Essential Workers Were Heroes. Then We Asked for More.
I work in fast food — cleaning, grilling, smiling — and I know why you don’t want me to earn $15 an hour
Past midnight, or at 2 a.m. on the weekends, our fast-food place closes its doors and we use the next hour to clean up and put everything back in its place. Recently, we got an additional task, sorting through the trash to meet new recycling requirements: plastic in the yellow trash can, food in the red one. “We grill burgers, not the Earth” was the gist of the initiative, an effort to address the fast-food industry’s impact on the planet.
We’ve been working overtime ever since. The stacking of task on top of task takes its toll. No amount of optimization can make you complete 15 time-consuming and back-breaking tasks as quickly as when there were eight of them. Regardless of the fact that we do, in fact, grill the planet, it’s good PR for the restaurant. So we keep doing it.
Our bosses don’t amend our contracts when the workload gets heavier. No raise. No bonus. Just like the product we use to clean the walls and mirrors and toilet seats, we’re multipurpose, you see? Legally speaking, nothing is outside our wheelhouse. We make burgers and entire meals in a hot room. We deal with disgruntled customers who won’t wear their masks. We wipe away protesters’ graffiti off the glass window. We clean up dog shit tucked away in between the seats. We comfort our friend crying alone in the cold room. We look up shelters for the Spaniard who failed his two-month trial period because he didn’t learn our language fast enough, and can’t fulfill the “multipurpose” part of his contract.
Jack of all trades, master of all. And the scope of “all” gets wider at every turn. No raise, though. Tools don’t need more money.
Whenever buzzwords like “unskilled labor” and “minimum wage” reenter public discourse, people come out of the woodwork to defend million-dollar companies, and we’re left to bite the dust. That’s what…
