Fry cooks
Fry cooks
432 comments
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All labor is skilled labor.
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Yes, but some labor, like McDonalds fry cooks, is also skillet labor.
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Well then some labor, like working in certain music industries, is also Skrillex labor.
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Mom said to bring home some chicken nuggets.
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All jobs are equal but some jobs are more equal than others.
On a more serious note:
Of course all labor requires some level of basic human capability and as such must pay a living wage. But there is very much a distinction you can draw, based on the amount of training required to perform a job accurately and safely without supervision, and how much background knowledge is required to go above and beyond the daily work, e.g. to respond to emergencies or to further develop e is ting procedures.
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Guys desperate to put himself above another, with the delusion of throwing shit in a box being skilled labor, instead of standing in solidarity with the mcdonalds worker and demanding more for both of them
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If he thinks packing boxes is skilled labor, then flipping burgers is also skilled labor.
It's just not specialized, and doesn't require any certification or further education. Which would command the premium he's thinking of.
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All labor is skilled labor. Can you think of any job that doesn't require learning some sort of skill(s)? It's just an arbitrary designation intended to justify low wages.
I'm highly educated but you couldn't just stick me into a traditionally "unskilled" roles for which I have neither experience nor training and expect me to function. I'd crash and burn because jobs require the development and utilization of... wait for it...skills.
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More reasonably: failed to use /s
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All labor is skilled labor, but packing boxes sure as shit isn't more skill than a short order cook.
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I'll do you one in reverse: all labor can be represented in the unskilled labor required to recreate it. If unskilled labor is x, and skilled labor is 2x, skilled is just a higher quantity of unskilled labor as expressed per hour.
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Every skill is different from others qualitatively, not ranked hierarchically, one above or below another.
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I get what you're saying, but calling any position a cook at McDonald's is uhh...generous.
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Don't let that question distract you from how he illustrates her point: the capitalists get away with exploitation by distracting workers into fighting among ourselves. It's so easy for them: even in this thread everyone sails right past this main point into arguing about whether an Amazon warehouse worker or a McDonald's cook should earn more.
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I would add, though, the deeper observation, that among the means of imposing division is the constructed distinction and terminology embodied by "unskilled labor".
The concern for workers is not which worker belongs in which category, nor even which categories should be given and how they should be named, but rather, how to challenge both the distinction and also the processes and conditions from which it emerges.
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2023, words mean anything you want them to mean and the only thing that is real is our outrage. That's why a cardiologist is just as skilled as someone stacking boxes.
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The meanings of terms are often determined and enforced socially through particular systems that carry power in society.
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Sure as hell is if the company needs it to happen
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TIL packing boxes is skilled labor
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Everything is skilled labour. For 99% of jobs you couldn't roll up and be proficient at it without training or practice.
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But correct me if I am wrong, but in my country skilled labor means you have to have a relevant formal education to qualify for the job, (in addition to getting training on the job which is inevitable).
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Yeah, but not all jobs offer training on-site.
If you're an unskilled worker, you're only eligible for unskilled positions, i.e. ones that don't require outside training.
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Came to say this. It's hard labor, sure, but it's probably the least skilled job there is.
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I think (choose to believe) the original tweet is satire.
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Oh yeah, calling box packing skilled labor can't not be satire.
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we are in the post-poe era.
Satire is dead.
Reality is far more ridiculous than satire could have ever hoped to be.
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Since when is packing boxes a skilled labor?
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I think that's the joke
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Everything's a skilled Labor job if you use your imagination hard enough.
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It does get easier, though.
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I rather a dude handling my food get paid better than someone touching cardboard.
No balls ony food is preferred over no balls on my Amazon packages.
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But what if we could have both?
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Think of the shareholders!
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Extra cheese flavor all around!
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This is the American way though isn't it? Push downward instead of moving upward. If flipping burgers is easier than packing boxes, and makes you the same money, why not quit at Amazon and start flipping burgers at McDonald's?
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The idea is that apparently it is not necessarily easier to flip burgers, but it requires less skill and training/education than picking items from warehouse shelves and putting them in a cardboard box.
I've never worked in a warehouse, but I'd assume there's no significant difference between the two tasks when it comes to education or training. I'd be pretty pissed off if the guys at McDonald's were paid the same as me, but I've spent years at university and accumulated some debt along the way.
