""Want Fries?"

When I was 16 years old, I worked my first regular job; it was a summer job from June to Labor Day in September. I worked a six day work week with Mondays off. I got up at 5:30 AM to get to the bus stop and be at work by 7:00 AM, I was a common laborer at an amusement park called “Riverview Park”, a place that is now considered one of Chicago’s happiest places to be in the 1950s and 1960s. The “Park” closed down in 1967 and that property now houses a police station and some land development.

My job was “grunt work”; sweeping streets, cleaning buildings and any type of heavy lifting that was needed. I came home dirty, sweaty and smelling bad; my days at “Chicago’s Greatest Amusement Park” weren’t much fun for me, but it gave me the salary I needed to pay for my auto insurance and gasoline (24 cents per gallon).

I was paid $1.22 per hour and cleared $67.00 a week, for a 48 hour week! This job taught me a valuable lesson; I didn’t want to spend my life at a job like this one!!

I had friends who worked at a place called “Henry’s Hamburgers”, home of the 15 cent burger, and they made less than I did with the same long hours and distasteful duties; they weren’t planning a career at “Henry’s” either!

Those jobs provided us with spending money, and they also taught us that those jobs were something you did to gain experience in the working world, not a lifetime occupation. None of us needed any special skill to do those jobs, and they could be filled by almost anybody who could walk and chew gum at the same time. Nobody I met at my job was planning to be there for 20 years; that job was just a “rite of passage” in growing up.

Over the last few week,s we have seen people demonstrating in front of some “fast food” restaurants for the cause of raising the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour. I know everybody needs a job, especially in the “Barack Obama Economy”, but this idea won’t help America at all.

McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and KFC can’t operate at a profit by paying that rate to their store employees and maintain the prices they need to remain attractive to the American consumer.

I’m quite sure all of the above companies pay their production workers and delivery drivers quite a bit more than minimum wage, as those jobs require special skills or special training and are meant to be positions to be filled for several years by those skilled employees.

In order for Americans to continue to enjoy the convenience and low cost of “fast food”, the store workers cannot be paid the same as “skilled workers” or their next hamburger will cost them $10.00 and the French Fries will be $6.00. How many of you will continue to frequent those businesses at those prices?

Many of those companies offer educational benefits to employees who wish to better themselves, and some employees take advantage of those programs, but those who don’t, shouldn’t think the company should raise their salary for being stagnant in their jobs.

If you think driving McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and KFC out of business is a good idea, then you should support the $15.00 per hour minimum wage, because it won’t take long for all of those discontented workers to be part of America’s unemployed workers, and there won’t be any raises for anybody.

If you want to get ahead, you have to MOVE UP in your job, not cry about something you are unwilling to change. Nobody should be saying “Do you want fries with that” when they are 55 years old!!