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Perhaps it is my own cynical nature, but when I read stories like this, I have a vision of a disgruntled worker who was probably fired for some other reason, just trying to make her boss look bad. Or, possibly, a bad manager who unjustly fired someone. But that manager isn't exactly in the wealthy class. I wonder how high up the chain this order to fire her came from. I just don't see the McDonalds elites writhing their hands and thinking about how they can fire this worker.
Nowadays, we teach students to try to get the spelling close enough to a spell checker to catch it. I admit that even I rely on that tactic. And the grammar checkers in Word help a lot too. I teach the students to avoid passive voice sentences, and Word underlines them anyway.
We don't have to exchange papers, thanks to Google Docs. Multiple students can collaborate at the same time on a single document. It's pretty cool to see multiple cursers typing away on the same document.
I predict that within ten years even all of this will be archaic. By then, it will all be voice recognition.
Did I mention that, even for my generation, cursive writing is a thing of the past? We were taught it for one year, and it was never enforced. None of my peers use it, and only one of my students uses it. I think she does it just to piss me off, because she knows I have a hard time reading it.
Probably the most useful grammar lesson I teach my students is how to use a semi-colon for something other than a winky-face. ;)
AIW -- So you and Pal are causing ranchers to go broke and have to graze their cattle on govt land to make ends meet.
Pal -- I heard Robert Reich say something yesterday (democracynow interview by Amy Goodman; their in a fund raiser mode so Bob did not actually say it yesterday) say something like what you are saying. He said (from my memory) "political cyncism is ceding to moneyed interests". I just liked it, so I had to share.
As a true believer with a minor in Constitutional law I can say for certainty that I don't like the idea of any kind of sanctioned public prayer. All prayer--of any kind--should be private. It is deeply personal, like sex. It is between the individual and God and should always be kept that way. Not only did Christ himself in the Gospel discourage it, it is completely unconstitutional by law. Furthermore, it places first--even in the arena of like minded believers--the sole perspective of the orator. History has clearly shown that whenever this power is given to one person, it is always misused and usually with disastrous results.
chuckle8: Aha! I found it in #174...good eye. Of course, I shouldn't make fun of someone else (even though he is an English teacher..no one's perfect) because I also make mistakes... like in #183, 2nd paragraph, first sentence "Why would the US be any different any of these other countries?" I left out the word "than". But if I had tried to edit that mistake, after AIW posted, it would have messed up her reference number. So, I let it go. I try to catch these things in the Preview but it seems easier to catch other people's errors than one's own.
That would be a good teaching tactic, perhaps, to have a class retell a story, in writing, on a short story the teacher reads to the class.. just a few paragraphs. Then have them switch papers and have them correct their peers' grammar, punctuation, and spelling with blue colored pencils. Then have the original authors, after the teacher double checks the papers with red colored pencils, rewrite the essays with the corrected papers.
I remember, decades ago, when I was in grade school, the teacher gave the class a test that consisted of reading a very short story, then several multiple choice questions and some fill in the blanks questions. The very first instruction said: "Read through the entire test, and follow the instructions, before continuing." I believe it was a timed test as well. I can't remember what I did, or what any other the other kids did...but I think most of us rushed to read the story and then began filling out the answers. But when we got to the very bottom of the page it said: "Do not answer any of the questions! Just print your name at the top of the paper and turn it in!
Palin, I'm with you on this food thing. Over the past thirty or more years, we've virtually cut red meat out of our diet. We never eat ground meat anymore; other red meat that's not ground up, maybe once a year... if that. My hubby & I eat vegetarian 80-90% of the time, occasionally supplementing our diets with poultry or fish. Much as I hate the higher pricetag, I'm only buying free-range chickens from now on.
