Maybe it's just me.

[scorpio111]

This unsettles me greatly. I know that in the grand economic scheme, it's ideal for ensuring steady work and pay for those who, presumably,  won't necessarily alight in more creative or progressive careers, but there's sort of retro-Dickensian/Orwellian about it.

Maybe it's just me.

Comments

[usha93]

Does it unsettle you because it's McDonald's specifically, or more generally?

When I first moved to Cali, gosh probably around 1980 or '81, I worked for a while at a place called the "Skills Center," which was part of a local community college. There were many clients (it was a free service) who had quit school, wanting to get out of jobs such as working at MickyD's who paraded in.

The way the Skills Center did it was, they both administered the GED test (the more traditional way for those of us who quit school early to get a high school degree), and worked with large local employers of the time -- General Dynamics, Convair, like that -- administering tests in things like "mechanical ability" and "spatial reasoning" -- and those who scored high enough in the desired categories would become paid-trainee employees of the big companies, getting truly decent pay for their on-the-job training

[scorpio111]

I'm not bothered that it's McDonald's specifically. What gets me is that it's this one venue that 'trains' people in a limited skill set that has limited potential for upward mobility. IOW, they're saying, 'We're going to train you on how to manage a fast food restaurant, which is the type of job that will present you with a ceiling in about 10 years. Not only that, but the pay is nominal, and you will have no way to really gain real vocational or intellectual experience to prepare for any other type of career. And we'll do all of this when you're just 16! Isn't that great

at least its UK

[krishnahermes]

Here there's too much competition for jobs in general, its much tougher to sneak into an island, so its indicitive of the problem with cracking down on imigration, the economy seems to have a tendacy to shrivel up when its blood supply gets cut off.