7 ms·

When I was younger, I worked at a McDonalds in SoCal. Almost all the employees were white teenagers. The managers were white as well. We didn't make much, just

• late2part 10y ago
  My impression is that a similar issue occurred in the military a few years later.
• rhizome 10y ago
  ~1984 was around the time of the explosion of malls, so there were a lot more non-food jobs for teens after that.
• CalChris 10y ago
  Minimum wage in that era had much stronger purchasing power. 1980 saw its decline. https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html
  • candiodari 10y ago
    Wages saw a decline since the 1980s. Minimum wage just as well as almost any other. Hell, by a reasonable PCE measure, even the president is making substantially less. The government has of course solved this problem. One, the actual amounts didn't go down, they simply didn't keep pace with inflation. And as actual measures (ie. "Big Mac index" type indices) kept going down, they were systematically removed from tracking by the FED. So the government can claim that they didn't in fact go down by a factor of 3. In reality nobody has lost any wages you see, and the fact that a fast food worker's (esp. immigrant ones) "apartment" (room is a more apt description generally) today is tiny, looks barren and has absolutely nothing in it worth anything, or the issue that their cars are invariably beaters. Well that was the case for lowest-level jobs in the 1980s as well, wasn't it ? Wait ... no it wasn't. First of all, they owned houses and cars. But you see, according to the fed's measures of inflation everything is about the same. And of course it is. You see, people today only use about a third of the housing as people of the 1980s. That must be because people now ... euhm ... are about 1/3rd the size of back then ? They also only use 1/3rd transport (fuel, public transport, ...) ... now there's some small justification for that, as a gallon of gasoline goes a lot further now, but still.
• kashkhan 10y ago
  it's better to let teenagers invest in future job skills than past job skills. Sure grape picking would build character, resourcefulness, obedience to bosses and teamwork, but it's got no future. Same thing with fast food jobs.
  • faster 10y ago
    Non-cognitive skills like those are very important. I've seen a few papers lately that show that it's more valuable to long-term earning to learn non-cognitive skills than cognitive skills in a child's early years. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/16164/1/16164.pdf http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/16164/1/16164.pdf
  • rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    Interpersonal skills are future job skills. Technical skills are only useful if they command a salary lucrative enough to live on but not so lucrative that you find yourself on the automation chopping block.
  • nradov 10y ago
    Knowing how to show up on time, follow instructions, and be polite to customers is a future job skill.
  • masonic 10y ago
    Working in fast food means responsibility and planning: time clock, rules, clean uniform, proper shoes, standards for behavior, etc. Some millenials aren't held to such basic standards elsewhere in life yet.
• da02 10y ago
  What jobs did the teens from affluent families get instead of fast food service?
  • RussianCow 10y ago
    Not the OP, but likely many of them didn't get jobs at all because they didn't need to.
    • sand500 10y ago
      Gotta get those extracurriculars and community service that colleges look for on top of getting good grades.
  • dragonwriter 10y ago
    > What jobs did the teens from affluent families get instead of fast food service? Probably either none or things (paid or not) connected with their career plans and aspirations, often through personal networks jump started from their parents networks. Same as teens and young adults from affluent families now.
• rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Nothing helped me appreciate education and hard work like working as a produce clerk at a second rate grocery store, seeing day in, day out, the same customers buying the same horrible processed foods, and the same burnout co-workers showing up stoned out of their minds to deal with the shit jobs they work to afford their weed to help them deal with their shit jobs. Taught me more about life than any class or book ever could.
  • externalities88 10y ago
    Here I am working for one poorly run tech company after another, jumping to the next as they die, hoping my salary won't go down as cost of living goes up, dealing with the same kludgy tools and frameworks and short sighted management. That degree and hard work got me more money. The rest is all the same
• hkmurakami 10y ago
  Any insight into what does In n' Out does differently? They seem to continue to attract that demographic.
  • dropit_sphere 10y ago
    Also, to piggyback: does anyone know if In-N-Out has a Disney-type dress/grooming code? Every time I go (about once a year, so I'm a bit fuzzy) I get the impression that everyone is cleancut.