Those diseases you've described are a real appetite spoiler; mighty glad I'd eaten breakfast already before reading your post! - AIW
Just an afterthought: If everyone in this country, whether working or not, was guaranteed a basic income, THAT would level the playing field between employers & employees in a heartbeat. These crappy jobs would no longer be a necessity for survival, which would be tremendously empowering to workers. When the incentive is to improve one's standard of living, rather than simply to live, it's much easier to say "Take this job and shove it!" when working conditions suck and the imbalance of power is too much. - AIW
Here's an example of corporate heartlessness:
And before you condemn RT for Communist propaganda..many other US media also reported on this.
http://rt.com/usa/mcdonalds-employee-fired-buying-food-823/
Chi Matt -- Take solace in the fact that for old people (>40) that the incorrect use of their and there is almost 100% of the time a typo.
Okay Matt… if you're going to accuse "my group" of being exclusionary, how about some examples? Empty generalities just don't cut it for me.
Your right-wing cliche' is a crock. Folks who work at places like McDonalds are forced to work... not by a gun to their heads so much as by threat of a slower, more painful demise: homelessness, and/or starvation. They sure aren't doing it to amuse themselves, or to make someone else rich. Marc recently shared his own experience working for McDonald's years ago; he explained how McDonald's and other franchises stiff workers via wage theft, which seems not only abusive to me but criminal as well.
To compare a worker's situation at McDonald's to that of someone working as an independent contractor is a lousy comparison. For example, I am self employed and people hire me to provide a service at their homes. It's a nice simple arrangement, cut & dry, no middlemen and no BS. If they don't agree to my rates, they can either do the work themselves or hire someone else who is willing to do the job at a cheaper price. No one steals my wages or dictates what I am to be paid. It is a totally different kind of arrangement where the power-imbalance is absent. To suggest your house exists to provide jobs for tree trimmers & gutter cleaners "by my logic" is just plain stupid.
People work to live, Matt. Businesses who hire full-time workers and pay poverty wages shouldn't even be in business, in my opinion. The shareholders don't do the work, nor do the CEOs or the business owners do the work. They are making a fortune off the backs of those doing the actual work and paying them so poorly that employees are forced to seek government assistance just to get by. As Marc recently pointed out, our taxes pick up the tab for wages & benefits these rich owners refuse to pay their workers. I too am infuriated by this. So then... who's subsidizing who, Matt? If these franchises exist solely to enrich the owners, shareholders and CEOs, then that is who should be doing the real work. If this isn't an option and the business is dependent upon workers to provide the actual service customers are paying for, they OWE those workers a decent wage; otherwise they are a parasitic, exploitative enterprise that has no right to exist.
You say that businesses aren't created solely for the purpose of providing jobs to people. Fine. But that argument can just as easily get turned around, Matt. Do you think those of us not born into wealth should exist only to be a source of cheap labor for greedy businessmen?
These right-wing cliches are nothing but hogwash, spoon-fed the public by a bunch of self-serving pigs. - Aliceinwonderland
stecoop01: Our forefathers were way outgunned and they succeeded. All of those countries that had revolutions were way out weaponized and they succeeded. All of those more modern countries like Iran, Libya, Egypt..a few that come to mind but there are many others...have overthrown their corrupt governments who had superior weaponry and police and soldiers. Even Rome, who conquered half the known world and who had superior weapons, failed to hold it together when those "hordes" overthrew the empire. And the many slaves had no loyalties to their abusers. When masses of people overwhelm the relatively few, no matter how well armed, empires fall. And that's why THEY, the ruling elite, needs to keep us believing that we won't stand a chance.
Why would the US be any different any of these other countries? Maybe because they have not reached a high point of intolerance or pain of being screwed? Not quite anyway. Maybe tomorrow? Just let the prices of everything shoot through the ceiling...especially food.
If the government was going to imprison or kill people who stood up to them, why didn't they do so at the Bundy ranch? Unless, what Loren Bliss says is true: "The alleged retreat may be an act of accommodation and alliance rather than an act of surrender". After all, there are militia spread all over the country and the so-called "Oath Keepers" are former, or present, military who "swore to protect the US from all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC". And if they believe that the "US" is the people of the US and not the corrupt politicians and their criminal ruling elite puppet masters then they will stand against the real enemies of the US and not against the people who are rebelling against those tyrannical forces.
