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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Very few jobs are happy for you to show up whenever, in whatever state you want, with intermittent or stably low competence.
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.
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...
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?
FTFY
It's the flip side of McDonalds not owing you anything under capitalism.