  • rogerbinns 10y ago
    They don't have franchises like the other chains. That is also why their rollout seems slow. This means the boss is the company, not a franchisee who will have their own way of doing things. They then make a reasonable effort of benefits for their employees: http://www.in-n-out.com/employment/restaurant.aspx http://www.in-n-out.com/employment/restaurant.aspx
    • mahyarm 10y ago
      Do affluent teenagers care about benefits although when their parents very likely have benefits for them already?
      • greedo 10y ago
        My fellow teens only cared about how much money they made, if the uniforms made them look like idiots to the opposite sex, and what their schedule was.
    • masonic 10y ago
      They don't have franchises like the other chains. I don't think that's a factor. Both corporate-owned stores and franchisees use the same employee demographics, generally. Sometimes you'll find a franchisee who is an immigrant from outside the Americas and find a lot of family members and their friends making up the crew. (For example, there's a local Taco Bell that has more South-Asian employees than not.)
• edblarney 10y ago
  "It wasn't as cool to work at fast food, and the area was becoming more affluent." If you walk into a 7-11 in Scandinavia (yes, they have some there) - esp. in a small town - you'll sometimes see a drop-dead '10' Swedish model working behind the counter. Why? Because 'it's normal' for people to do such jobs - as you say - 'when you were young' it was normal. When those jobs are done by non-citizens, especially of a different ethnicity, then there is a 'stigma' associated with that work, and the social value drops quite a lot. The notion that 'the area became more affluent' and kids wouldn't do those jobs is a total misrepresentation of reality. A) If the social context didn't change, then kids would do those jobs. B) 'They had to hire illegal migrants' is again another lie. As the area becomes more wealthy - guess what - wages are supposed to rise. Yes, that means the price of burgers should rise a little bit as well. But it's again, a total misrepresentation, borderline lie to imply that the 'only way to have service workers is to hire illegal workers'. This is beyond false. The anecdote you described provides the fundamental basis for the rise of inequality in America. The notion that 'illegal workers' must be used to support economic activity is obviously unfeasible in the long-term, that somehow growth depends on a class of workers who'll work below the real prevailing wage - and who cannot organize, collect social security, healthcare etc. No - it's completely upside down. There are so many places in the world where 'regular kids' continue to work at McDonald's. Wages and benefits are higher, and there is no real social stigma. (Of course, working at McD's is never going to be considered a choice job, but you did it :) ) "I do think something is missing though when kids don't learn what it's like to hold a retail type job dealing with the public." Yes - I fully agree. Been there. But a bifurcated society creates stigma and deep 'social class signalling' in these jobs and it destroys the social compact. Imagine this for a moment: that Obama or Trump gives all illegal migrants instant citizenship with full rights, healthcare, the right to organize labour, social security. Then guess what happens by the 'illegals are necessary economic logic': McDonald's has to 'fire the new citizens' and 'hire actual, new illegals'! It's a destructive, unsustainable Ponzi scheme. Local wages should rise until the jobs are filled. Some farming jobs just won't work out - those crops can be grown elsewhere. Yes - we need to treat people with humanity and dignity and there'll always be some people who 'fall through the cracks' - but the systematic importation of illegal workers on a large scale is inhuman.
  • 10y ago
• diogenescynic 10y ago
  There are plenty of white teenagers who work at every In-N-Out I've ever been to--because they pay better. Otherwise those kids, in nicer areas like you point to, have better alternatives for minimum wage like retail. The reason the jobs you describe are being replaced by immigrants is because the wages have been stagnant or not kept up with inflation. Unskilled immigrants take labor jobs that Americans aren't really willing to do, like being a janitor or emptying septic tanks or pouring concrete in Bakersfield.
  • derrickdirge 10y ago
    To the parent's point, it's probably generally considered slightly 'cooler' to work at In-N-Out than at McDonald's. In-N-Out certainly seems to be trendier amongst young people than most other fast food restaurants. Anecdotally, it seems that as general affluence within a community rises, so does the value placed on social standing. So your compensation package has to cover increased lifestyle expenses, adjusted for the position's impact on your status in the community. If wages stagnated, but somehow McDonald's just kept getting trendier, I expect they would retain more of their original demographic than if McDonald's was increasingly seen as a place that only employs losers and morons.
