I was a 20-something dethroned dotcom ceo that went to work at mcdonald's (2000) | Hacker News Reader

I was a 20-something dethroned dotcom ceo that went to work at mcdonald's (2000)

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293 pointskamphey195 comments

He went on to found meetup.com (see his bio at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Heiferman).

I met Heifermann once during a project and I thought he was a grounded person. I remember one thing he did was paying not for ad slots, but to change your background to a dalmation spotted print for a promotion, with a link. This was long before CSS, etc.

He made his money just when the idea of value being divorced from real product to virtual metrics, “chasing eyeballs,” etc. was getting hot. The days when you sold a huge contract by showing a CD ROM of the website you were never going to achieve, to a client who had no idea what they were buying.

This guy was much more honest than the norm. The McD and meetup stuff reflects the fact that he kept people in the equation.

"10/[20]00-10/[20]00: counterperson, mcdonald's" Does that mean he worked there for one month or less?

I checked his Linkedin, the job isn't listed. Jan 2002 he started a new photo startup ("50M+ members posted a billion photos"), then co-founder&CEO of meetup.

It's a good time capsule of what his thinking was in 2000 but I wonder if it was more than a break. At my office job I, too, often think I should drive an Uber or deliver food for a month as a break.

Is working the counter at McDs something you add to a LinkedIn profile? Do people moving from the counter at McDs to BurgerKing use LinkedIn?

Exactly. I have dozens of jobs I don’t list on LinkedIn. I wouldn’t list McDs either. Your LinkedIn is your resume. Something tailored towards the career you choose. These off jobs and hustles don’t belong in my opinion. Leave that for the story telling part of the interview when they ask.

He was founder of Meetup, acquired by WeWork for $200m in 2017, my guess is for cash. They only raised $18m so that should be a good exit for founders. I don't think he is using his LinkedIn profile to find a new job. I would expect him to use his LinkedIn as more of a bio, and include the McD's experience.

Why not? Its a nice PR story about early life struggles.

He wasn’t struggling. He had sold his former company properly. He was just more or less taking a break by working at McDonalds.

Some people said it was a bit disrespectful at the time because he didn’t need neither the money nor the experience and was only doing it for the kick of it. I tend to agree.

Such a classist comment

Guy who makes $200,000 a year is aghast that some people actually work at McDonald's

In our little IT bubble where 3+ interviews are the norm, it's fine to envy the straightforward hiring in food-service.

Ofc we still got the better deal overall and should only complain in hush tones

I'm haven't worked at McDonalds for 20+ years, but I think that the top manager at each store is making $200k, and the top 4 are over $150k - it goes down fast below that though. I'm reasonable sure that if I had stayed at McDonalds I'd have never had a year where I made less than I made in tech. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to be out, but they pay those they care about well enough, and there were some good things I miss.

>I think that the top manager at each store is making $200k, and the top 4 are over $150k

Curious what this range is based on? According to ~3.8k self-reported salaries from Glassdoor, the McD manager salary ranges from $37k-$64k with a median of $48k.

I don’t like to speculate but I could imagine managers at some franchises receiving a bonus based on profits or sales.

The top manager. The shift managers make about that, but the top managers who mostly do paperwork and are rarely seen on the floor do better.

Does each store have multiple managers like that or is this equivalent to someone who manages a region of stores? I've worked fast-food in the past as a run-of-the-mill front line worker and wasn't aware of such a position (although that doesn't mean it doesn't exist). Particularly for the franchisees who own a single store, I'm not sure that is economically viable.

The franchise that owns a single store that is a bit less than what the owner will make (doing a lot of work in the store). Where the company owns the store that is what the top manager makes (from what I can tell the company makes about the same from a franchise or an owned store). Where the franchise owns multiple stores their income depends mostly on how much of the store work they do - but it isn't really possible to manager more than one so they have managers doing that work for them. Though it is possible they are underpaying the top managers and those top managers don't realize they could go elsewhere for more money (business often ignores fast food experience - which is normally correct but the top managers shouldn't be ignored because their experience is similar to other middle managers - less power point but otherwise similar enough)

>Where the company owns the store that is what the top manager makes

This seems to be the minority of instances, though. For example, I looked up McDonalds numbers in 2021 and only about 5% are company owned, with the rest being franchises. I think the original claim could have been worded a bit more clearly by stating those high salaries are for managers of the small percentage of company-owned stores and not necessarily generalizable to most fast food restaurants.

Pretty sure my manager at Starbucks made $50k at most. Up from there probably higher but not at the store level

Is that a word now?

It dates back hundreds of years.

You might of heard of people like Marx and Engles and the concept predates them.

Yeah Marx definitely came to mind. Kidding aside, there’s a time and a place for the word, but it seemed a bit wacky to respond with just “such a classist comment” and leaving it at that.

The food service industry doesn’t look through LinkedIn profiles to find recruits for those jobs. The parent comment phrased a legitimate question and it was met with a sarcastic remark that wasn’t insightful or well-placed.

But it was par for the course from people that jump on any opportunity to use that word. There’s no future in taking those people seriously and you shouldn’t give them a platform.

He worked there for a few weeks:

https://www.businessinsider.com/scott-heiferman-startup-care...

Well that explains why he felt nobody appreciated his efforts. The first few weeks at a job like that you are pretty much just in the way. It takes some time to learn the routines and operate the equipment so you can work quickly without thinking.

Agree that’s kind of *^%% move, I’d have too much self respect to start working somewhere for a few weeks than bail.

Doesn’t matter if it’s a food service job or a FAANG. McDonalds was doing him a solid by offering some kind of employment for a person presumably down on their luck with zero experience. Hiring people is a huge expense and risk even for a small franchise.

I dunno. Sounds like you've never bitten off more than you can chew. I have found myself in a situation before, where my continued participation would be an immediate low-grade harm and my rate of improvement was slow because I had volunteered for something well out of my wheelhouse. So I had a dilemma: give up and disappoint today, forcing my replacement; or carry on in my incompetence and risk the whole endeavor.

Quitting early did bruise my self-respect: people were depending on me! But hanging on, just to protect my feelings, would have been a much greater regret.

Are you implying that working at a McDonalds counter was more than the future founder of meetup.com could chew?

I believe I can revolutionise multiple fields. I cannot cut it working at a fast food restaurant. Ability is not one-dimensional.

I will state outright that the founder of meetup.com did not have what it takes to work the counter at McDonald's. It takes the ability to shovel shit with a smile, for less pay than it takes to afford a shithole studio apartment, and zero intangible reward. For a CEO to actually take that job, and succeed in it, would be quite the stunner.

McDonalds can fire you for any reason in my state. At any time.

