[lewiscollard]

From the UK too, and your experience is matched by mine. The last time I was in one (I mean "the last time" in both senses of the words) I waited over 20 minutes for my food; I do not know how long it would have actually taken because at that point I got bored, wrote it off as a loss and walked out. No sense in complaining to anyone because that would have consumed even more of my time.

McDonalds is not food and it is not even fast anymore.

I cannot blame their staff for any of this anyway; if I was being paid that little to be treated like garbage I wouldn't give a shit either.

[hackable_sand]

It is not apparent that we are ambivalent because of compensation.

I would argue an inverse corollary. I would argue that the most qualified people for the job are applying.

What I am noticing in my own work is fatigue from processing volume.

It's not personal. You are a statistic until you walk up to the front counter and make it personal. Only then we can actually solve your issue because we have a person to relate to.

I am curious about this notion that fast food workers don't care. I see it a lot. We absolutely care.

[lewiscollard]

I think that merits an apology from me, then: what I said was wrong and I'm sorry. If I'd thought about that sentence for more than ten seconds, it'd be clear that it's all better explained not by indifference from the staff doing the actual work, but because (as you said) they are asked to work under impossible conditions, and as long as some line on a chart representing "money" goes in the right direction it's the people that set the conditions of the job who don't give a shit.

Some part of me understood this already, because...

> You are a statistic until you walk up to the front counter and make it personal.

Aside from the fact that the "front counter" is apparently deprecated these days...given what I know about my personality flaws, I am sure I'd not want to do this. It's not like they could make the food appear 20 minutes ago, and they're not responsible for the conditions that made it take 20 minutes in the first place, so what would it accomplish other than making their day worse? Maybe some warm feeling of "well I fuckin showed 'em" followed by "oh damnit, I was an arsehole" 15 seconds later which would hang over me for a LOT longer than 15 seconds. Walking out was a better outcome for everyone, including me.

[lumost]

I do wonder if the US is soon to experience a regression in productivity due to compensation practices.

If all accessible jobs have declining pay, when do you start to reduce effort to match?

[Tanoc]

That's already happening. Roadsides aren't being cleaned up because the local DOTs aren't being paid enough. That leaves fallen rocks, mud buildup from floods, tree branches, and overgrown bushes very close to the roadway. Grocery stores have empty shelves because they don't get enough stockers. If you go to the meats aisle it's a good chance you'll either find some pork that's started to turn yellow or some beef that's started to turn brown because nobody wants to dig through the freezer. They get told the meat's old, they find the visible one, and the put a price reduced sticker on it. Walk into a hospital and the grating at the entryway will be filled with mud, the baseboards along the walls in the hallways will be scuffed to hell, and the walls will have scrapes taken out of them because the maintenance staff aren't being paid enough to care. Go into a bank and you'll have one teller working both the drive through and the front desk, and they'll take their time getting to you because the drive-through counts towards their statistics since the interaction with the drop off point is tracked. They aren't paid enough to work back and forth in the down time when either is doing something the teller doesn't need to be involved in.

Apathy's just setting in across the board, and it's entirely warranted. One hour of work can't even afford you one hour of reward anymore when it comes to most non-specialized and non-salaried jobs.