Well, the “good” news is, McDonald’s is hiring

We continue to struggle with high unemployment. We continue to exhibit an incredible lack of interest and/or will in having a rational national conversation about what, exactly, the folks who’ve been displaced are going to do for a living if they happen to have been displaced from a reasonably paying job that ain’t going to come back any time soon, if ever. (Oh, why stop with our our incredible lack of interest and/or will to converse about jobs….We continue to exhibit an incredible lack or interest and/or will in having a rational national conversation about Social Security, healthcare, national debt, death, taxes – this just in: our taxes are percentage-wise the lowest they’ve been since the 1950’s, and a lot of other items that should be on the rational/national agenda.)

Ah, well, fear factor it is!

Which leads me to the big news on the jobs front: McDonald’s had a national hiring day in April and received over 1 million job applications. (Source: Boston.com.)

Not that everyone applying for those jobs is unemployed, but, say for a moment that they were. With 13.7 million people out of work, that would be over 7% looking to make minimum wage changing the fat in the fry-o-lator and handing out Happy Meals.

Nothing against fast food, mind you.

I am of the opinion that this country would be a better place if everyone – including the most silver-spooned prince and princess capable of networking their mummy-daddy way into cushy “internships” in cool places to work – were required to spend a minimum of 3 months in some type of food service job.

Flip burgers, dish ice cream, wait tables, wash dishes, sling crud onto plastic trays in the college caf – all of which, come to think of it, I’ve done over the years – any and all of this would help people (especially those silver-spooned mummy-daddy kids):

• Get that work can be physically exhausting, smelly, greasy, and terrible
• Learn how to put up with unreasonable, disagreeable people to whom they’re not related
• Develop some compassion for the folks who are working these types of jobs for more than 3 months at a time
• Realize why we have a minimum wage
• Appreciate that no one can live on it
• Understand that even crappy jobs can be fun, while also learning why they need to develop the skills and get the education that will land them a job that’s not quite as exhausting, smelly, greasy, terrible, and ill-paid

And yet, how depressing is it that over a million people are looking for jobs at McDonald’s, which so far has hired 62,000 of those job seekers. Which, by quick calculation, looks to me like you have a better chance of getting into Yale than you do winning a job salting French fries.

Oh, what a world economy we live in!

The odds may be a bit better in Massachusetts, where of the 16,000 applicants, 1,700 have gotten jobs, and McD’s is still looking to fill 500 more positions. Then again, maybe they’re not, if we base it on Mark McBee’s hiring experience:

Mark McBee, owner of 13 McDonald’s restaurants in Eastern Massachusetts, hired 115 workers — almost double his goal — for mostly entry-level jobs. McBee said he had trouble turning down some of the 2,055 people who were interviewed because there were so many qualified applicants. “We had a lot of professional people who were looking to change careers and a lot of kids, a lot of mothers, a lot of senior citizens — it was an amazing mixture,’’ he said.

Let’s parse this “amazing mixture” out.

First off, “a lot of professional people who were looking to change careers….”

Somehow, I don’t think that Mickey D’s is anything other than a desperation move for a “professional…looking to change careers.”

Reason for Applying: I was an accounts payable manager in financial services, but I now realize that I’m more of a “people person” who wants to work with the public in a fast paced, fast food environment.

Not!

Obviously, “professional” can mean a lot of different things. (Think about the use of the word “professional dry cleaner.” As opposed to “amateur dry cleaner”?)

Nonetheless, I suspect for most folks who were working in an office, a career change into a polyester shirt and baseball cap is not top of mind.

How completely and utterly depressing this must be on both sides of the interviewing desk.

“A lot of kids” – as you can tell from the above – I’m down with, especially if these are kids who are looking for an after school or summer job. Depressing if this is largely high school drop outs or high school grads with meager skills and fewer prospects for a decent job. Ever. Yes, I know, some of these kids who start out as burger flippers will make it to store manager and maybe even franchise owner someday. But I suspect these jobs are almost as disproportionately difficult to achieve as going from high school hoop star to the NBA.

By the way, while I’m all in favor of the young folk working at McD’s, I never worked in a fast food chain. There were fewer during my crap-job days, and there were also more of other kinds of crap jobs available. Good luck finding a summer job in a shoe factory in Massachusetts these days.

But I did work in a college snack bar. So I know what it’s like to clean the grill, change the grease, and take a chisel to the 5-gallon container of ultra-frozen ice cream because some clown wants rum raisin, rather than the softened up, easily scoop-able fudge ripple.

“A lot of mothers” is something I’m of mixed feelings about on the how-depressing-is-this scale. Stretch the budget, make ends meet, why-not-when-the-kids-are-in-school, put something away for the future, buy a PC for the family to share. All laudable goals. And yet…

One thing if you were pretty much assured of getting a job; another thing to find yourself in keen competition with lots of professionals, lots of kids, and lots of senior citizens.

God, it’s hard to think of a more ghastly job for a “senior citizen” than standing on their feet all day boxing up Chicken McNuggets.

Food service work is grueling!

Yeah, I get that the old folks still have to work, given busted pensions, dwindling 401K’s, uncertainty about Social Security, longer lives, and just wanting to stay in the game.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when Walmart greeter started to look like a reasonable golden age job, but it sure does when compared to a golden arch job.

Anyway, if there was a rational/national discussion on what American workers are going to be doing in the new world order, I missed it.

A million folks chasing jobs at McDonald’s…

Sigh!