When you're renting yourself to authoritarian institutions like corporations, there is no "self respect" required for you to always take the best deal for yourself whenever possible.

> McDonalds can fire you for any reason in my state. At any time.

Yeah but if you show up for your scheduled shifts and are on time, sober, don't steal, and are moderately competent, they won't.

The crossover between people with those qualities and the people who find themselves in a position where McDonald's is a good deal is quite small. Often times these people have been failed by society on a number of fronts and have a very different perspective on the arrangement. This isn't to absolve people of personal responsibility, but we are much more of a product of our environment than most of us realize.

Those are the minimum expectations for any job. If you can't do those things you will forever be dependent on others to take care of you unless you were born into very fortunate circumstances.

I would say stealing is the only of those that would exclude you from any job. Lots of stuff requires intermittent random periods of competence on your own schedule. For instance you could buy a dilapidated house and drunkenly fix it during moments of clarity and make a fat profit. Or fix and flip cars. Really anything involving independently flipping stuff.

That may be a career, but it's not a job.

Very few jobs are happy for you to show up whenever, in whatever state you want, with intermittent or stably low competence.

> If you can't do those things you will forever be dependent on others to take care of you

Well that is kind of my point. Society, including you and me, has failed these people on so many levels that they lack the most basic ability to function within said society.

We can ostracize these people, or we can sympathize with them, take care of them and dismantle this classist service-based economy in favor of one that is more humanistic and kind and provides for as many people as possible.

Of course, that isn't going to happen because people need their big macs and coffees.

And you aren't mouthy with other workers, managers or the customers.

The have sacked hundreds in recent months, people with decades of experience and a good record.

Not front of house people though, the cynic in me says that laying off hundreds of minimum wage earners wouldn’t really alter the bottom line.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/07/mcdonalds-lays-off-hundreds-cu...

>Yeah but if you show up for your scheduled shifts and are on time, sober, don't steal, and are moderately competent, they won't

If labor history in any place where firing is at will should have taught anyone anything, it's that many, many companies, for all kinds of stupid, greedy or sometimes necessary internal reasons do indeed often fire employees in droves despite their rigorously showing up for their scheduled shifts, sober, honest, and competent...

What cloud landscape do you live in?

> in any state

FTFY

Even just in the US that's not the case in Montana AIUI.

high turnover is common. he was not doing anyone a disservice.

>> I’d have too much self respect to start working somewhere for a few weeks than bail.

You also have to remember the time. The first real dot com crash and recession that quickly followed.

I went through that crash. I remember several days where FLOORS of companies in the building I was working would be let go and companies were shuttering by the dozens every day. For about three months the bar across from our building would have a dozen people sitting around a couple tables, drinking beer around noon, talking about how they almost made it and you knew another company had laid off its entire staff. You knew one day you would most certainly join them. And I finally did.

And then you realize your dreams of changing the world are gone and you need to find a job because you still have to pay rent, pay your heat bill and put gas in your car, so you just took anything as aside to keep you going. I went to work at a Pizza Delivery place for almost a year while the economy recovered and companies started to need people again.

For him, he had a much faster turn around. But at the time, when no companies are hiring, you're just looking for something that will keep you busy and bring in some money until your next move. I'm guessing he didn't really care because so many of us tech cast offs were working at fast food places after the crash. He probably felt like he would be replaced within hours of quitting, which is probably pretty accurate.

McDonalds never does anyone a solid. As long as it's legal, you don't owe McDonalds a thing.

It's the flip side of McDonalds not owing you anything under capitalism.

I used to work in software sales in a call center. I hated my job and the highlight of my week was the Monday burrito special down the street at a place where the employees shouted "Welcome to Moe's!" whenever customers entered. When thinks ultimately fell apart at that job, I went to Moe's and somehow managed to get a job despite a lack of food service experience. I lasted a while—months, I think—but eventually got fired.

I don't know that there's a moral to that, but I guess I tend to look at the urge to bail and go to unskilled (or really, differently-skilled) labor less as a virtuous thing and more a sign that some in-place re-evaluation is needed with mental health in mind.

I still occasionally say "I should become a farmer" but take it more as a sign that there's something I probably need to address within my current situation and/or I need to get back on the wagon of going on morning walks.

Maybe you needed to work with your hands for a while.

> somehow managed to get a job despite a lack of food service experience. I lasted a while—months, I think—but eventually got fired.

Bit of a tangent; I switch between knowledge work and labor a bit, and the biggest mistake I see people make is not altering their caloric intake or sleep schedule.

Could you elaborate on that? Altering caloric intake and sleep schedule as a reaction to what? And how would you change between the two regimes? Increase/decrease how much? etc.

Not GP, but being on your feet all day will lead to needing more calories and sleep for proper recovery.

I can't speak to sleep, but you are wrong about the calories.

Kurzgesagt has a really interesting video on it: https://youtu.be/lPrjP4A_X4s

The caloric part quite blew my mind. I know its not the most scientific source but digging deeper in it it does seem to match up.

Herman Pontzer, an anthropology professor, talks quite a bit about a study he did on the calorie needs of people who are highly active on this podcast: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/examining-energy-evoluti...

Spoiler alert: you burn basically the same number of calories per day sitting on your butt as you do being quite physically active.

> Herman Pontzer, an anthropology professor

> you burn basically the same number of calories per day sitting on your butt as you do being quite physically active

Can you provide more evidence for this, because it sounds entirely bogus. Perhaps you mean one's base metabolic rate? If you are physically active, you will consume more calories than sitting all day - because, you know, you are exerting yourself.

Also, an anthropology professor is not a credible source on diet, exercise, fitness and health.

https://www.science.org/content/article/scientist-busts-myth...

Your citation is to another piece by the same guy?

HN is not the place to discuss diet, exercise, fitness, or health. Every thread is the same: the human body ackchuwally runs on magic. Diet is really, really complicated. In fact, nobody burns calories at all. The body just does it's own thing. Watch this Youtube video about it. They quote an anthropologist.

No, that's wrong.

Somebody else burns the same number of calories being active as you do sitting.

The article does not compare the the same individuals performing sitting vs. being active.

It says that members of hunter-gatherer tribes such as the Hadza on average consume as much energy per day as US-Americans sitting on their butt at home. It says the Hadza's bodies have adapted to perform a more exhausting task with less energy expenditure than US-Americans need.

But the same person (being a Hazda or US-American) will still need more energy being active than being inactive.

(Source: Read from "here's what we know so far" in the article.)

This is similar to finding that from N calories, an obese person may only run 1km while a professional marathon runner will run 5km.

Edit:

The Kurzgesagt video refers to the same Hazda people, and states that if you start working out after being sedentary for a while, you burn a lot more calories, until your body eventually adapts: https://youtu.be/lPrjP4A_X4s?feature=shared&t=212

You can call us just "Americans". The US is unnecessary, thank you.

