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Hot take burger flipping is not unskilled labor. You ever had to make smashburgers, bitch? You know how long it takes to master using one precise motion to seperate the patty from the griddle correctly? It took me 16 months to get the hang of it and permanently fucked my wrists
Now imagine trying to do this while managing the cook times of >20 differnt items that all have to be matched to different sandwiches while being stuck over a grill that's over 400 degrees fahrenheit with barely any ventilation for hours at time. It is rocket science? No.
But actually being good at it, and performing to the standard people expect, takes skill. Anyone who's ever worked in food service can tell you that some people are crazy fucking good at it because they've spent years developing those skills and getting paid jack shit for it
Also like. No restaurant I've ever worked at or seen in my life has realistically been kept to health code because they run minimum labor at all possible hours and maintaining those standards takes a huge amount of time and effort and /focus/
And let's talk about how physically dangerous food service is! Besides my permanent wrist injuries I've sliced myself open on cutting equipment, had serious burns more times than I can possibly count, got caustic chemicals in my eyes and mouth...
Back injuries, head trauma from skipping and busting my forehead on a low shelf, etc. The impossibly fast pace of modern food service makes accidents virtually unavoidable because you are always being pushed to work /faster/, do more, until you inevitably make mistakes
And like. Food can be really dangerous! Allergic reactions are no joke! Improperly prepared food can kill people! And when you pay food service workers absolute dogshit wages and push them to meet sixty second window times, you invite all of those
The underpaying and poor treatment of food service workers is not only a labor and huminatarian issue but a /public health/ issue. I sent out God knows how many burgers to customers literally covered in my sweat because I wasn't allowed to step away or wipe my forehead lol
And yeah, it was fucking gross, I didn't wanna fucking do it either, but I also didn't want to get fired
Anyway work is work. I don't care if it doesn't take a goddamn degree you're still commiting a limited amount of your time on earth before you fucking die to a task and that has some pretty significant value goddammit
Funny how we've all accepted that "time is money" and "time is the most valuable commodity" and "how can you put a price on time with your loved ones" but can't seem to make the leap to thinking we should be paid more for the fucking TIME we spend creating stockholder value
I don't care if you're a layer or a janitor or a doctor or a frycook your time has worth, it has value to you and the people who care about you. Is an hour a lawyer spends with their kids somehow worth more than an hour a teacher spends with theirs? Fuck off!
And yeah going for time with kids is the easy rhetorical blow but also like. If you wanna spend that tie. Playing video games or masturbating or seeing how many hot dogs one human can consume it's no less valuable.
Every hobby you've never had time for? Every book you've meant to read, social event you had to blow off, skill you've wanted to master? Those are the opportunity cost of commiting your time to laboring for an employer. What price would you put on those?
Adela just dm'd me to tell me to go to bed but DONT YOU SEE HOW MY IMPENDING EMPLOYER MANDATED WAKE UP TIME IS ROBBING ME OF MY ABILITY TO EXPRESS MYSELF, HOW IT LITERALLY DEMANDS MY UNCONCIOUSNESS ON THEIR TERMS AND yeah I should probably go to bed
