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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How I Get By: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier

That $215 paycheck for two weeks doesn't make sense and worries me. If she works forty hours a week between two jobs, she's probably working at McDonald's about twenty hours a week, which is about average for retail and food. That way they have wiggle room to "ask" you to pick up hours when someone calls off or if things get crazy, but they won't risk getting near mandatory health insurance hours.

Anyhow, 9.50 x 20 hours is 190. 190 x 2 weeks is 380. 380 x .75 to factor in taxes taken out is 285. Her check should be in that ballpark, especially if she's working extra hours. Obviously I don't know her schedule, but if she's keeping track of her hours and her check seems off, she might be the victim of wage theft, which sadly, is very common.

This is why I always tell people to A) pay attention to their paystubs and B) work at places with systems that allow you to audit your time punches yourself. Not only does it keep pay honest, it's a great way to help you figure out upcoming paychecks in advanced.





user-inactivated  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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user-inactivated  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

$7 an hour? What. The. Fuck. She's been in the industry for 14 years and she gets paid that!

And paying full for her diabetic medicine. Also what the fuck.

What a depressing read. Fuck I'm sad. And angry!

steve  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I haven't read the article yet (but plan to). I don't think there is a reasonable expectation that fast food wages would go up with tenure. That is an entry level job, designed around a part-time workforce. There's an entire other conversation we could/should have around what a living wage is... but honestly - she's competing for that job with High School kids who live at home, are covered by their parents' health insurance, and eat their parents' food.

And please don't mistake my point as some right wing "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" ideology. I have tremendous sympathy for this person's situation (just from the snippet I've read).

user-inactivated  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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user-inactivated  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I agree with what you're saying in regards to competition, certainly don't think you're bootstrapping! But surely that many years in the industry you work your way up the chain to some degree - she apparently left the role initially as she was promoted but not given the pay rise she was promised. So she was doing the right thing and getting shafted regardless - the poor thing.

It's just the wages combined with the lack of healthcare and how she works herself off her feet just to keep the lights on. I really can't imagine that life and it's so unsettling knowing people are forced to live like that. If I don't get a payrise in a certain amount of time, I just leave for another role - but that doesn't sound like something she can do in her situation. She's spent years in the industry but wasn't given any training or progression plan to help her in the future.

kleinbl00  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The issue is that you're not so much talking about a corporate ladder as a corporate stepstool. You go from fry cook to front register to maybe assistant manager and then that needs to be parlayed into something better somewhere else.

We're talking about a person who has worked entry-level jobs for fourteen years. Which sucks. No doubt. Steve's argument - which I agree with - is that there needs to be a compassionate plan for people who are never going to rise above entry-level. I mean, yeah - she didn't get promoted to assistant manager in 2015 but that was 10 years into her food service career. For all we know, the past four years she's been the Maitre'd at Spago (but probably not). You're right - it's unsettling knowing people are forced to live like that and there are lots of them, and there are plenty who are doing worse, and we need to do something about it.

kleinbl00  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Welcome to Capitalism

kleinbl00  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

MIT Cost of Living calculator for two adults, no kids is $9.53 an hour., "living wage" being calculated from

    \Basic needs budget = Food cost childcare cost (insurance premiums health care costs) housing cost transportation cost other necessities cost

    Living wage = Basic needs budget + (basic needs budget*taxrate|

    And we only know what she's making, not what her boyfriend is making. We know they moved in with his parents for some reason. We know she lost her car. We know she's diabetic. And she's making 3 cents less per hour than what MIT considers the bare minimum.

    What you're illustrating is the basic conservative/liberal divide: a conservative would argue she needs a job closer to her home, that she needs to negotiate her pay better, etc. A liberal would argue that live needs to not suck for those people who lack the skills to negotiate a better paycheck or find a better job. Let's be honest: she's been working food service jobs for fifteen years. There's a failure to thrive here that a compassionate society works with, rather than punishes. Thee or me? Yeah, we'd find a smart way out of that situation and things would suck less. But your average conservative doesn't understand that when life starts sucking for the people who don't know the ropes, they start voting for Trump.

kleinbl00  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

27 hours at $9.50 an hour in Raleigh with no deductions should be about $215. In the notes she works about three extra hours a day in her two weekend shifts so it's probably not badly off. It's just a depressing wage.

user-inactivated  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't know what upsets me more. Those tax rates or that wage theft is so common that I automatically jump to that as the cause instead of assume higher tax rates.