The tone of this comment makes me question if it was made in good-faith. But I will add my perspective. I see this debate all the time, I've seen it since I was young, and not just on the internet.

It stems from a language difference, in Latin American Spanish, words like america and its relatives like americano, latinoamericano, panamericano, etc is inclusive of North and South America.

In English, globally, America refers to the USA. It is context dependent, but to describe the continents you would normally say "the Americas."

This distinction naturally annoys native Latin American Spanish speakers, especially because it is compounded by historical, geopolitical, and economic dynamics.

If someone chooses to be over-explicit in English, it's better to let it pass. Correcting the language can come off as dickish, especially when you consider the historical context. Additionally, the person on the other end is sometimes making this mistake on purpose, trolling for a pointless argument.

If it were up to me, I would add this topic to the list of things HN mods should ban.

Cannot hear "US-Americans" without remembering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww

> It says the Hadza's bodies have adapted to perform a more exhausting task with less energy expenditure than US-Americans need.

You're not wrong, but I'd see it as the Americans who've adapted to more recent situations. Not walking ten miles a day is a relatively new phenomenon.

> you burn basically the same number of calories per day sitting on your butt as you do being quite physically active.

I think I’m missing your point. How do you explain weight loss from exercising?

People tend to lose weight from dieting, not exercise. Unless you're training for a marathon or something, even vigorous exercise tends to burn so few calories that an hour at the gym can be erased with a single trip to McDonald's.

Probably accurate. The amount of exercise needed for effect is less than a hour per day (less than 30 minutes if intensive) but this is a not done by most.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5556592/

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/exercise.htm

What kind of reference is a "Kurzgesagt" video please? Not only has the this channel been in more controversies than needed, they seem to also spread missinformation

As I understood, kurzgesagt is produced by scientific consensus from a large number of scientists.

As a big fan, I'd be interested in hearing more about the controversy and misinformation.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=uCuy1DaQzWI

Someone already linked the actual research in this post thread a few hours before you responded, which you willfully ignored just to.. try to score some cheap contrarian points?

I'm not going to engage with that, go troll somewhere else. Bye :)

This is one in a long list of reasons why I continue to view calories as a useless measure. I don't really give a damn about how much water I can heat up by burning my food, that's not how my digestion system works. It was a reasonable enough analog when we had a very rudimentary understanding both of what's really in food and how digestion and the metabolic process works, but its horribly outdated today.

I can say having recently gone from coding at a desk 8 hours a day to working full-time on a farm with no heavy equipment, your food intake absolutely should increase. As long as I'm staying busy I can eat basically whatever I want and not feel sick or gain weight. That's not to imply that I don't still need to eat the right kinds of food as well, but volume and calorie count has no noticeable effect on me like it did when I had a sedentary job.

> I can say having recently gone from coding at a desk 8 hours a day to working full-time on a farm with no heavy equipment, your food intake absolutely should increase.

Yeah I think people are missing the transition phase of this equation.

I can help fill in the blanks at least on my own anecdotal experience. What are the missing gaps you're interested in?

Oof, never become a farmer. Farming is generally something you (reluctantly?) inherit along with the farm. It's insanely expensive to buy your way in. Even if you inherit the land, the cost of buying and upkeep of machinery is extremely expensive. Everything you invest after that point (in livestock, seed, fuel, time) is a risk. Bad luck or bad weather can ruin a crop. The hours are long. The stress is monumental - suddenly you really care about the weather. And unlike some small tech startups you absolutely have to employ people, but the people who end up working as farm labourers "fall" into it because they can't do anything else (kinda like the building trade). Not that you'll be complaining when you have to pay their wages. No you'll complain when the umpteenth stupid costly mistake is made.

Unless you're thinking about larping as a farm labourer, runaway.

I think when tech people think of becoming a farmer they're thinking of doing something small like this https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-series/gourmet-farmer and maybe something like Clarkson's Farm (Series on Amazon Prime) rather than going to build and manage a modern industrial farm.

In some ways this idea of becoming a farmer can be thought of as rich people cosplaying at being a farmer rather than actually running a for-profit farm. For some this might work out and be an actual career that they are good at, but for others it might just be a hobby.

Though both the TV shows I mentioned show how much hard work there is in actually running a farm and producing food.

Hence the term "hobby farm". It is a retirement dream: buy some land, hire some locals to do the lifting, and spend a few months each year pretending to be a farmer ... but one not fettered by financial concerns. Such people toy with various farm-related schemes but invariably settle in to a low-work pace with a few farm animals as pets, a back acre strewn with the various implements they bought and discarded after a season or two. Clarkson seems pretty open about this. I'm not sure whether he means to be entertaining, to show the absurdity of the process, or whether he actually enjoys it.

> Clarkson seems pretty open about this. I'm not sure whether he means to be entertaining, to show the absurdity of the process

He has made a career out of his behaviour. He seems to have mellowed now, and hasn’t punched anyone in the face lately.

His views on climate change, race, homosexuality and probably anything else you can name were aimed at being funny or offensive, depending on your perspective.

Worth noting that Clarkson's farm would have been a catastrophic failure but for the money pumped into it by the TV show.

I think it's made clear in the show that just running the farm by itself would not be profitable, and if lucky would break even. Other farmers in the area are in far worse situations financially as they do not have a TV show as a sponsor.

Granted he did go and try things which seemed nice but were ultimately unprofitable - big tractor, sheep farming, etc.

Yeah, it's a good show. I just mean that regarding the original point (tech workers fantasising about farms are deluding themselves) the counter "they are thinking of something like Clarkson's farm" still conforms with them deluding themselves.

Farming is a pretty big thing though, if you want to get into that it might be better off buying property and slowly turning it into a smallholding. Or work at a farm as a farmhand.

Anyway, not parent commenter specifically, but if you're in a situation where you have loads of money but don't know what to do with yourself, volunteer work is always an option, and there's loads of things you could do, be it formal volunteer work (e.g. homeless shelters, retirement homes) or informal (set up IT classes at your local library, go around your neighbourhood and pick up trash, pick up a conversation with a random lonely stranger)

This happened to me, and I actually did it. I burned out of an IT job and joined an intentional community where I worked with people with disabilities on a farm. There was also a vegetable garden and a craft shop. I lived there for two years. It was an Americorps position, and I made $150 a month (although housing and food from the organic farm were all free). Probably the most formative two years of my life, although afterward it was definitely hard to explain to employers why I decided to take an Americorps position in my 30s. I never went back to work in IT, although I still read about programming/the IT world almost every day.

Customer service jobs are great because you feel useful and you never wake up stressed wondering if you will be able to do your work well that day.

