Fast food jobs in NY evidently attract a lot of comedians.

now let's apply that to a burger flipper/toilet scrubber.

sure, it'd be cheaper to do yourself, wage wise. But how much would you be losing if you had to waste the time on doing it?

case in point. a woodshop I used to work at employed 5 of us with varying levels of skills and wages. Everyone took a turn cleaning the washroom. So one week, I'd do it and it would cost 18 for the hour that I wasn't running a sander. THe next week however, it might cost twice that because it was the lead hand's turn and the task took him longer.

I think we've been skirting this part of the valuation of labour... how much is it worth to a business owner to not have to do something themself?

That is kind of the point. If you can pay $7.25 (or whatever minimum wage is these days), it is worth it for an employer to hire a 15 year old with no work history or experience to do the job. If you have to pay that 15 year old $15 an hour it suddenly isn't worth it to use him. Or some unreliable pothead dropout. Better to just do it yourself.

Apparently gul has been arguing about how much better things were in the Goode Olde Dayes of the Carter Administration or somesuch. When I was 19 I didn't own a car. I didn't own a computer. I didn't have a cell phone. Hell, I didn't have an answering machine. The 19 year olds I work with have all these things (well not the answering machine because who has those these days, but they DO have iPhones).

None of that gets the particular 19 year old I'm thinking about to work on time. And once he is at work it doesn't stop him from just wandering off to do God knows what for large chunks of the time he should be working.

Not only is life more comfortable for people who only merit minimum wage these days, people who merit minimum wage are worth less than they were in the Goode Olde Dayes. If anything, we should lower minimum wage.

Amazing. It's almost as if you got what you paid for.

I don't see what age has to do with anything. Historically I've worked circles around my coworkers, young and old, as they wandered off to do whatever they felt.

sure you can pay it, people need to work and will take what's offered when other prospects are limited. now your personal jibe aside, wouldn't someone with twenty years experience as a short order cook be worth more? how about simply the fact that they're an adult and (presumably) bring the reliability and maturity expected of their years?

of course it doesnt' fit the 19 year old in your mind (and I'm sure he's a strapping young fellow), without the boy of straw, you've only got "we pay the lowest possible wage for disposable employees".

When did the American ideal become a return to serfdom?

I'm too lazy to edit this down, but since when were we talking about an experienced short order cook?

McDonald's, et al, uses processes and automation so that a trained monkey could do the work. As such they pay accordingly.

That said, unless you own a restaurant having 20 years of experience as a short order cook probably isn't going to get you a lot. In a year, maybe two, you can pretty much learn everything there is to learn about cooking for a diner.

It is a little like being a GM factory worker. Just because you have 20 years experience tightening the third lugnut on the right front tire that doesn't mean you can do it $70,000 better than some schlub they brought in off the street. And if the schlub will do it for $30,000 you've got $40,000 to do research and development to build a better car/or just pass the savings on.

[And since when did it make sense to pay anything but "the lowest possible wage for disposable employees"? That would be bad business. That said, you should pay a premium for your valuable employees--although this really only goes to a certain point. I've got a guy I work with who is freaking gold. Smart, fast, hard-working. But he's never going to get rich on his current job because they can hire a couple teenagers to do it adequately for less than paying him enough to make him want to stick around. And he doesn't want to move into a management position even though he'd be great at it. ]