I can see your point. From what I could find online (in the last three minutes), there are 900,000 McDonalds shareholders, or, to put it another way, one shareholder for every two workers. Of course, you were talking about the MAJOR shareholders, and not all McDonalds workers are minimum-wage workers. They do have a corporate office, about 20 miles west of me, that pays descent wages. But anyway...
Right now, there are 989 million McDondalds shares out, at a price of $101 each. Assuming, somehow, that everyone was forced to sell their shares at that $101 price, (which wouldn't work because the price would drop once they started selling), but just assuming they could, that would be a payout of close to 100-billion. Divided equally among the 1.9 million McDondalds employees, that's about $55,000 each. My math might be a little off. So I guess that would benefit those workers. If that ever came to pass.
I agree. I'd put the threshold way the hell up there though, at like $50 million. After that, a 75% income tax.
Thom once floated the idea of taxing stock transactions, like one cent per 100 shares traded. That seems fair.
I wish it were feasable to have a zero-percent sales tax on anything made in the USA, to help people "vote with their wallet". I could have saved thousands in sales tax on my Toyota, which was actually more made-in-America than most Fords, or so they told me.
DAnneMarc: Thank you, now I know. I was thinking mostly from the side of a consumer who only sees the paper and plastic dishes, utensils and cups they give us to eat and drink from. Obviously, I've never worked in a fast food restaurant...or any restaurant. No one thinks of how those cows are slaughtered and cut up...or the very messy and probably very unsanitary conditions in which their food is handled...including maggots and bacteria or dangerous proteins like BSE (Bovine Spongiform encephalopathy--ie: "Mad Cow Disease")** ...when they bite into a juicy burger. There is no cure for CJD. Once you get it...you just lose motor control and shake, like Parkinsons Disease, until you die.
By the way, you may even be eating cancerous meat. Seems they were butchering cows that had cancer and instead of disposing of the cows, they would just cut out the most obvious cancerous tumors and then added the rest of the meat to the meat they sold to the public. Cancerous cells do migrate to other parts of the body and show no signs of cancer in those areas when they first get there.
This is news from yesterday about the Petaluma, CA problem.
http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2014/05/02/bad-meat-investigation/
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** By the way...BSE is a prion (or mis-folded protein) that eats holes in the brain and nervous system. That protein has also been found in other red-meat animals and even in humans. Humans get that disease by eating animals that have that protein in their meat and it is then called CJD (Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease). Farmers have even used the ground up carcasses of diseased animals to feed other animals that were then sold as meat to the public. You can't even cook the meat well enough to destroy that protein...not even "well-done". You'd have to turn the meat to ashes in order to destroy that protein. I certainly wouldn't trust our slaughterhouses, nor the regulatory agencies, to keep this very dangerous disease out of the meat we eat. They always seem to catch these things after it goes to market and people get sick or die. I believe it is because to implement strict laws and procedures and government overseers (inspectors) we would have to have honest people who are not bought off by profit mongers. I wonder how all those politicians and SCROTUS judges would like it if tons of diseased carrion were to be dumped on the steps of the Crapitol or the Stupreme Court?
Nothing was done in the days of Upton Sinclair until Theodore Roosevelt read his book The Jungle and then sat down to a steak dinner. I understand TR actually threw his steak dinner out of the White House window after he had read The Jungle. But maybe that's just an urban legend?
I'm one of the people. So are the other 60 million or so people who voted for Romney (not that I did). So are the other millions of people who lean to the Right on issues. Your group of people seems pretty exclusionary.
That's why I'm all for more government regulation of the food industry. I want labels that tell me what exact farm the produce or meat came from, so I can make better choices with my health and my money.
This will probably go down as a right-wing cliche, but there is some truth to it: No one is forcing anyone to work at those places.The owners hire people to make money for the owners. If that person isn't making money, they get fired. That doesn't seem all that wrong to me.
