Funniest question of the day …

So the minimum-wage workers at fast-food restaurants in 50 cities are going on strike. 

Some news station posed the question: 

                Would you cross a picket line at a fast-food restaurant?

About laughed my ass off when I heard that.  Really? 

We’re about to launch an attack on Syria which could inflame Russia and much of the Middle East, Muslims are burning Christian churches in Egypt, while black teens are killing each other with wild abandon in Chicago,  and killing others because they have too much time on their hands. 

Meanwhile, the most important issue of the day is how bad do you want a Big Mac?  Are you willing to cross a picket line to get one? 

Seriously, local media sent reporters into the street to interview people on that pressing issue. 

The world’s on fire and we’re getting ready to pour more gas on it.  Do you want fries with that? 

Listen, I don’t give a rat’s patoot if every fast-food joint in the country closes today or tomorrow or forever.  Most of their food is over-priced high-calorie crap anyway. 

I don’t blame them for selling this garbage – it’s what some people want, and wolfing down a couple thousand calories at a sitting once in a while isn’t likely to kill you.  Not good for you, for sure, but not instantly fatal.  Still, if Mickey D’s is your home away from home for far more than just coffee, all the Lipitor in the world may not save you.  Your fat ass is fried, just like your food.   

I also don’t blame them for all the fat kids who grew up on Happy Meals.  Idiot parents stuffing their kids with Big Macs and Whoppers created those little porkers, not McDonald’s or Burger King. 

However, that some states allow parents to use food stamps to do this is positively criminal.

But I digress … this is about the minimum-wage workers at those places and their strike for higher wages – actually double what they make now – and that they want to unionize. 

The net/net is that I don’t care if a bunch of slackers who man the counter or drive-thru window, or even those who attain the exalted “Fry Chief” title, walk off their jobs.

I feel for older people who find this work all they can get at their age, or those who’ve suffered a setback and are just now scrambling to make ends meet.  This is an unpleasant interim gig for them. 

But I have zero compassion for young adults who think they can make a career out of flipping the basket on the fryolator when it dings.  Or refilling the condiment dispensers.   

It’s not like they’re “there” anyway.  Most of the young ones are just watching the clock waiting for their shift to end so they can do something more intellectually stimulating.  Like sending naked pix of themselves.   Maybe spouting teen-angst haiku in 140 characters or less.  Checking out who is checking them out while they see who is checking out someone else.  Or simply holing up in mom’s basement for hours of video games or online porn. 

Who can blame them?  Life is so hard.  The stress is terrible.  It’s tough to have a dead-end job at minimum wage, especially when you have loftier goals.  Like not working at all and still getting paid enough to do whatever you desire. 

That’s what they actually want.  They think a union is going to deliver that for them.  They’ll make decent bucks.  They’ll be protected from getting fired for, say, being rude to customers, or not showing up at all, or making videos of themselves tampering with the food.  And they can keep slacking along, doing the minimum, and get by into their 30s. 40s and 50s if need be.   

Good luck with that. 

There’s a reason why fast food companies – most of them franchises anyway – pay minimum wage or a little more.  The work isn’t worth more.  Honestly, a robot could do most of it.  And frankly, most franchisees aren’t making a ton of bucks unless they own a number of outlets; in many cases, the franchise owner and family members are also putting in time behind the counter to break even.   

These aren’t high-margin businesses at the store level. They don’t have any control over what they can charge for their offerings, and it’s a fiercely price-competitive marketplace.  Double their staff costs and they’ll shut down or reduce staff through increased automation.  Force unions on them and like small businesses everywhere they’ll just shut the doors.

There’s also a reason why people earn only minimum wage.  The market doesn’t value them that much.  They don’t have marketable skills desired by others willing to pay more for their services.  That’s not the market’s fault; it’s the potential employee’s fault. 

The unions and community organizers behind the strikes like to push that a lot of people making about minimum wage in fast food places have “some college.”  One article  reported that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that more than 42 percent of restaurant and fast-food employees over the age of 25 have at least some college education, including 753,000 with a bachelor's degree or higher. 

So what?  “Some college” doesn’t guarantee a better paying job, any more than a degree in some arcane subject means you’ll make a living at it.   

If your only marketable skill is pushing buttons with pictures on them and giving back the correct change the register displays to you, anyone can do that.  In fact, it doesn’t even take a human. 

Want to see your replacement?  Go to any self-checkout line in a grocery store.  That will be taking your place shortly.   It won’t whine, complain, and skip work.  It also won’t join a union. 

I’ve been watching the strike coverage online off and on during the day.  There’s 31-year-old Shantel Walker trying to live on what she makes at a Papa John’s in Manhattan.  Well, duh.  You can’t do it.  I’d have figured that by the time you’re 31 you’d have realized that.  Especially in New York City. 

So here’s a career tip for Shantel.   Get off your ass and train for or learn how to do something that pays better.  That’s your responsibility, not your current employer’s.  Oh, and move.

Next? 

Now for all of you reading this, you do realize why all this is going on, and why now, don’t you? 

Obama’s popularity is finally starting to tank.  People are getting a bit tired of the class warfare stuff, especially since the economy is still in the crapper.  Unions are losing members.  Small businesses are reacting to ObamaCare by reducing employment for hourly workers – a lot of them minimum wage – to less than 30 hours a week.  The youth are not as highly motivated to vote or get involved politically as they once were, since a lot of them still don’t have jobs and are saddled with a ton of college debt.

Then there’s the immigration debate.  And let’s be honest, a lot of people working at the bottom rungs of the fast-food and restaurant may have – shall we say – left their “documents” at home.  So a doubling of the minimum wage – or the promise of that – may be very appealing to them. 

If you’re the Democrats and the unions, what do you do?  You need something new to take to the streets.  The celebration of Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech only lasts so long, and had to share the stage with some awful black-on-white crimes.  The changes to the Voting Rights Act haven’t actually set the public on fire. 

So you need a new target. 

About 13 million people are employed in the fast-food and restaurant industry.  That’s a pretty rich target to hit.  And that’s why this is news.