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Having done both, this is pots & kettles being pissed at each other for boiling water. Flipping burgers and packing boxes are both trivially easy on their face, and the hard parts of both jobs are accuracy, speed, and figuring out how to get your job done when your capitalist overlords have erased your support staff and passed their jobs on to you.
It's really easy to flip burgers. It's fucking hard to take orders, flip burgers, make drinks, and keep the fryer rolling by yourself while also doing freezer pulls to keep everything running.
It's really easy to throw shit in boxes. It's fucking hard to throw shit in boxes when you've been standing for 10 hours on your day off because of mandatory overtime, none of your equipment is maintained, none of the shit you're supposed to be packing is where it belongs, and your management who are supposed to make sure that shit gets taken care of are busy sexually assaulting the 18 year old new hires.
Everybody's jobs suck and corporate skeleton crews are making it worse. The average $15/hr worker in 2023 is doing 3 to 4 workers jobs from 2019. Eat the rich, Unionize, etc...
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Pissed at who, is the question
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I’d be pretty pissed off if the guys at McDonald’s were paid the same as me, but I’ve spent years at university and accumulated some debt along the way.
But for some reason nobody gets pissed when someone whose whole actual job was to fall out of the right va jay jay and directly into the ivy leagues gets paid much more (100x in most cases) what they do to blabber on phone calls about market share or whatever.
McDonald's workers aren't the problem at all and nothing about the labor market changes substantially by them being able to afford diapers.
We have wealth hording dragons in this country ruining the whole thing with their wrath and greed and yet everyone's pissed that some serf got an extra ball of cheese this week.
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The tasks are quite different, and so is the training.
Each skill is different, not higher or lower, or greater or lesser, than another.
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Why not punch upward, to help fight the powers that punch down on everyone from their heights?
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I don't see anyone arguing for this here.
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I’ve never worked in fast food but I’ve been to them and I’ve watched the workers. You can’t tell me packing boxes at Amazon is skilled labor and that shit isn’t.
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Seems a lot of the comments are focused on debating the word ‘skill’ applied to each job while another capitalist gets off free while infighting amongst people who should be supporting each other in a shit world that capitalism built and benefits off of.
Enshitification is where there’s a CEO somewhere that fucks everyone over and remains untouched.
That person really should be the focus of hate here.
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Maybe it should be considered that the amazon worker in the picture would be able to go to his boss and say 'I could go flip burgers at McDonalds for the same as what you pay me, I want a rise'.
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They should absolutely take it upon themselves to go to their boss for their rise. Would be even better if they back off attacking someone who flips burgers and is allowed a living wage to do so. It is unnecessary to kick down.
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Enshitification is where there’s a CEO somewhere that fucks everyone...
That person really should be the focus of hate here.
Speaking of which, why is some waged labor characterized as "skilled", and other not?
How has such a construct become entrenched, and in what context has it been utilized?
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A legal definition stating that special training/experience/certifications is required for that job, vs "routine" job functions.
For the guy at Amazon this could be fork lift certs, equipment certs, etc For the McDobalds worker this could be hazardous job training for chemicals, hot work, food prep/food handling training/culinary training, and maintaining the equipment.
Note, both could have job responsibilities "beyond the normal range".
That is what is intended by the "skilled" description.
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Seems to me like "skilled labor" is some job that cannot be quickly and easily learned by new workers. (Build me a shed is a little less intuitive than grill me a hamburger)
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So long as you get hung up on the catch phrases, those will be the easiest goal posts that get switched.
Just watch, tomorrow it’ll be defined by ‘how much more dangerous’ a job is to create the same infighting rift.
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Indeed, in a nominally free-market system, it would be completely irrelevant how much ‘skill’ is involved in a job. All that would matter for pay level is how much money the worker brings in. In an actually-free-market system, it would matter, because companies would have to compete on price, and they could lower their prices by paying less for skills available in abundance.
We don’t have a free-market system of any stripe. We have capitalism, in which the capitalists have been extracting record profits from the efforts of workers at company after company, while real pay has been stuck at the same level for decades. Neither he pay at McDonald’s nor the pay at Amazon reflect skill of the workers or the value they create for the company. It reflects only what the company can get away with.
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Packing boxes is not skilled labor.