I did 5 years at Trader Joe’s, would easily do it for 30 if they paid 150k lol.

My farmer near-equivalent is, "I hear janitorial work can be rewarding." No, I do enjoy software work, but sometimes I do just want to turn my mind off or not deal with all the politics

We, the internet people, should all work a regular job for 2-4 weeks year. I think far too often that I'd like to experience being a truck driver before I die.

Why there are no companies that arrange this? We need a Kidzania for adult nerds.

Therein lies the problem, as you'd expect a company to arrange for this, via just go ahead and .. do it?

But I guess as a society we are constantly inventing higher level of first world problems that's probably the result of echo chambers that has stratified the society.

I think unions and certification would largely prevent the "just do it" idea. For better or worse, it seems more difficult for a programmer to become an electrician than for an electrician to become a programmer. So yeah, if you want to LARP at some kind of trade, then you're likely going to need some kind of fixer to let you do that after you (and the people you want to inflict all the substandard work on!) sign all the appropriate waivers.

Now if you just want to swing a sledgehammer on demolition day for what is usually a construction crew, ask a friend, because it is great exercise and relieves stress and has a relatively low barrier to entry. But on the other hand while you're saving the membership fee of your crossfit, you're also taking work from someone who's unlikely to be able to switch careers on short notice, so perhaps this is not the best way to unstratify society.

>you'd expect a company to arrange for this, via just go ahead and .. do it?

Given how the hiring process works (or if I may be frank: has devolved into a soft lottery system), and expectations for most part or full-time employment in terms of scheduling and work terms: yes. Maybe you can get away with finding a seasonal job to do this with, but that only solves half the equation.

many US jobs can barely get medical leave without scrutiny, there's no way this "adult internship" would get approved without some major handshakes. Or as you put it: for people who's so comfortable or confident in life that they can bounce around jobs like this for leisure rather than survival.

>that's probably the result of echo chambers that has stratified the society.

I'd say this is less echo chambers and more how corporate America has evolved. This may have been possible (but still infeasible) in the 60's where you can walk in with a nice suit, give a firm handshake, and be on the holiday shift in a week with relatively minimum contracts or background checks or negotiations (with a single wage that can support a nuclear family to boot!). There's just a lot of bureaucracy even to get entry level stuff these days.

I worked in bars and restaurants on the weekend when I held a full-time job during the week, so it's possible. The variety also keeps you from burning out.

If you aren't to hard-up for money, there's always volunteer work to scratch your "regular job" itch.

>Why there are no companies that arrange this?

That's a weird expectation. But I think, for starters, that the reason you don't see it often is that when it comes to jobs working with your hands, you'll find that incredibly costly accidents by employees overwhelmingly occur within the first few months. I've seen it while a technician at Verizon and also for the local transportation agency. A new hire is an investment where you take on massive risk to start with, and you recoup costs incurred after the first few months when the risk dramatically falls.

If you ever feel like you want to beat your body up a little, it is very easy to find seasonal work at UPS (or I guess amazon) during the holiday season.

I worked for UPS unloading trucks one holiday season. We would work 8 hours straight, and the only way to really eat was to have granola bars or something in your packets to snack on as you go. UPS hires ex-military personnel to lead the trucks, so you are yelled at if you slow down.

In the beginning it was grueling, but after about a month or so my body was used to it, and I was volunteering for overtime and worked up to 12 hours a day.

It messed with my back though. I would say it took me three years before my back felt normal again. For this reason alone, I wouldn't actually recommend it unless you are in your twenties.

> It messed with my back though

I’m an MR tech. We see a lot of truck drivers and builders. Bad backs do seem prevalent in those professions.

Being overweight seems even more likely to cause trouble.

Basing views off the people I see rather than actual stats is bound to be problematic. Eg does every rugby player have a bad neck? Does every soccer/football, netball and league player have a torn ACL? Every golfer has a bad elbow?

We don’t scan the healthy truck drivers.

If his timeline and application are true, he was technically still the chairman of his company while working at McDonald's, if in name only.

> 10/99-10/01: chairman, i-traffic (an agency.com company)

> 10/00-10/00: counterperson, mcdonald's (4th & broadway, nyc)

I sometimes think about going back to work at food service jobs after I retire, just to keep busy. I enjoyed those jobs as a high school and college student, and I wonder if I still would, or if I might be too spoiled now. And if my back was tired at the end of a shift when I was 21, I guess now I might just die.

I dream about working at Toys R Us again, at least a few times a month, 20+ years on. I can no longer put the cheapest metal swing set on my shoulder and carry it out to a customer's too-small car.

But damn it was fun.

Somehow the retail arm of the chain still exists in Canada. 80 stores remain.

Note to self: invite US visitors with kids to toys R us.

I'm around the service industry daily/nightly, used to bartend, lots of my friends still bartend. Apart from the social aspect of actually enjoying working with your coworkers, cool regulars, general night life fun, etc, the world has collectively lost it's mind since 2020 and there is not a chance I would ever do industry again.

The amount of drama, fights, and just people in general being rude assholes since 2020 is astronomically higher than it was when I bartended around 2005-2010 and way higher post 2020.

I used to bartend on dirty 6th in austin a decade ago and I won't even walk down that street today. Society has lost its mind.

I live in a busy bar neighborhood here in denver and we just had a door guy get shot and killed 2-3 weeks ago, literally on my street at a restaurant I go to every few weeks 4 blocks away in broad daylight on a Sunday. A 14-15 year old (iirc) running around on a scooter harassing people shot him in a scuffle.

I still live in denver but in the very outer burbs. I moved from market st about a year ago and it is so much better out here. Denver needs to gets its downtown under control. I used to love nightlife and going out to bars but after 2023 when places were all open again I never went out again as it didn’t feel safe after 9pm.

Really hoping they turn it around.

This isn't a $XCityBad thing. It's happened to drunk crowds everywhere and is completely irrelevant to location or whether you're even downtown. I guarantee the two step bars in the burbs are filled with drunk drama too nowadays. I was in Austin, Tampa, Dallas, Houston and Denver over the last decade and go to a few of them yearly. Denver is far away the safest out of those and I'm glad to be here. I live in 5 points, which I'm sure you think is a big scary place.

I will happily trade seeing a person living in a tent and being able to go out and do an incredible amount of various things literally every single day without driving to living in the suburbs, but glad you like it. Cities are scary.

Can't walk home after 9pm.. lmao.

I'm more afraid of sitting at the airport nowadays than walking around downtown. That's where the real psychos are nowadays. Or hotel bars when traveling. Awful, rude impatient people who act like they've never left the house before. 2020 really did a number on peoples aggression/patience levels and industry people are taking the brunt of it.

