at work and low pay. Bad quality of life at work offset by pay, such as with doctors, is not a bad job.
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/05280713556b763ef4f8cf28fa...
It's a little dramatic for my taste, Occam's Razor probably applies, but there might just be a grain of truth to it... at least in the darwinian sense where incompetent time management just so happens to somehow beat workers into submission better than competent time management happens to retain them. The incompetent managers win out over time and a dominant pattern emerges.
Another is using immigrants or poor people trying to establish themselves as managers in name, but in reality they are there to fill in for the lower paid shift workers who are constantly quitting or unreliable because they are paying the lowest wages.
The “managers” put up with this to earn a steady salary paycheck, but per hour worked, it frequently comes out to less than minimum wage.
Obama admin increasing minimum salaries to $48k from $33k had the small business owners I know frothing at the mouth.
> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
With the corollary
> but don't rule out malice.
During parts of the worst sections of the labor shortage, I was seeing CFA owners on my Facebook feed saying that they couldn’t hire anyone offering $19-23 / hr so they couldn’t imagine what everybody else must be going through.
You see a similar thing with gas stations, where the "nicer" ones (Buckees, Sheetz, Wawa) are corporate owned, whereas BP, Shell, etc are franchised.
Not that there aren't GOOD franchised locations, but it's much more variable.
They take that stuff very seriously.
https://www.businessinsider.com/what-it-costs-to-open-a-chic...
(The other problem is the building materials shortage because you can't inflate yourself out of the shortage of available housing, you need to actually build new construction, but we are getting sidetracked.)
edit: Wait the TREASURY prints money, not the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve just... greases the wheels of banks, I guess?
What can outweigh intelligent people not improving life in home country but building career in 1st world?
The Philippines is one that springs to mind.
They have a massive industry over there training up nurses with the explicit intention of sending them overseas. The net result of this is a top class health care system.
Cash remittances make up 10% of their GDP. This is in addition to a culture of overseas workers sending massive gift boxes back home once a year (often containing expensive things like smartphones and laptops for the younger generations' education).
Plus you have the soft power and less tangible benefits (cultural exchange, etc.)
The Government actually actively encourages people to emigrate, in fact, as it's a great way for the country to get ahead culturally and economically. They simply don't have the industry locally to support the high number of skilled and educated workers they produce.
>What can outweigh intelligent people not improving life in home country but building career in 1st world?
This statement carries with it a couple of assumptions:
- People in a corrupt society will work hard to get an education when it doesn't give them an opportunity to make a better life overseas.
- Educated people who remain in their corrupt, third-world countries of birth will have the opportunities to use their skills to improve their home country.
- People in poor, but non-corrupt and growing economies that have the opportunity to stay and improve things will instead leave.
I'm sure you can find multiple examples to shatter every one of those assumptions (Nigeria really sticks out for the second one).
You're ignoring the WhatsApp factor. Immigrants experience first hand how well Western democracy works and then share that with everybody back home.
It's also quite common, at least in my experience, for people to follow politics back home. Invariably, they advocate quite vocally for more democracy, less corruption and less discrimination.
Don't forget that many developing countries have a wide array of policies in place to ensure that they can't make proper use of their human capital.
My father-in-law, for example, is an environmental scientist who simply couldn't find work in his field (public sector) back in South Africa in the early 00s as there were racial quotas and affirmative action policies that didn't work in his favour.
He was offered a job in NZ, after a solid year of being unemployed, and jumped ship immediately. His talent wasn't stolen by the developed world so much as it wasted by his underdeveloped home.
We are saying the same thing.
Fedex has come up in conversation over the past year as the worst logistics company, even from people who know nothing about logistics. All they see is that if it is coming via FedEx, then it very well might not come when it says it will.
Why would you want to tarnish your entire brand image like that? Would you not want FedEx Express to be a different name than FedEx Ground so that people still think to go to your more valuable product than just thinking screw it, I am going with UPS or USPS?
They still make us go through a yearly training on how to prevent unionization though...
And I would agree, they aren’t intended to provide a wage to support a family. That doesn’t stop people who are doing just that to work those jobs.
And there are also plenty of adults who don’t need to work who do those jobs. I know a few older guys who work part time at Home Depot making peanuts but they don’t need to the money, they need some routine and interactions.
Still wondering why or who intends this?
What are these jobs good for then? How is society benefiting from having people doing this for so little, as opposed to them getting a proper job (that is supposed to support a family)?
If a 16 year old needs a job are you saying the jobs should support a family?
I’m not sure I understand the handwringing. If some guy opens a used computer shop and asks $1,000 for an old 486 chip I don’t worry about “who is going to buy it?”.
Do you have any numbers on that? Your comment sounds like what an out of touch rich person would say, since only rich people can do without money.
> That doesn’t stop people who are doing just that to work those jobs.
And why is that do you think?
That is not the kind of jobs we’re talking about though. People who don’t need to work are not who’s being discussed.
Since we’re using anecdotes instead of data I’ll add some. More than one retiree in my family left the workforce because of Covid because they were afraid of contracting it. I don’t know if they’ll go back to work, but they’re not in the labor pool regardless.
That's exactly the topic of the person I replied to.
And sure, some people works those jobs since they can’t find anything else. Not sure what you’re getting at. Would you prefer those jobs just didn’t exist?
