Worked at one for maybe a year and some change. Thinking back on it, it was kinda enjoyable. I liked my colleagues, I liked prepping drinks and getting orders out the window. I even liked mopping. The real drawback, what eventually drove me away from it, was doing it every day for the foreseeable future.
If I could, I would sign on to work, like, two weeks. Then move on to something else. Maybe pick up another two weeks when I felt like it. The idea that you have one job that you sign on and do everyday until you quit or die seems... silly. Surely it's possible to make employment more flexible -- to let people train for and try a lot of different things. How are you supposed to know what you like doing before you've done it? And, one imagines, a workforce with a better understanding of a variety of different jobs would be better equipped to anticipate problems and find solutions.
College kids are the most respectful customers tho! From my experience, the older the worse. Though I didn't work at a clothing store
I think dirty and very routine work would be rotated. Like you work so many days at the thing you are interested in and have a few days a month doing something boring or tedious or gross or whatever. Some jobs its not feasible to have high turnover or very part-time work, in that case I think you would be allowed to retire much sooner to compensate you for your exhaustive focus.
For example, I did niche work in sewers for a while that was gross and required a lot of training and a good level of coordination between me and my coworkers to get things done in a reasonable amount of time. Admittedly, I am leaving that job now, but it wouldn't be worth it in the long run to have to train people everytime it happened (would the trainers get to switch jobs too?) because me and my coworkers got so much quicker as time went on.
My ideal life would be technical work for a day a week, teach for three half days, and work at cafes for three half days. Caring for others is very fulfilling, and so is abstract problem solving, but both can be exhausting if I have to do them for 40-60 hours a week EVERY WEEK.
I did similar jobs where if it weren't for greedy owners, corrupt and sadistic management, and of course the :grillman: that wanted to pay a few bucks to bully employees, I'd have enjoyed doing it all over again.
I once worked a fast food job that was genuinely great. My manager was chill and didn't care if we took the leftover food at the end of the day so I would just hand out free food to the people on my street
my manager also had my back if a customer was being a dick so I could just tell people to fuck off
One old manager of mine was like that when I did bike delivery! She was super cool and had my back. One day, there was this creep staring at all of the swimmers on way back from a run and I called him out for being a pervert. He chased me for a while but couldn't catch up, but apparently he saw the name of my shop on my uniform (duh lol) and showed up a few minutes after I did. I was in the back eating and telling the story to a coworker who told me to stay back there a minute.
He was livid but my manager totally shut him down and kept asking him "well what were you doing?" and he got really flustered after awhile and left. I ran into her at a party at what I found out to be her boyfriend's house and he had a big portrait of Lenin so that was cool.
I had a cool one like that once. They knew that if a :grillman: "wanted to know the name of the punk that didn't show enough respect" :grill-broke: that the manager would make up random names so the trail would go cold for their lead and cortisol driven revenge quest.
As I get older, I think it would be kinda fun to like work McDonalds Thurs-Sun evenings and banter with the drunk and high kids. But only if there wasn't the hurry hurry bullshit from the greedy profit driven managers.
It's fast food. Hurry hurry bullshit is pretty baked in. Even at a sit down pace you're fucking busy most of the time. That's just how making food for a lot of people is.
there's probably a way to make food service chill out a bit. the problem with lunch/dinner/bar close rushes have to do with too many people trying to eat all at once and rent keeping out having 5x as many restaurants but they're only open for like 90 minutes twice a day around busy times to spread the burden.
i guess food trucks do some of that but we can do better.
For dine in its about creating the right expectation. If you're going to a sit down place it should be an occasion and you should be willing to spend a couple hours there. Chill out, have some drinks, get some apps and order your meal like an hour after arriving or better yet, if you know what you want let us know what you will be having and we'll put it on hold. But if people went in with the expectation that they're gonna make an evening out of it and don't want to be in and out of a sit-down place in 40 minutes as a group of 8 that'd help.
As far as fast food goes, it should be massively expanded but changed fundamentally as far as what food is being done. Stuff like soups, pastas, salads etc can be made in massive quantities in about the same time as a single to order portion and then just just gotta put it in a box to order, maybe some garnish stuff. The idea that Fast And Fresh is ideal is dumb. Fast food could be so much healthier if people realized that almost any food you get from anywhere is mostly prepped ahead of time and are glorified reheated leftovers.
It's about half capitalism and half how making food fresh to eat by order just works. I'm genuinely fine with working kitchens, I've never done Fast food but have done catering services that did take away meals for grocery stores and stuff. Most of my experience is higher end stuff. As far as under socialism stuff goes, shorter shifts are probably the biggest thing. I don't mind being busy and it does come with the territory to a certain extent. More people and shorter shifts would handle most issues.
In communist society, nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. [52]
similar for me in a different shitty job. The other thing that really got to me was that I would never actually be able to afford a home or really any sort of security at it. Like I enjoyed the work even if it pushed me sometimes, but why do it if I'm gonna be precarious forever?
Completely get it but why tf do you want to work food industry on god mode difficulty? Try a sit down restaurant or something, MickyDs is masochism
I think it's the only one I could work at. It gave me an appreciation for a well laied-out workspace -- looking in at other kitchen setups makes me shudder.
I'd be working in ecology of some kind. Repairing whats left of our biome.
I would be a pretty coffee shop barista for the rest of my life if it paid a living wage.
I would be a train driver, obviously. Capitalism means that the train companies I can work for now like to work their employees to death transporting fossil fuels and think nothing of polluting an entire region with dangerous chemicals. :yea:
it would be ass working in a place where people come and go every two weeks for anyone not staying at the job for only two weeks
yeah, the two weeks thing was just some interval of time. A more realistic one might be something like 3 months
Fast food actually isn't that bad. I honestly think most retail/service jobs would be a lot more palatable under communism because there wouldn't be the constant push to cut labor costs. If McDonalds actually had all the employees it should rather than making one person do three people's jobs, it would be both easier for the workers and better for service overall. I could handle that.
I've done plenty of minimum-wage type jobs but never food service. Waiter, line cook, even dishwasher. Just give me a bunch of tasks to do and let me cook. Obviously I'm thankful for my "skilled" office job that gives me a somewhat comfortable wage but a lot of days I wish I was just managing orders from a dozen tables during lunch rush instead of sitting in on bullshit zoom call number 3 where every useful development is planned by e-mail afterwards anyways.