Hell, if you look at the /r/boomersbeingfools subreddit it's all of the people living in the burbs being harassed by old angry grandparents constantly. I rarely see that crowd out here.

I live in one of the cities you mentioned. I think part of the problem is that many of the “fun” areas have become expensive and bring a different crowd, or people feel entitled to a certain experience because of the prices they’re paying.

The bars that still have $2-3 drinks (yes, these exist!) still have a wonderful, self-policing crowd. I also used to bartend in the same time range as you, at the equivalent of a 6th street bar.

The people who aren't from my neighborhood are absolutely the problem. Half of my neighbors are industry or just cool young people who go out all the time. I live in a gritty neighborhood that used to be the "Harlem of the West", not sure which city you're in but it'd be like Ybor (tampa), Deep Ellum (Dallas), I guess east6th austin but graffitti/hiphop not honkytonk vibes. Austin doesn't have a blues/jazz/hiphop neighborhood really and its unfortunate White Elephant or whatever is all they've got. Like you said, we get a lot of suburban tourists, groups of people who come in for their friday/sat night to the "cool" part of town and don't know how to handle their liquor or nowadays are just looking for drama, hate being asked for their drivers license (a law here to check for expireds) get in arguments with their partners, other people, try to fight the door guys.

Post 2020 is wild, I all but guarantee my local dive next door deals with a fight almost every fri-saturday. They definitely have to kick someone out every fri/sat at a minimum. Never used to be that bad. I can't explain how many people have tried to start something with me since 2021 (once bars opened) just going out and seeing shows and dancing and what not. If I go out to the busier areas after midnight it's almost a definite thing some dude(s) will go alpha bro mode over nothing or just stare people down. Last saturday a group a randoms at a table was enunciating loudly hoping I'd hear it that I don't belong at my own home bar. That I looked stupid and had stupid tattoos. Dudes had probably never walked into it before and were definitely not from my neighborhood. I just ignored them because who cares. Weird stuff like that. People are just weird now. I've seen so many people 86d.

We had a dollar beer night up till at least 2016-2018 in Austin off Guad at The Local but it looks like that closed down. I can't imagine dollar beers today. The $1 Coors Banquets they sold sell for I think $6.50ish here today. I'm paying $6-8 for single well (Concierge) vodka talls nowadays..

> the world has collectively lost it's mind since 2020

Covid causes brain damage. The common symptom of "loss of smell" was found to actually be due to covid infection of the neurons in brain & cranial nerves. Obviously "brain fog" (or memory issues, fatigue, lack of focus, however people articulated it) is due to damage to brain.

I wonder how society moves forward. We didn't get the movie-horror-story virus that turns people into zombies, but we did get a virus that leaves many people with diminished emotional regulation, attention span and ability to reason.

> I wonder how society moves forward.

I'm nervous about this generation of kids who had to grow up locked in a house.

The Kids Aren’t Alright.

Covid did none of that. Our idiotic, hysterical reaction to a respiratory virus caused 99% of the fallout. Hysterically blaming the dreaded Covid is part of why things are so fucked. Every single Covid mitigation was exactly the opposite of what a rational society would have done.

Good lord. It amazes me that people still buy into the hysterical Covid narrative painted by a bunch of media appointed, politically motivated “experts”.

You were lied to and manipulated for others gain. It takes an extreme amount of privilege and a very sheltered world view to keep buying into the 2020 covid narrative. Snap out of it.

Have you ever given any serious consideration to the possibility that the podcasters and youtubers you've been listening to are in fact lying and manipulating their listeners for profit?

When I get invested in a certain belief, I find it useful to ask myself "What would it take for me to change my mind?". It's a helpful tool to catch situations where I've been discounting or ignoring evidence that goes against my belief. If you ask yourself that, and the answer is that nothing would change your mind, then you're not making evidence-based decisions, you're making decisions based on faith or (potentially mis-placed) trust in a person, group or identity.

Are you arguing that the publicly available, state sponsored data is a lie? Or just that all the “experts” we were told to listen chose ti ignore that data. Because I’m not following podcasts or fox or whatever trope covidians tell themselves people like me follow. I looked at the data and science. And it looks absolutely nothing like what the idiotic “expert class” told you.

I think its just a huge burden that certain states are putting on people along with dramatically increased cost of living due to insane govt spending. People are really hurting right now and tempers are short.

- Housing has gone up 50-60% in the past 3 years.

- Groceries have also gone up 30-40% along with restaurant prices.

- Despite the job market for professionals being the worst its been since 2008 you have the media gaslighting everyone talking about a "vibecession" and saying the economy is the strongest its ever been.

- Crime and lawlessness has been out of control, we are approaching 90's levels of crime in a few short years.

- Interest rates are the highest they have been in 30+ years, all loans etc are now very expensive(see housing costs as house prices have shot up).

- Arsonists running wild in California/Oregon/Washington causing record wildfires and releasing tons of CO2 into the air.

- Homelessness hit record high (up 12% from 2022 to 2023)

- All these things are causing a huge drop in quality of life and pushing people to the brink. So many people in my circle of friends - engineers, scientists and mgmt that are out of work I have never seen anything like this.

The economy *is* running great. It's just that trickle down doesn't work and that means all the gains from the economic upturn go to the top 0.1% and that's why regular people feel like the economy is failing. Because it's failing them.

I feel the same way, but rather about being a receptionist. Which is an option if you are concerned about manual labor.

I did this between jobs (and slightly overlapping) for a while, about 6 months. It didn't pay the bills and I got a seemingly permanent repetitive stress injury from working in the kitchen, but it was fun and an excellent change of pace. My god I was never confused about how to do a task and when I left work I was just done, there was no todo list hanging over my head.

Reminds me of a summer job I had once, sitting at a machine assembling the plastic part of toilet blocks. I sat at one end where my job was to place a foam slice rough-side up onto the plastic bit appearing in front of me. Pssht. Pad. Psssht. Pad. Psssht. Pad. 8 hours a day, break every two hours where I'd spent some of that money on a snack, CD player with pirated music doing its thing.

I mean I only spent two weeks or so doing that if I recall correctly, the rest of my time there was supplying the eight or so machines (times five people per machine) with parts and taking the finished boxes away, but still.

> he was technically still the chairman of his company while working at McDonald's, if in name only.

He discusses this in the blog post:

> in my interview, the manager (ralph) asked if i can handle a fast-paced, intense environment. i said yes. he looked at my resume and asked about my current part-time job as chairman at i-traffic. i said, "it's an internet thing." he said "ok" and then asked me for my waist size.

Did he really use lowercase? The status-seeking, high status lowercase mixed with the "outside looking in" account of working class people written for the benefit of other rich high status people, Jesus.