Edit: I see that part of my problem is assuming she's working more hours. My math involves an assumption of twenty steady hours a week, not fifteen and change.

kleinbl00  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The tax rates aren't even that bad - she's losing 17% of her salary to taxes. The Feds are going to give their income tax back, don't you worry, she's poor; that's about $18 per paycheck.

The shitty part is working 27 hours a week (and probably spending 12 hours on the bus) in order to take home $215. What's shittier is that the job she does? It probably makes sense to McDonald's to pay her $9.50 an hour to do it but it doesn't to pay her $15. Up here? Up here you make $15 for working at McDonald's and they employ four people per shift. There's one on the drive through, there's one on the register, there's one cooking, and there's one doing everything else and the rest is robots and kiosks.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that she has no viable skills. She's got diabetes. And she's one pay hike away from being roboticized out of a job. How do we solve a problem like Cierra?

THAT is what is going to tear the future apart.

user-inactivated  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    It's $215, for 2 weeks of work.

From the article. Which is where I'm getting my concern from, because fifteen hours a week doesn't sound right. That's either only two full shifts or three part time shifts and unless someone is pinned, that's not a lot. As weird as it sounds, an extra five hours and change makes a huge difference. Not trying to argue, just explaining my reasoning behind my math in the original comment.

    Let's assume for the sake of argument that she has no viable skills. She's got diabetes. And she's one pay hike away from being roboticized out of a job. How do we solve a problem like Cierra?

    THAT is what is going to tear the future apart.

I really don't mean to be dark, but through ignorance, apathy, and cultural inertia we live in a world where a lot of nasty stuff is going on that I don't even want to say out loud. But we got kids these days fighting for the environment, we got people waking up to the ills of big business, we're holding people responsible for the opioid crisis, we have a collective weariness against war, we have a collective weariness about women and minorities being treated poorly, on and on I could go. I mean, things are really dark right now, but things are also really good, and maybe we're at the point where society is ready to pay attention to its shortness of breath, the ballooning numbers on the bathroom scale, and that pervasive back pain that won't go away and not only go to the doctors, but actually start taking their advice. Yeah, giving up cigarettes is hard, dieting is no fun, and exercise isn't always an adventure, but it beats the alternative.

Ten years ago, if I told people I was cutting back on meat, all but swearing off synthetic fabrics, and refusing to do business with companies like Disney and Amazon, they'd think I was just plain weird. Now when I talk to people about those kinds of things, either they're on board and do similar things, or they think I'm weird but at least understand where I'm coming from. That's progress.

Are we all pretty screwed? Yes. Are we probably more screwed than we were ten years ago? Probably also yes. Am I more hopeful that things are starting to change now, though? A hundred times.

kleinbl00  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    From the article. Which is where I'm getting my concern from, because fifteen hours a week doesn't sound right.

Fuck, you're right.

Looks to me like she's working Saturdays and Sundays at McDonald's, which is probably two 7.5 hour shifts per week (until they make her stay until 11, at which point whee an extra four hours of work but also shit, how am I going to get home when an Uber is half of that money right there).

    I really don't mean to be dark...

I am 100% on board with all of these things. The problem is, not everyone is. And between Greta Thunberg becoming a celebrity and Trump withdrawing the US from the Kyoto Protocol, there's some battles ahead. And they're fucking existential. There's people riding the bus 4 hours a day for $9.50 an hour so they can buy their insulin and there's people who think they aren't applying themselves and there's people who don't fucking care all they know is that a crisis model of healthcare is the most expensive paradigm you can subscribe to and we all have to live on the same planet.

ButterflyEffect  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee isn't structural unemployment so much fun

where's that article you posted way, way back about workforce retraining

kleinbl00  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Joke's on you I'm pretty sure it's a McKinsey Report...

Okay I looked, what I was thinking of was keifermiller's post to a Bain study:

You might be thinking of this:

ButterflyEffect  ·  1570 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thank. Fucking. God. That wasn’t a McKinsey report, that would have been a great way of getting me to write 500 words of pure unadulterated hatred. The Bain study is exactly what I was looking for, need to reread that with current context. Thanks!