Posted on 08/22/2017 2:52:15 AM PDT by Cronos
Once a customer has barked their order into the microphone at the Popeyes drive-thru on Prospect Avenue, Kansas City, the clock starts. Staff have a company-mandated 180 seconds to take the order, cook the order, bag the order and deliver it to the drive-thru window.
The restaurant is on “short shift” at the moment, which means it has about half the usual staff, so Fran Marion often has to do all those jobs herself. On the day we met, she estimates she processed 187 orders – roughly one every two minutes. Those orders grossed about $950 for the company. Marion went home with $76.
Despite working six days a week, Marion, 37, a single mother of two, can’t make ends meet on the $9.50 an hour she gets at Popeyes (no apostrophe – founder Al Copeland joked he was too poor to afford one). A fast food worker for 22 years, Marion has almost always had a second job. Until recently, she had been working 9am-4pm at Popeyes, without a break, then crossing town to a janitorial job at Bartle Hall, the convention center, where she would work from 5pm- to 1.30am for $11 an hour. She didn’t take breaks there either, although they were allowed.
..More than that, she likes working in fast food. “I love it. I’m good at it. Just like Martin Luther King said, ‘If you are going to be a road sweeper, be the best damn sweeper there is’,” she says. “I don’t know. It’s just this society is all messed up.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Here is the problem. “Marion, 37, a single mother of two”
Where is the father in this family? Is he paying child support? Does she even know who the father is?
It’s the elephant in the room in every story like this.
Twenty-two years is a long time to be working at an entry level job.
22 years working in fast food? And she is only making $9.50 an hour?
That is a choice.
Something does not add up.
If she worked 9 to 4 at fast food and 5 to 1:30 cleaning, she would never be with her kids, for one thing. She would also drop from exhaustion.
She would, however, bring in about $3,400.00 monthly. Is that not enough to live on in Kansas? I would have to question her spending.
IOW, her profit per order is roughly 8% of the price - not bad if you ask me.
Of course, if you work in Fast Food for 22 years and are still at the bottom of the ladder, this does not bode well for your future.
Actually, based on a six day work week, it would be over $4,000.00 per month. Something is not right.
I didn’t know Popeye’s was a career?
Responsible women don’t have children they can’t afford to raise.
In all honesty, there are many for whom it would be a career, sadly. Think of many of those who have been on welfare for 2 and 3 generations. If they ever had to go to work one day, good luck. Many of them are unemployable.
Nice sob story. She’s not homeless, she is staying with a friend because the city recently condemned her apt. Up until recently she was making ends meet. Now she is being used as a shill for $15 minimum wage which will get her replaced by a machine.
It’s an article advocating 15 dollars an hour.
It’s the Guardian. What Der Stermer was to Jews, the Guardian is to Americans. Just look at the insane comments that go on for 6 pages.
22 years in fast food (because she likes it!) yet never thought to walk into a real restaurant to get a job where there is room for training and growth? And why no promotions in 22 years?
The problem is that with society breaking down like this the number of women in her situation is huge. Huge numbers can politically force bad solutions.
They’ll get their $15 per hour. And then shortly thereafter be replaced with automation - kiosks for ordering, burger bots for food preparation, automated cleaning systems to clean the prep bots. Cleaner, faster, more sanitary.
Break even for a burger bot is $10 per hour.
Stop getting pregnant by men you can’t live with if you know you can’t afford to raise a family as a single mother with little or no skills and education. You have no one to blame but your own lack of self-control. Sexual maturity and responsible adulthood are two very different things. One is worthy of respect and admiration while the other is not. Guess which one is not...If you guessed the former then you are correct because sexual intercourse without regard to its consequences (not always completely negative but more so nowadays) does not automatically bring prestige and respect to idiots who might eventually expect responsible Americans to support them and their “families”.
“Am not sure what to think of this”
All I can think.... Just another chance to say the evil corporate giant is taking advantage of the poor?
This time with the backdrop of our ‘history of slavery’ — all to say “see, it’s not over.”
Well, for one thing, Popeye’s needs to stop letting Wimpy run tabs til next Tuesday. Maybe then they could give her a raise.
In what universe did the idea that a minimum wage job would support one fully, never mind three people, come into play. Minimum wage jobs are for people living in congregate settings such as with family, with roommates yes plural roommates, or in a group home of some kind.
It is minimum and entry level.
Now this woman is in the business 22 years and making minimum? Is something seriously wrong with her? And she cleans? Fast food workers here rapidly climb to 12 dollars and hours and cleaners make 15 to 25.
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