His whole site uses lower case. Seems like a stylistic choice. Check it ou

Yeah. My first real job was at a restaurant and there was something totally zen about the work. It wasn't exactly turn off your brain but I would just be too busy to think for hours on end. Plus the people I worked with were all over the map but they were all a hell of a lot of fun to be with. You'd work a long shift and then hang out in the parking lot after drinking beer or go out to a party.

Ah... it's sad to say but I probably just miss being 20.

The key is "Enjoy". There is no substitute to meet people, smiling, happy, no politics, no desire to grow or get a raise. Plus fixed hours and you are not responding to slack/emails/oncalls after that. This is not stress, this is fun as long as you do not have to pay large bills.

Yes, it also gives you ideas for new businesses.

From what I've seen, it's not the same. I worked at McDonalds in high school and college. It was fun for the most part. But most of the employees were like me. Young, not really adults yet, pretty carefree.

The people I see at McDonalds today are not the same at all. Mostly older, disinterested, no energy, no spark, marginal care for personal appearance. You rarely see a high schooler or young person working there. It's just depressing to even be in there watching them.

If McDonalds is to exist, it would make sense it would be a young person's job. To think that there are large swathes of the population who can do no better in prospects is depressing indeed.

my 6 month stint at mcdonalds was pretty amazing as a sophomore in high school. it was 2 no nonsense managers and a few chill managers that corraled a bunch of teenagers and young adults that liked to get high and have fun. which we did with reckless disregard and it was AWESOME! some crazy shit went down after close in the ball pit over there lol. i got fired by my friend because me and a coworker came in after a smoking sesh in the woods to get some free food and i was supposed to be working that evening. i brushed it off and asked for some free food which we got. it was a great first job and i made several connections with people that im still friends with to this day. also, i ate so much free mcdonalds in that 6 months that i have only had it a handful of times in over 20 years since.

That's interesting. I wonder if it's related to the corporation. My local McDonald's hires people who seem to be mostly in their early 20's. OTOH, the Dairy Queen that's just a few minutes down the road seems to rarely have anyone older than 19 or so working there. Average age at DQ seems to be around 16.

McDonalds probably has more hours to cover per week, all hours of the day and more year round need.

A DQ may be open early and year round too, but really needs people in summer evenings and weekends when high schoolers are most available.

It's a franchise; so how each restaurant and region hires will vary.

In 2004 I drove between MA and Chicago, and found a very stark difference in every one. In Chicago McDonalds was hiring people who were coming out of poverty and helping build work experience. In PA, the McDonalds were well oiled machines and run with pride.

In MA the McDonalds have always been first jobs for immigrants / refugees.

Yes I'm mostly going on local observations. Sometimes on a road trip I'll still run across a McDonald's that's well run, clean, and the employess act like they care at least a little bit. But it's much more rare at least in my experience.

There was a movie subplot that featured something like this as part of the main character's midlife crisis. Something with Kevin Spacey. American Beauty?

People who retire from professional jobs often do pick up part time work that would be classified as "menial" because they want to keep engaged and/or make a little extra money. I've had older Lyft drivers who retired from professional backgrounds including one guy who was a comptroller for an engineering firm in Boston. The WSJ sometimes profiles retirees who fall into this bucket as well. IIRC there was a former CEO who couldn't stand being at home and decided to work at the local airport information counter, maybe even as a volunteer.

>American Beauty?

Correct

Food service needs a lot of people to work the 2 hour lunch shift from 11-1 and then go home. You get out of the house, get to talk to real people. Doctors have noticed that people who sit around doing nothing tend to die earlier than those who stay busy, and people who talk to others also do better, so that 2 hour shift could add years to your lifespan. That you get some extra spending cash is a nice bonus, but not why you do it. (at 16 you do it because they are about all that will hire you and you need then money)

His most recent LinkedIn role: Fulfillment Center Associate I, Part Time, Amazon.

This guy is a legend!

I've done that as a break, once. It was fun to sling boxes around for a month on outbound dock. Tune out, grab a box, scan a box, tote the box, scan the bin barcode, repeat.

Making bucks, getting exercise, working inside. The discount was nice, and I still use the comfy composite toe shoes when I need to do some heavy work.

Confirmed: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheif/

From May 2022 - Jan 2023 · 9 mos

There seems to be a certain irony that working at a fulfilment centre sounds like one of the least fulfilling jobs you could do.

> Nobody thanked me.

Do you think this is still true?

This resonates with me. I used to work in tech, but I recently joined my family's brick-and-mortar business. No one says thank you, no one appreciates you. I find it amazing that this culture of thanklessness exists even in the US (I'm in India) in non-tech jobs.

P.S. I worked at all fronts of the business before joining the management. Worked at the counter, as a delivery personal, as a sales executive, etc. And when I say "Nobody thanked me" I mean no one at the company appreciated my efforts.

I'm curious what qualifies as "nobody thanked me".

If I told someone "good job" that's not really thanks in my mind. I probably wouldn't say "thank you for making the fries"... but I would say "good job".

And that's being the job, it wouldn't make sense to repeat it, multiple times, multiple days

It's more that no one appreciates the work. Not the customers (which I don't expect), nor the management.

Businesses like these are about showing up everyday - day in and day out. Unlike in tech, you can't be just smart and find "smart solutions". There is no magic. And so people are always in a state of normalcy. And any kind of "smart" execution takes a lot of time to see its results.

As a customer, I always say thanks for whatever someone did for me, and it I always feel like smacking another customer whrn they are on their phone while giving an order to someone at a counter, like the human behind that register was actually just part of the register. Just an npc, or a toaster. The company they work for does see them that way and treats them that way, but we have no excuse for doing the same.

As an employee, or a boss, I don't find it ridiculous to thank or be thanked for random tasks occasionally, especially when they are a little out of order. No one needs to be worshiped for making fries, and it's techically simply within the expected job description for the manager to tell you to go out back and wash the rubber floor mats or something slightly not your usual task, and yet never acknowledging anything ever is also just being an inconsiderate ingrateful assshole.

It's worth it not to be that guy even if only for the purely self-interest reasons of having more and better choice of employees who do a better job on average and give you less grief when you need a favor like to cover someone else's absense or a large job etc.

Asking instead of telling at least sometimes, and saying thanks at least sometimes, has to be genuine too. If it's just bs noises that don't actually mean you are being accomodating and flexible then don't bother. Even though the boss is the boss, and has the right to just didctate, and even if the thing you're asking is really all else being equal a command, the reason for asking is not just as a pacifier so someone feels respected when thy're not, it's to allow for the possibility that there actually is some problem. 99% of the time there should be no problem and thr answer is expected to be "yep got it", by asking, the person is far less stressed on an ongoing constant level feeling that if there ever was some problem, they could just say so.