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There's no such thing as unskilled labor. I guarantee you that dude is better than you are at packing boxes. That's known as "skill"
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There is definitely such a thing as jobs that take lots of book learning and tests to get, and jobs anyone can get by applying for them. This semantic fight of "No such thing as unskilled labor" is just going to make people call it something new and politically correct, but it won't change reality.
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Skilled labor is something that you need outside training in order to do.
When someone is an 'unskilled worker,' it means they're only eligible for positions that train them.
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If you can master it in a week it isn't a skill. You are redefining the word to make it so broad it is useless to make some ideological point. Also given what I see with Amazon boxes I doubt they can in fact pack better than I can.
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This commenter's never had top score on Tetris
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The only, truly, skilled labor.
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Have you ever received an Amazon package? They are not masters of Tetris
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Also, I'm not entirely sure that putting an item that a machine gives you into a box that the machine tells you to put it in requires more skill than working at McDonald's.
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I don’t really feel great about making fun of the skill needed for low paid jobs. I’m sure it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Edit: there is a left leaning argument that the label of “low skill labor” is used as a cudgel to justify low wages. If you think it’s so easy, try picking fruit for a season. An experienced fruit picker with years of experience will be many times more productive than a newbie.
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Both jobs are difficult and worthy of respect, Neither are what you would traditionally consider skilled labor.
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I would actually argue that the workers at the burger place have the harder job, because they would actually have to deal with people more and people tend to suck on terms of respect for those in lower-income jobs
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I worked at BK in a dark time of my life. It was physically and mentally demanding. You had to memorize the order of every ingredient of every burger and assemble them in the least possible time and there were themed burgers or some shit so you had to re-learn from time to time. Wasn't exactly un-demanding mentally. From time to time I had to re-arrange big packages in the cold storage for hours. Fun times. Very hectic and demanding job.
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It's not making fun of at all. Skilled jobs are the kind of jobs you need to learn a specific skill to do, E.g building contractor. Unskilled jobs are jobs that are simple enough that almost anyone can do, E.g. flipping burgers or packing boxes.
No matter what kind of job it is, the employee MUST be compensated for their work fairly and be given adequate measures such as annual or sick leave to ensure that they remain healthy while working.
I'd rather a system where an employee can vote their bosses out of the job so that the bosses end up working for the employees rather than the other way around. A salary isn't a gift and neither is labour.
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Agreed
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Every job is easy and that's why he wants someone else to do it instead of doing it himself.
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It's not "skilled" labor.
You need zero skills to work at Amazon.
That being said, you will learn things if you stay long enough.
Skilled labor is like a trade or where you need a specific education. I'm not even sure you need a HS diploma to work at Amazon.
Source: me, working in an Amazon FC
But yes the point of her reply is also very apt. Class solidarity friends. If you're single making <55k or whatever the median income in your area is, there's not a whole hella lotta difference regardless.
But I'll also say this. There's a lot of mfers that do MUCH less work at desk jobs, and in fact are entirely redundant and unnecessary, compared to a fry cook or Amazon tier1 employes.
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There's no such thing as unskilled labor.
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Why do think that learning things is different from gaining skills?
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Fry cook or box packer. He upset he picked a harder job?
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Did he tho? I've cooked and dealt with customers and I've packed boxes and packing boxes feels wayyyyy easier to me
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You're good at packing, some folk are better with customers. It's a skill. And it's skilled labor.
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Grass is always greener.
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Ehh. Both have their challenges. I think it's difficult to say.
What I'm fairly sure of, is that he thinks he's worth more than a fry cook.
He's not upset that the fry cook world be making more, he's upset that he would no longer be making more than a fry cook.
The problem of him thinking his job is more skilled than a fry cook, is entirely another issue that I'm not going to get into.
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I like how everyone is upset with the "skilled work" part. But nobody did the calculation, that with Bezos pay and 16 dollars per hour, you could hire 562500 Workers. Which I think is crazy
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But Bezos' earnings are in addition to what Amazon uses for personnel expenditures, so that's not instead of, it's in addition to the number of people Amazon already can and does employ. Something like ~1.5 million employees, though that includes higher paid employees as well as the warehouse and delivery personnel.
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I think the relevance of the observation relates to how the business's income is distributed among all those receiving some share.
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You can hire way more than that, people don't work 24/7, but I assume Bezos' income in this post isn't based on a peasant workweek.
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That is actually pretty nuts.