They don't exist in my country and people don't seem sadder for it.
Do the mentally challenged universally care about pride in their work and purpose? Isn’t a pointless job still pitiful?
Some people are excluded from being paid the minimum wage and in some cases are exploited. That’s likely not in many or most cases, but my point is that I doubt the jobs were created with the mentally challenged in mind.
I personally know some. I've seen some profiled in the newspaper. I know of programs that match them with jobs.
> Do the mentally challenged universally care about pride in their work and purpose?
Universally? There are always exceptions. But plenty do, just like with everybody else.
> I doubt the jobs were created with the mentally challenged in mind.
I've seen them, for example, working as ticket takers in movie theaters. Nothing wrong with that, and it's a job that still needs doing.
I call BS.
The employer of last resort. There's no welfare system in the US.
I don't intend any disrespect, but you're repeating revisionist history.
I worked nights at a McDonalds about 4 years back (first year of university) in Canada. You are spot-on about them treating humans as the weakest link.
For instance, I noticed that every carton in the freezer contains an illustration of the item inside (in addition to names in English and French). My understanding is that they simply do not trust their workforce to be able to read the contents of the carton and will gladly slap an image on top to remove any unpredictability from the process.
I think there's a wide gulf between that and "treat literally everyone like they have the intellect of a toddler" kind of policy making which you see advocated for a lot on Reddit (less so here, but sometimes). McDonalds definitely does that, but my impression is that it's more of an acknowledgement of things getting missed in that kind of work environment than people being stupid. When two school buses pull up and you've got every machine beeping and buzzing things need to be stupid proof.
I saw a NY Times article about garbage men who make only $15/hr in southern states.
Who in the hell wants to do any of these jobs?
Of course I understand this is the answer.
It's more of a rhetorical question to the idiot quotes from the Facebook group about how fast food is a "teenage job". Even as a teenager 20 years ago I wouldn't work for less than $10/hour.
What I don't understand is how people don't see the wage pressure exerted by corporate America in the last few decades. NAFTA to remove a bunch of "real jobs", then move remaining manufacturing to "two-tier" systems where new employees can't attain wage rates that their parents would have made at those jobs, then all the shenanigans at low wage places (just-in-time scheduling, wage theft, toxic customers, no benefits, etc. etc. etc.).
Don't even get me started on how the American "safety net" forces people to work in these shitty jobs. Dare to make over some ridiculous poverty threshold and you get no assistance.
Lucky you. Sometimes even teenagers have to provide for their family, for even more ridiculous rates because they're teenagers and thus somewhat exploited by society. Not everyone can afford saying no to bad paying jobs.
I'd work for $1 an hour if the alternative was starving or selling my body or dignity. Though in fairness it's much easier and more lucrative to just enter the crime world. No age checks there, but promises of riches and they're always hiring.
Or we could remove luck from the equation and decide as a society to support everyone: living wages, food, housing, health care.
I recognize my luck, which is why I find society so absurd at times. And I for sure have no problem paying higher taxes to extend the guarantees above to all citizens.
[1] Food you make yourself from scratch, say: stew of lentils with meatballs
Compared to buying a high quality hamburger in America from people who are paid and treated well, McDonalds is very cheap (i.e. it is easy to find ten times more expensive burgers)
I also think GP's point was a bit different, as in eating out altogether may have been seen a treat, not McDonald's specifically. Eating in was more the norm, for price reasons.
Over here in France, I do consider it expensive for what it is. I can easily whip together food that is healthier, tastier and cheaper.
And when I say "easy" I also consider the time factor. It takes me less time to chop up some vegetables, throw them in a pot over some minced meat and do the dishes while it cooks. I can also cook some rice / pasta / whatever to go with it. It usually takes around 30 minutes from start to finish. Unless the McDonald's is right next door, it won't even be faster.
It's been years since I haven't been in a McDonald's, but a menu used to cost some 7-8 €. Most other fast-food places (think kebab joint) used to cost roughly in the same ballpark. The kind of recipe I'm talking about above will usually come in a bit cheaper, and there are multiple servings.
Of course, there are cases when you're out and about and can't cook, so YMMV, but for many places where people work "inside" (as opposed to, say, construction), there usually are microwave ovens available, so you can reheat your own food.
I could make a healthier, better tasting meal for $1.39 in ingredients but that would be quite restrictive. I don't know that I could make a burger. More importantly though I would have to make sure the perishable ingredients were fully used before they went off, I would have to have kitchen equipment and knowhow, and I would have to have the time and energy to make this food. Some of those things are luxuries not everybody has (even though they're quite a bit better financially, healthwise, etc. in the long term)
When I cook for myself realistically, I usually spend more than I would have at McDonalds (not counting whatever my time is worth and kitchen equipment cost).
Could I eat cheaper than McDonalds without cooking myself? Not really, unless we're talking about a few cents.
Could I eat cheaper than McDonalds by cooking myself? It depends on my choices but generally yes, but requiring some careful overhead management.
And there are much better fastfood options out there.
All of this is done to reduce the cost and increase the homogeneity of the final product. The product itself has been engineered for decades to be as palate-pleasing and inexpensive as possible. The humans preparing and serving the food are the only weak link in the chain, and they’re treated as such.
All of this so we can eat cheap, predictable burgers. It’s the worst kind of poison — that which kills slowly, and sucks the joy from your life as it does so.