It turns dictation into cooperation. Can you restock that station later? I have to pick up my kid. Can you do it now if I take you off this other thing? ok. ok. Much better that way.

Thanks for cooking the fries, or even good job on those fries does sound silly, because it is, because it kind of misses the point and isn't what they're talking about.

Oh my god. It would be unbelievable if I had not whitnessed it myself. I wonder what is the kick? Exaggerated self importance. ( Thanks for the spell checking ...)

I think part of what they mean is that some retail managers seem utterly incapable of giving positive feedback in anyway except to sandwich a criticism.

Like yes, it can stave off bad responses from volatile colleagues to sandwich bad feedback with good, but if that's the only place that positive feedback appears, then the listener learns pretty quick to just ignore the positive feedback. Its evidently disingenuous, and its deeply toxic to assume that "because you're working at McDonald's/Walmart/etc, you're not smart enough to pick up on that".

Certainly, "thank you for making the fries" is poor thanks. But "I saw how you hustled to get the fries out during that rush, that made $other_employees jobs a lot easier. Thank you for that" is good. Too often, retail employees just get the "thanks" and not the "here's why I appreciate it".

It depends on where and when you work.

When I was a teenager in the 90s I worked cashier at McDonald's in an inner city black neighborhood. On Sunday mornings we got a big crowd of people coming to/from church, and I'd say the majority of them were very kind and courteous - I even got a tip a few times. I also worked Saturday afternoon/evenings and it was a different story.

> Nobody thanked me.

I don't buy this for a second. I thank everyone for even the most trivial of interactions and I'm certainly not alone (in the US)

Buy a Coke at 7-11 - "thank you!" Take package from UPS guy - "thank you!" Waiter takes order - "thank you!" Support rep puts me on hold to look up issue - "thank you!" Pretty much every retail/store interaction - "thank you!"

People like you do exist. And it is a joy to serve you.

When I said "nobody thanked me", I mean the management didn't.

(edited for clarity)

This comes across as quite rude, FYI. You may want to clarify and be more specific.

Thank you. I hope I fixed it.

Thanks for the clarification - see there I go again!

I couldn't figure that one out.

Maybe he was speaking of management, franchise, and McD corporate?

Or maybe it was a quirk of that store in NYC, or our own experiences are otherwise not representative?

Or maybe he was writing more loosely, about a "thankless", poorly appreciated, poorly compensated, purely transactional job.

My partner and I were normally polite when picking up ice cream from a local dairy a few weeks back. "No rush, take your time." Nothing overly fancy from a manners or politeness perspective. Was offered free ice cream for "being the nicest folks we've had in a long time." Didn't take the free ice cream of course, but thanked the folks working.

I suspect overall impoliteness has seen a bit of an uptick, from my casual observation of the sociomacro (especially during airport and air transportation transit and use), and that gratitude is not expressed in casual interactions as perhaps it previously was.

https://hbr.org/2022/11/frontline-work-when-everyone-is-angr... ("Frontline Work When Everyone Is Angry")

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-28930-001 ("Catching rudeness is like catching a cold: The contagion effects of low-intensity negative behaviors.")

I find it so jarring when visiting - not so much thanking (I would say thanks/cheers in those situations in the UK too) but the way it's taken (or so it seems) with such sincerity or like it was a huge thing that really needed to be thanked. 'Thanks.' -- oh you're so welcome!

It's completely arbitrary really, it's just really noticeable and, well, jarring when you're not used to it/used to different. I'm sure it's similar in reverse (I thanked him and he was so grumpy about it, didn't say a word! (Or he just said 'cheers' back, I didn't buy any alcohol?)).

It's anecdotal, but my wife was a Disneyland cast member for ~5 years. She claims that the words 'thank you' were a rare occurrence to hear from guests...

Just wow. Wow.

You may be in the U.S, but are clearly from Canada

I went to Canada for a birthday week. Great time. Interacted with a lot of people. Not a single scourging word. Not a one. Zero. I will never forget that.

What a beautiful thing to say. I'm happy you decided to come up for your birthday, and that you left with such a positive vibe <3

I always say thankyou. Got three raw burgers at a restaurant this summer and just asked for them to be cooked. They gave us new ones, took an hour longer. Still tipped 20% and thanked them sincerely and said not to worry about it. The waiter got choked up. I'm not going to be an ass in front of my kids. I worked manual labour planting trees for ten seasons, know what it's like to struggle.

Never be an *ss in front of anyones kids. I always also say thank you, and to I'll add to p.o.c. "Have a blessed day." I got that from my friend answering machine. Thanks Solomon, I will.

I dug ditches for just one season, and I can still feel it sometimes. The struggle is hard and it real.

>>Never be an *ss in front of anyones kids.

My personal principle always is to be polite with everybody. Like that's default mode of operation. No matter what you do with them. You might not buy from them, you might not hire from them, you might even want to keep distance from them. That should have no nothing to do with how you talk with them.

Separate speaking from doing.

I took it to mean that no manager ever thanked them. Because, like sibling comments, I can’t believe no one like myself and siblings ordered a burger and said “thank you”. Hundreds of customers at that counter everyday, someone had to have uttered those words. But management, OTOH…

(Alternatively, “no one” being defined as “the vast, vast majority of customers”. That I could believe.)

I've been doing nonprofit (free) work for decades.

I almost never get thanked; even after doing tens of thousands of dollars' worth of free work.

That's fine. That's not why I do it.

This reminded me of American Beauty, for some reason...

Here in England, there's a very significant cultural divide between North and South. One of the key symbols of that cultural divide is whether people thank the bus driver when disembarking. In London, thanking the driver would make you a bit of a weirdo; in Newcastle, not thanking the driver would make you dreadfully antisocial.

I imagine that there's a huge difference in this respect between a McDonalds in Manhattan and one in a small town.

In London I often see people thanking the driver. At least outside of rush hour & outside zone 1

Yeah I see it all the time on buses where you exit by the front door.

I think it's a central London / outside central London thing. Just in my personal experience people in both Brighton and Somerset thank the driver, and I bet there are plenty of other places like that in the south.

I picked up the habit of saying "cheers drive!" after living in Bristol.

In Dublin, thanking the bus driver is such an ingrained thing that Dublin Bus use it in their job ads (“Get thanked for a living” was a recent one). The switch to two-door buses has complicated this, obviously.

> Do you think this is still true?

Personal opinion, when intra org reciprocity is not discussed or measured, quality plummets as a necessary response to stress/burnout feedback loops at every scale.

Coming to terms with this """insight""" etc. was tl;dr life changing and exactly how is still an open question

Yep. (I'm in the US.) The transactionalization of aspects of both work and life is depressing. I think it's a confluence of multiple factors that may or may not be present in all circumstances: a lack of manners, a power imbalance, and/or a view that someone who provides a service is a widget rather than a human being.