  • mc32 10y ago
    Where I live in SF, there is a coffee shop owner who hires your regular high school/college student, next door there is a grocery store which mostly hires spanish speakers. One seems to make the choice to hire young kids, the other hires cheap labor.
  • cylinder 10y ago
    In n Out pays $11-$12/he with good benefits - much more than McD. McDonalds are also franchises so the individual owners are much more concerned with weekly cash flow than corporate In N Out who can decide to invest in higher wages for lower turnover and better staff which are longer term investments.
  • greedo 10y ago
    Agreed. When In-N-Out opened up near our franchise, the managers were in a panic because they were paying 75% higher hourly rates not to mention what they paid their managers. Plus, fast-food jobs developed a stigma as loser/dead-end jobs. Teenagers needed spending money, but not at the cost of being "uncool."
• gmarx 10y ago
  This change occurred in my town as well at about the same time. How do you know you are getting cause and effect right? I always assumed that after the amnesty in the first Bush administration it was just easier/cheaper/better attitude to get mexicans and the restaurants stopped hiring the high school kids. I don't think those jobs were ever considered cool for the high school kids but money is useful
  • dragonwriter 10y ago
    > I always assumed that after the amnesty in the first Bush administration A minor nitpick, but you are probably referring to the amnesty component of the 1986 immigration reform law, which was during the Reagan Administration, not the first Bush Administration.
    • gmarx 10y ago
      Thanks
  • greedo 10y ago
    Well, having worked there, and knowing how racist the owners/upper mgmt were, they would have preferred to hire only whites. Any productivity gains by hiring immigrants who "might" have worked harder were lost at least initially with communication issues until we had enough Spanish speakers to make things operate smoothly. And while we did have a few slacker white kids who just wanted an easy paycheck, I can't say that was true of the majority of white teens we employed.
• dmode 10y ago
  I didn't grow up in the US, but is this because parenting changed around this time ? Where I grew up, we would hear stories about kids in the US leaving their homes at 15 and trying to figure things out. But when I moved here, i have never seen it. All the families I know take good care of their kids throughout college and even after. So there is no need for them to work at low paying fast food jobs. Their parents can cover their expenses. Savvier parents are even investing their kids future by helping them build startups, participating in hackathons etc. Far cry from a job at McDonad's.
  • wavefunction 10y ago
    Given your description of folks here in the US (which is positive and flattering) I think you're overlooking most of the population of the country, for which your description of college or building startups is not true.
    • dmode 10y ago
      I was referring specifically to what OP was hinting at - changing demographic at fast food stores in wealthy areas.
      • pasquinelli 10y ago
        Well, really the seem to be talking about an area that became more wealthy, right?
  • DrScump 10y ago
    we would hear stories about kids in the US leaving their homes at 15 and trying to figure things out I think that's a pre-WW2 concept at best. With the advent of child labor laws, a child has restraints on numbers of hours and time of day, especially during the school year. When I was 16, we needed school-issued Work Permits to work at all and were limited to 4 hour shifts on "school nights" with a 10PM limit.
• Kluny 10y ago
  I'm not in the states, but if I had a high school age kid I think I'd do anything I could to get them a better summer job than McD's. The money isn't the point - they're going to end up competing with adults for real jobs at some point, and the more high quality items they can get on a resume, the better their chances. Middle class kids legit can't afford to work in fast food because they need to spend their school years doing something more valuable than that. I would probably advise my kids to shadow a tradesman, volunteer at a hospital or for a political campaign, plant trees, lead at a summer camp, or any other thing that will lead to better opportunities than fast food. Even working in a high end restaurant would be better.
  • sand500 10y ago
    >Middle class kids legit can't afford to work in fast food because they need to spend their school years doing something more valuable than that. I agree fully. Especially once you get to college, you need to start looking for internships and having more things on your resume makes you that more competitive.
• cylinder 10y ago
  In Australia McDonalds are still generally staffed by young teens, not immigrants, and often white. This is because there are lower minimum wages for minors (staggered by age). I think this is a matter of costs (wages) and not much else.