Imagine having half a million people working under you, and you don't even need them to turn a profit.
Leave first world nations, and you become a god. Not sure why more billionaires don't do that.
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It's much less than that with benefits and taxes but still probably 200k+
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I'm so over the use of "checks notes" for emphasis. for every entertaining way of making commentary there are thousands of boring copies.
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For some reason it's one of the acceptable "le Epic roleplay" sayings that people tolerate. I see it the same as the litany of other ones that aren't, like "I put on my robe and wizard hat" or "rawrs at you" or whatever.
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checks notes rawr xD
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🗒️🗒️
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It doesn't even make sense to say it in this context. They don't understand what it means at all, they just mindlessly spouted it off like a robot.
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Lol at calling packing boxes skilled labour
That is way easier than working at McDonald’s
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Skill and difficulty are not the same.
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Brother how you gonna diss on spongebob like this?
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Right? I've seen my dude straight sling them crab pats out the window with gusto. Mf even came in talking about how ready he was. Unstoppable.
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Way to get played by the big man. Making you fight amongst yourselves.
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If it cost less to use machines to pack those boxes, you know they would be using machines and not people.
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one of the issues with using robots to pack boxes is you can only assign 1 robot to one product. You can't use the same robot to pack potato chips and boxes of cat litter. It'll either crush the chips or not be able to pick up the box.
Same if the same SKU has two different packaging options: bag and box.
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They already have, IIRC, 2 warehouses that are entirely robotic (they are testing facilities for a full robotic workforce) except for the humans that perform maintenance on said robots. They have the means to generalize the packing robots. But it's more expensive than a person still, as well as there still being some bugs in their specific system.
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This is where I tell you that they actually made a fully automated McDonald's.
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Heck, even the ones with people I've worked in are mostly automated. The people are just glorified hoppers, filling the machine and taking out the finished product. Even the grills have these big press like things that allow the meat patties to be cooked on both sides and not have to flipped! The position of "burger flipper" may not technically exist depending on the kitchen tech being used at any given location. lol
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Working class fighting among each other and Rich enjoy the benefits.
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Rich normalizing constructs that the working class assimilates despite the harm it causes to workers.
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It’s really helps the system when our capitalist overlords give us someone to look down on though. People who get sucked in by the propaganda will fight when some is trying to take that from them.
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The more I see something like this, the less I understand how it is USSR that fell apart first.
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"Skilled work", please.
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Image Transcription:
X/Twitter post by a redacted user with a profile picture of a man wearing a Santa Claus hat reading "I make $16hr packing boxes at the Amazon distribution center. I'll be damned if the niggas that's flipping burgers make as much money as me doing skilled labor."
A response by a redacted user with a red-haired woman as their profile picture reads "Bezos makes $150,000/minute and pays you $16/hr but you're mad at checks notes McDonald's fry cooks?"
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜 We have a community! If you wish for us to transcribe something, want to help improve ease of use here on Lemmy, or just want to hang out with us, join us at !lemmy_scribes@lemmy.world!]
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As a human, you've probably made a lot of mistakes, but that's okay as long as you learn from them and they didn't hurt anyone.
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If the skill set you offer is in demand and the pool of people is too small to meet demand you make a lot of money for that skill set. If the skill set you offer doesn't require much, something that anyone can easily pickup, and the pool of people to pick from is over saturated -- you get paid less for that skill set.
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This isn't true in practice.
In actual reality, instead of hopeful, idealized economic bibble bobble, even skilled or in demand professionals get underpaid because the magical market for labor everyone conjures up in their mind palaces doesn't actually exist, and corporations collude constantly to suppress wages and even steal them.
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What about business owner or landlord?
What kind of skill is it to just be rich and have everyone else do the work for you?
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Skilled labour != Valueable labour
I have a ton of useless skills.
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Care work is just about as useless and unskilled as any, taking as the guide how work is valorized under current systems.
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432 comments
I'm confused, does he actually think a box packer is skilled labor or is this just a whoosh from the girl.
Warehouse fulfillment is skilled labor. Fast food work is skilled labor. I'm having a hard time thinking of an example of a truly unskilled labor job.
Skilled labor is economists jargon, so the meaning of it does not match the dictionary definition.
No one is saying there is literally no skill involved in unskilled labor.
Landlord
Warehouse fulfillment and fast food. It takes little education and training. I can be doing it in a week. Tops.
