I worked a lot of crappy jobs to fund my studies - working places that treated their employees like cheap fodder, only caring they showed up on time and moved A to B as fast as possible. You'd show up for summer shift one year to return the next to find your co-workers who'd been doing the exact same thing every day while you'd been gone with no suggestion of training or boosting their skills. McDonalds was the one place that I actually saw investing in their staff - training and promoting and pushing those they saw capable of going on the management track - even if they didn't have any qualifications that would put them on that path elsewhere. One guy I know from those days now has his own home and car and lives quite comfortably, having taken that training and transitioned into another business organisation. Certainly not something that would have happened if he'd taken the same minimum wage job down the road at the fancy restaurant.
When I was going to college I worked at McDonald's part time. I lasted maybe a few months and they hired me for the Christmas season and promised they'd keep me on after it, but let me go anyway.<p>I worked at McDonald's for Christmas and Thanksgiving, I worked for breakfast and lunch. I worked all of the stations for cooking food as I waited for coworkers to be woken up by an assistant manager who drove to their addresses and rang their doorbells because maybe didn't show up for work.<p>I tried to show up early for work, used a bus, lived in an apartment with two friends from high school. Along the way there was a children's hospital and one day a helicopter landed in the street and delayed the bus 15 minutes and I was late and got chewed out that I should have planned for the helicopter and gotten out 15 minutes earlier to catch an earlier bus.<p>I was studying Calc II and Chemistry at the time and kept my backpack with me with a change of shirt so I could take the bus to my classes after my shift was over. I was picked on for being in college by other coworkers and management. But I did my job, even cleaning rest rooms and the parking lot.<p>I feel empathy for people who work at McDonald's I got an Aunt who works for them and can't find a job elsewhere, and most of what she does is clean the tables after someone is finished eating.<p>I'm the sort of type of employee that they use temporarily because I am qualified for other work due to my college degrees. I hoped I'd have a job for four years, but it didn't work out that way. It would have paid the 1/3rd of the rent and kept me in college. But I lost the job at McDonald's and Captain D's as well, and after not finding a job moved back with my parents and attended a community college near their house.<p>I see fast food as a service industry, and people who work it serve the community. My own son taught me that, so we must never look down on them. McDonald's hires a lot of diverse people as well and other companies need to learn from that.
The most important takeaway from the article is this<p><i>I stopped equating dislike for big shitty companies with dislike for their foot soldiers.</i><p>I wish more people felt the same. Developers have more job options in general than people in other fields, but they also end up working for unsavory companies sometimes because of circumstances. It must be much harder for people in retail, fast food, warehouses etc :(<p>A little empathy goes a long way.