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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

Fast food is the absolute worst job a person can possibly have in the United States. It destroys your body, kills your spirit, and pays less than nothing when you consider the lack of health benefits and high possibility of injury. I did it for years before learning to code, and it's work that no human being should have to do. I don't know what will come next for low skilled people, but I know the world will be a better place when we've reached a point technologically that humans are free from this kind of labor.

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Don't you think you're being a little hyperbolic here? Less than nothing? Really?

I worked fast food for 2 years, one full time. I did not mind it one bit, in fact, as far as jobs go, I liked it for the most part - the only really shitty part of it was the terrible pay and smelling like grease after your shift. My sister worked with me and she enjoyed it to. It's also not particularly physically demanding.

Retail, on the other hand, was very soul sucking to me. My hypothesis is I'm sensitive to the bright lights they use in retail stores.

Love retail and selling things. When you work in a fast food retail store like radio shack in the 80/90s customers tell you what they want its great.

>It destroys your body, kills your spirit, and pays less than nothing when you consider the lack of health benefits and high possibility of injury.

I worked out in the woods of the northwest as a logger and would like to disagree. There are certainly jobs that are worse in all the metrics you've listed. Personally, I couldn't wait to get a fast food job after I quit.

I worked at Wendy's during the 1980's (high school) and it wasn't bad. Minimum wage and all, but any problems you encountered started and ended on the same day, so stress wasn't really an issue.

What seems different these days is that most of the workers aren't high school kids. That was the case in the 80's. Something about the job market where people are trying to use entry level fast food jobs to support an adult life.

The adults working at McDonald's as crew today are people who can't get a job anywhere else, or in some cases retirees looking for something to do or a little extra spending money.

I was the same as you, in the eighties I worked at McDonald's and it was pretty fun. 90% of the staff were under 25 years old and most were in school. Either college or still in high school. You could have interesting conversations while you worked and the menu was vastly simpler so it was pretty easy to get the hang of doing everything.

Yeah the pay wasn't great but there wasn't much else a young person could do that paid more, and very few people were trying to support a family or even fully support themselves. There was healthcare for full-timers but it really wasn't as big a deal then. People did not freak and think it was the end of the world not having insurance, and in any case many of them were probably still covered by their parents.

>I worked at Wendy's during the 1980's (high school) and it wasn't bad. Minimum wage and all, but any problems you encountered started and ended on the same day, so stress wasn't really an issue.

That's the whole point of this article though. The workers in a busy McDonalds restaurant today are being expected to make 10x the output you did as a teenager in the 80's for wages that are less than what you made, inflation adjusted. A line cook in 1985 made about $4.50/hr, which is $10.50 in 2018 dollars [0]. In 2018, federal minimum wage is $7.25, and the are plenty of McDonalds employees making that much across the country.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1986/09/rpt1full.pdf [0]

I made $3.35 and worked my ass off in 1985. I was genuinely tired, though not stressed at shift end. That 10x thing is pure bullshit. The extra stress is solely because their paycheck is needed to survive, versus for some extra money. I didn't have much idle time. Wendy's had a salad bar then and other things (manual cash registers, less automation, no credit cards, less prefab food, etc) that were arguably more work than today's world. Other stuff, like degreasing the floor at shift end can't be any better or worse now. Didn't need health insurance or other benefits though, and my paycheck went to clothes, booze, and computer/electronic crap. Stuff my Mom wouldn't buy. I wasn't stressing about how much my paycheck was.

  A line cook in 1985 made about $4.50/hr

Not in fast food. Starting wage was usually minimum wage unless market conditions dictated otherwise.

I always loved it in American Beauty when he quits his soul sucking corporate job to go work fast food for the spiritual fulfillment it gives him.

Ahhhh pre-recession optimism.

One of my top 5 five favorite movies...during Lester's interview at the burger joint...

Lester: "Well, I'm sure there have been amazing technological advances in the industry, but surely you must have some sort of training program. It seems unfair to presume I won't be able to learn."

> Fast food is the absolute worst job a person can possibly have in the United States

Having also worked in fast food, I disagree. Manual labor was a whole lot worse on my body and paid basically the same.

Of all of the lousy jobs I’ve had, fast food wasn’t nearly the worst. And If I were forced go back and work any of them tomorrow, I’d still be a happy and healthy person.

Well, I would put a job cleaning out a chicken coop right up there.

High possibility of injury??? as opposed to a Miner Fisherman, Construction Worker Realy?

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