It's far harder and longer timeframe replacing an engineer for example.
Walmart door greeter, maybe?
I guess one thing I learned reading this thread, there are very few unskilled jobs nowadays.
Maybe old time admin assistants just collating papers, making copies, etc but even then those are really just unskilled tasks moreso than an unskilled job. They also had appointments to set up, calendars and rolodexes to manage, organization, etc.
I think any unskilled job can be made skilled labour if you're thoughtful about how you do it, and do it well.
Whatever job Eminem had in 8 Mile on the Up/Down button machine?
I'd asume some of the jobs where you just test meds all day doesent require any skill
Skilled labor requires a degree, unskilled labor does not.
The only one I can think of is the guy that carries the nitroglycerin into the train tunnel when they're digging it.
It's so unskilled that if you mess up, you die and don't even learn a lesson. The job is literally walk without splashing this liquid.
This job doesn't exist anymore. Human rights and all, but a lot of train tunnels are coated in the blood of "unskilled labor".
All skilled labor can be represented by the unskilled labor required to recreate it, ie training.
Skilled labor meaning it took more than a twenty minute introduction for the job. If the guy flipping burgers can cook multiple burgers at multiple Temps, than that would classify as skilled labor. They guy that drops the fries in the fryer and just has to wait for the ding, not skilled labor. Another example, a welder who knows how the mixture of gas affects the welds, skilled labor. It's knowledge of why and how to get to the end result rather than following basic instructions just because that's what you were told.
Fruit picker, maybe? I know it's physically hard but is that skilled?
So to you what is the difference between a job that requires years of experience to become fully capable vs a job you can pick up and learn within a couple of minutes/hours/days?
You gonna pay your plumber the same as a fry cook?
A nuclear safety engineer as much as a cashier?
Cardiac Surgery M.D. the same as a box packer at an amazon distribution center?
Teacher the same as a universal basic income recipient?
Your fry order being wrong means nothing, the business owner pays for it to be replaced.
The cashier may scan an item twice or miss scanning an item but the nuclear safety engineer stopped that worker who was careless from dying due to radiation exposure.
The cardiac surgery M.D. gave your mom a new heart letting her live another 25 years but with a simple mistake instead she dies on the operating table and the insurance they pay for covers the inevitable malpractice lawsuit. The amazon box packer packs the wrong item so the recipient at worst asks for a replacement, and the business owner replaces the item if it's a private seller or provides a refund - or amazon ships a brand new one at their expense.
The teacher helped you understand basic concepts of mathematics, geometry, physics, biological processes... the UBI recipient rents their flat in Strasbourg at no cost.
When your definition of skilled labor is basic cognition ability then apparently no labor requires advanced knowledge of concepts that are difficult to understand and the risk undertaken has no tangible value. It's fine if the cardiac surgeon shows up drunk or high because the fry cook could without anyone losing their life, right? After all, their labor isn't valuable- anybody can do it because it's just skilled labor on par with packing boxes.
People are paid based on outcomes of their role and the amount of competition there is in that labor segment. Nurses right now, especially the ones that deal with the real messy cases are an excellent example of great pay and benefits due to a shortage of workers in markets where there is demand (e.g. population centers where nurses are needed.)
Software developers can make 250k++ - why isn't everyone just doing that? it's nearly free to learn (need internet and a basic computer) and building a portfolio just requires learning a skill and practicing it. You don't even need to leave the house. Packing boxes is way harder on your body. Cooking fries or dealing with customers is way messier and no one wants to really do those gigs... so why not just dev? isn't it an easy "skilled labor"?
No, he thinks it's more work. More work but he was paid slightly more until fast food workers got the bump.
Someone should tell him the harder you work the less people seem to make unless it's something very specialized.
All Labor is Skilled Labor.
Ask Bezos to work in one of his own warehouses. Ask him to flip burgers. See how long he lasts before he is asked to leave.
Nah nah I agree my guy, but your getting caught up on the social definition. The guy who made the statement, legitimately thinks it takes significantly more skill to pack a box than to flip a burger. Like his definition of unskilled labor just unapologetically includes everyone below him, and all he does is pack fucking boxes. It's GOTTA be satire.
I think this is an example of how much the upper crust has done to divide the main ingredients.
Whooosh? I don't know, but I know what I want to believe.