The $100 Hamburger

In the general aviation community, the “$100 Hamburger” is slang used to describe flying to another airport just to eat a quick meal and then flying back to your home airport within the same afternoon.  It’s an inside joke, poking fun at the fact that pilots will grab at any excuse to fly – and it’s true.  It’s also maybe a little outdated, as the cost of renting a Cessna 172 these days will run you over $150 per hour.  The point is, it’s not that there’s actually a hamburger that you would pay $100 to eat.

But what if there were?

That’s where we’re headed if these assholes get their way.

Hundreds of fast-food workers from McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Burger King and other chains walked off the job in a planned strike today aimed at getting the industry to increase wages and allow unionization.

The tactic is part of a larger movement dating back to at least 2012 that’s being called the “fight for 15” — a push to get the U.S. federal minimum wage raised to $15 US an hour.

Currently, the U.S. federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, the same level since 2009. That works out to about $15,000 a year for a full-time 40-hour-a-week worker.

When did this country’s expectations of a job flipping burgers morph from a bottom-rung entry to the workforce, mainly for teenagers, into a lifelong career with unlimited earnings potential? Also, how many hamburgers do you think you will sell, when they cost 4 times as much as they do now?

Like most shitty attitudes about life, work and responsibility, combined with an absolute ignorance of basic economics, this idea wasn’t invented by Obama, but its essence is most perfectly distilled coming from the mouth of a man who is himself working in his very first job.

“There’s a national movement going on made up of fast-food workers organizing to lift wages so they can provide for their families with pride and dignity,” U.S. President Barack Obama said at an event in Milwaukee on Monday. “If I were busting my butt in the service industry and wanted an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, I’d join a union,” he added, in an attempt to move Congress into action on the file.

That is just so stupid that it’s not even wrong. His lack of understanding of skills development and earning potential mirrors exactly that of his constituents: fucking ZERO. He is the Avatar of Stupidity, come to fulfill the Idiocracy.

Let me explain to you how it works: for certain jobs, there is a concrete ceiling on how much you can earn. If you push a broom and earn $8.00 per hour for doing so, that’s about as much as you will ever make pushing a broom. The reason being, is that you do not provide any more broom-pushing value to the company as time goes on. The benefit of your work has a maximum value, and it’s pretty much what your starting wage is set at, BECAUSE ANYBODY CAN PUSH A BROOM. Whatever raises you got are rewards for things like loyalty and punctuality, and I guarantee you they won’t be life-changing.

And yet, some will still find a way to complain about it:

Prospero Sanchez, who was at the McDonald’s in New York, said the $11.50 an hour he earns making pizzas at a Domino’s Pizza restaurant is not enough to support him, his wife and two kids. He started working at the same restaurant 14 years ago, when he made $5 an hour.

He has asked his bosses for more money. “They said no,” Sanchez, 32, said.

Before I continue, I would like to pause for a quick irony break, while we consider that this guy’s name, “Prospero,” literally translates to “successful” or “prosperous” in Latin, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Thank you for your attention.

Prospero complains that his job making pizzas isn’t enough to support a family of four. Well, I am totally fucking shocked, Prospero. You mean to tell me that you’re doing the SAME KIDS’ ENTRY-LEVEL JOB YOU STARTED DOING 14 YEARS AGO, and you’re not making $50,000 per year? Get the fuck outta here. But yeah, dude, you gotta look out for your family. Here are some ideas you may want to explore:

– Getting another fucking kids’ job in addition to the kids’ job you already have
– Pop your head out of your ass, learn some skills beyond saucing a disc-shaped piece of bread, and get a better-paying job.
– Sell one or both of your children to a band of Gypsies, reducing your family’s expenses.

Yes, I am making light of Prospero’s “plight,” BECAUSE FUCK HIM, THAT’S WHY.

My first real “adult” job was infantryman in the U.S. Army. In 1993, a Private (E2) made $913.20. Let’s not get into the fact that it was WAY more than the 35 hours or so per week that Prospero puts in, or that it involved months of technical initial training, followed by years of ongoing skills and leadership development – that’s $45 per day on Prospero’s work schedule, HALF of what he’s making sprinkling cheese on your pizza with his unwashed hands.

When I ETS’d in 1999 as a Sergeant (E-5) I was pulling in $1,514.70… like a PIMP. To keep the running tally going, that equated to $9.47 per hour on Prospero’s work schedule (I wish). This was as an NCO in charge of up to 5 soldiers, accountable for millions of dollars of equipment and enough firepower to level your neighborhood.

But, I knew that I wasn’t going to make a career out of being a grunt, and as I wasn’t getting any smarter, I went back to the civilian job market. My first job, I got hired to valet cars at a French Quarter hotel, for one night a week at $4.50 per hour, plus tips. After my first shift, I was asked to work the next 15 days straight. After 45 days, I was promoted to shift manager, then bell captain a couple of months later, finally being sent to Baltimore to train as a Contract Manager, in charge of contracted guest services at another hotel.

When I had reached the limits of my earnings potential at that company, I moved over to restaurant management, having made a contact through my last job. I started by learning every position in the kitchen, then moved to Kitchen Manager, and within a few months, had ousted the General Manager of the restaurant from her position. Fuck her, she was lazy.

When I had reached the limits of what I could earn THERE, I moved to my next job, and so on. Now, I more or less work for myself, having been entrusted with a lot of the decisions having to do with the company’s operation and direction. I also have other business interests in development that will pay off over the next few years. My family wants for nothing, and there is very little that is beyond our reach in the way of small to medium luxuries or vacations. And I did it in the same time frame that our pizza-assembler spent doing the same fucking thing, over and over.

THIS IS HOW IT’S DONE, BOY:

– You work harder than your peers, which is easy, since most of your co-workers are fucking lazy. Just doing what you were hired to do will look like superhuman effort on your part.

– Seek positions of higher responsibility and trust, and then prove that you are responsible and trustworthy.

– When you’ve reached the limits of how high you can climb in a certain job, ask yourself if you’ve met your goals. If the answer is NO, then move on to another job.

– Instead of spending your off-hours playing video games or sniffing highlighter fumes, work on ways to make yourself more valuable to your organization, or the next organization you wish to work in. With 4 kids at home, I went to night school for Accounting, not because I wanted to be a CPA, but to improve my business analytical skills, and become more effective in my role at work. If you’re not willing to invest some of your time and money in yourself, why should your company invest more of THEIR time and money in you?

Most importantly, act like a man, not a child. It is your job as a husband and father to do what is necessary to provide for your family, not your employers. All they have are jobs that pay $11.50 per hour, because that’s the nature of their business. If they have to pay you double, they go out of business and your job disappears. That’s not unfair, it is the very definition of fair. Because life is not concerned with “fair,” it is concerned with survival.

Smarten up, jerkoff.