From time to time, I hire people to do work around my house. We agree on a price, they do the service, and I pay them. If they don't do the service, they don't get paid. They aren't forced to do it. The house is my posession (just like McDonalds is the possession of the shareholders and franchise owners), and I hire people to help me with it. Based on your logic, my house actually exists to provide jobs for the tree trimmer/ window installer / and gutter people I hired within the last year.
I don't think anyone would really care. If Ann Arbor, Michigan, which has a large Muslim population, wants to start off a council meeting by asking Allah for guidance, good for them.
The Supreme Court said that the prayer can't put down another group (so no saying "people who don't believe are wrong".) And the prayer can't be preachy (so no saying Jesus/Muhammed/Budda/whoever loves you/is the only way/ etc...)
So what you CAN say is something like, "(The diety of choice for the majority of people in the room), please guide us."
That seems like a good compromise.
Matt, Matt, Matt… here we go again. You conservatives are so damn condescending. "In an ideal world…."
Hey, you don't need an "ideal world", or a "Utopia", for every student to have a great school to go to. All you need is a government that actually represents the people, and prioritizes what is best for the people, to have great schools. It's all about priorities, Matt. Not about living in some fantasy lah-lah-land. And by the way, I don't believe our tax money should be paying for private schools, or private anything.
On to the next topic! "But is the goal to bring down the CEO", you ask, "or bring up the workers?" I hate to answer a question with a question, but in turn I have to ask, why "either-or"? The answer is…. BOTH. Bring up the workers, and bring down the CEO to a more reasonable level of compensation! Not so complicated now, is it?
I think the purpose of McDonald's is to pamper the franchise owners and CEOs with excessive pay on the backs of the working poor, while feeding the public maggot-infested, chemical-laced crap disguised as food.
Just remember, Matt: you are what you eat. Bon appetit! - Aliceinwonderland
"SCrOTUmS"…. I love it! Brilliant, Mark! Take a bow.
Just for laughs, try to imagine government-sponsored Muslim prayers. What's good enough for the goose…. Get my drift? - AIW
"Ste", I refuse to be intimidated by those fascist goddam pigs with all their weaponry and military thuggery. They can just kiss my royal ass.
Not having been alive in the 1930s, let alone in Germany, I can only speculate. But there has to be similarities: mass propaganda, jingoism, martial law, kidnap & torture - (excuse me: "extraordinary rendition"... tsk-tsk) - racism & sexism on steroids, class warfare, fear mongering, bullying on the world stage... Need I go on? I can, but I won't. - Aliceinwonderland
I would back any thing you suggest.
Hold your horses there, dear Alice - with all the weaponry our military possesses, mass executions would make prisons unneccesary.
Does anyone else see the similarties to the rise of Nazism in 1930's Germany???
Funding for national security and laws like the NDAA require whipping up national insecurity! The boogeyman terrorists win again, and without lifting a finger. The real terrorism is climate change and climate terrorists like ALEC and the Kochs are at it again with demanding a tax on solar energy.
The Carbon Barons are taking down the planet and our government is too busy getting manipulated by the military industrial spy complex to do anything about it.....
There wasn't a machine at mine - just a sink. I was the machine. I think I hated it so much because, per usual, the sink was too short for me and it hurt my back to lean over the whole time I washed them.
While we're on the subject of McDonalds - About 15 years ago I heard a lot of talk about engines that would run on fry grease. Suddenly you started seeing chains grease dumpsters behind the restaurants - presumably to keep people from stealing that grease. They claimed that the only downside was car exhaust that smelled like french fries, which seems like a bonus to me! But as quickly as I heard about it, it disappeared.
Palindromedary ~ A dishwasher at McDonalds doesn't necessarily include "dishes." You are looking at all frying utensils and cooking ware, baskets, trays, and filters. They all have to be rinsed at a specific temperature and then placed in a specific dish washer machine. One of my jobs--during my stint--was as dishwasher. The result enabled me to greatly appreciate the job of dishwasher; especially, when eventually given the job of dishwasher from a real family operated 'mom and pops' restaurant later in my internship. I could have stayed there for life. lol. In comparison, the job was a piece of cake.