Some data points:

- My next door neighbors in a small town residential neighborhood are poorer, but don't say "please" or "thank you" for anything.

- An entitled Brahmin dude I used to work with at a Big Name University™ grew up with a dozen servants never gave gratitude or used pleasantries.

- Some other employees at a MAANG I used to work for as well as other residents in the apartments I lived in had an attitude of "too cool for everyone else" and didn't use pleasantries.

Without rapport and humanity by showing a little real decency and compassion, life and business interactions become commoditized and cold, and that intangible cool or goodwill evaporates and nothing much holds people to each other or people to a brand.

Slumming it, basically. You can leave whenever you want, the people around you are stuck there.

Just threw up in my mouth. Yes, our capital markets developed FOMO on the next Apple or Microsoft and so they devolved into throwing caution to the wind and funding people like This. There were trillions lost, millions of workers permanently removed from industry (I think IBM laid off almost a quarter of them alone), plus the damage to the private equity companies that were robbed of investment (by ALL available capital going into "companies" like PETS.COM during the dot-com bubble) and then the catastrophic losses we all sustained as the public equity markets popped followed by the tech nuclear winter that lasted SIX YEARS (when few university students graduated with CS degrees) causing untold additional losses for decades thereafter. I'm glad there are companies like YCombinator to experiment in a controlled way with exploiting high-level technologies (like Web 2.0...) to make our economy run more efficiently, but execs back then were not experienced enough to put people like this guy under a proper manager or simply cut him a check to buy a Corvette or something and send him on his way. Some of those execs did have big wins that have allowed them to move on from their "stabilizing role" in the economy to a now very "destabilizing role" (by inflating another stock market bubble and "artificial" energy crisis). Let's hope the capital markets shut them down before it repeats --because next time, China and Russia won't be on their knees as we screw around with investments in those finding their way at McDonalds.

I miss the carefree days of working in fast food in my late teens and early 20s. Getting stoned with friends, eating crappy food, staying up all night living care free. Glad I'm not doing it now, but there was a sense of wonder and joy in the simplicity of it all.

They should add a date to the title - I saw the $5 and hour and was confused. I swear I remember McDonald's starting people at $10 an hour even around that time.

It says dotcom in the title so it must be around 1999/2000 give or take a couple years.

NYC has had shockingly low minimum wage:

https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/spotlight-minimum-wage/

I specifically remember being a teenager around that time and trying to math out a part time job at McDonalds for 5.35 an hour and realizing how tough it all was.

In 2000? Yeah that might be somewhat typical for fast food wages depending on locale.

Minimum wage is a floor. It doesn't mean you can hire at that rate.

Minimum wage in my state is the federal minimum ($7.25/hr) but restaurants here have to pay about double that to get anyone.

Honestly this is something I would like to do once I feel "financially ready." I want to be a barista, at least for a little while. Like this CEO outlined, it's really easy to be detached from the real world when you're working super high paying jobs.

In my 20s I also lost a job and had to go work at a Mcdonalds. Regardless of all the other things.. most fun job ever!

I'm in my 40s now and run a small dev agency. (if that matters)

Reminds me of Armie Hammer selling timeshares in the Caribbean.

I went back treeplanting in between jobs at 46. It was glorious but I really missed my family.

I got a -1 point at an English test when I was a kid because of writing "i"...

Honestly, I think he’s living the dream — no tech headaches, just flipping burgers and taking it easy. Really makes me think...

I don't understand why this was "dead". It's not a statement I fully agree with; but the insight isn't something I'd want to keep off of HN.

I believe that flagged+dead indicates people reported the comment to death, whereas just "dead" indicates the poster is shadowbanned.

Well I appear to not be shadowbanned if this comment shows up so I must of been reported to death. I can see why, and it was a silly thing to say, but after a long day of nothing but solving deep bugs in a terrible tech stack I have little control of, while getting virtually no praise by the organization for my work, mindlessly flipping burgers seemed pretty nice.

You've never worked in fast food have you? "Taking it easy" is not how it works. You're on the clock 100% until you clock out, no rest, no breaks, if a burger takes more than 60 seconds to land on the customer's tray the boss is on your ass. If you miscalculate how many patties to slap on the grill and either run out or you have to toss some because they've sat in the steamer for more than 15 minutes you are in for such a dressing down. The machine tracks from the start of the order till it is closed out so he knows. He has some bullshit regional contest thing with all of the other franchisees in the area that he has to win if he wants to make that boat payment. If there are no customers you are cleaning, even if you just cleaned it. Plus you had to spend like half of your time training new recruits or filling in for them when they stopped showing after like two days. I did one summer of that in college and it cemented me in my tech career path. I couldn't deal with the stress.

You could work the night shift, though that of course has a huge trade-off.

My fast food experience

* Worked ~9 months at a dunkin donuts

* Start of shift generally 4 a.m.

* End of shift generally 1 p.m.

* 7 days per week although Sunday would only work 3 hr - this was because my boss could provide much more compensation because we were paid 1.5x hourly above 40 hours. He would illegally manually adjust my hours downwards in the computer system to ensure it didn't get too much out of hand :)

* Was promoted to "shift manager" after 6 months (meaningless title)

I agree with nearly all of your points:

* no breaks

* boss monitors waste, quality (customer complaints), service time per order

* regional competitions

* cleaning in downtime

* constant churn training new recruits who would suddenly quit

Your conclusion fast food is difficult seems off to me. The work is repetitive so each individual step requires little thought. To make a sandwhich you put the bread in oven 1 and click button 2 then you put the patty in oven 2 and click button 7. When it comes out you wrap, bag, add napkins, and hand it to the customer. Crucially when your shift is done you go home and don't care. There are no objectives that line employees care about at a quarterly level. You were able to move around the entire day and interact with people rather than being sedentary behind a screen. You didn't have to have any education or work experience beyond completing ~9 grade (compared to CS where the most common path in the US is 3 years of highschool, 4 years of college). Most employees at my location were young, more social, less attached, and better looking than my colleagues in big tech (ok myself included).

I would trade my new line of work for my old in a heartbeat if the compensation and career prospects were comparable.

Working in restaurants and hospitality is hell on Earth. Work long hours for peanuts and get shouted at.

I'd rather be a gardener or a farmer.

I have never had a toilet talk to me the way I see some people talk to service workers.

That was a plot point in American Beauty... got to say, at the point I was in my life when I saw it, I empathized with him.

I think when you work low paying jobs you quickly learn that the worst part is how most people treat you. Customers, managers, etc. We in tech take for granted how we’re treated.

The baristaFIRE fantasy seems to miss this part.

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