Ex-McDonald’s CEO says raising the minimum wage will help robots take jobs

[SheilaT]

66. This is a justification or what's already happening.

Former airline employee here. I started as a ticket agent at DCA (Washington National Airport) in January, 1969. Even then, the common rumor was that in the very near future there would be only four major airlines.

Okay, so lots of mergers have happened in the almost fifty years since then, but more to the point is this: by the late 1970's there was already evidence that the airlines had figured out ways to minimize the human factor. And you see it now: Most of you make your reservations on line. And you check in on line, or at a kiosk at the airport. How convenient. But that is EXACTLY why when things go belly up, when flights are delayed or cancelled because of weather or maintenance or because someone prefers to play pinochle to actually working, there are only a fraction of the humans available that should be there to deal with the vast numbers of stranded or inconvenienced passengers.

I can tell you that even back before the computers, we NEVER had enough staff to deal with delays or cancellations. It's only gotten worse since then.

I worked during the entire 1970's. At DCA. National Airport. Which is still there almost entirely because members of Congress find it incredibly convenient. They can make a roll call vote and be at the airport fifteen minutes later. I have no idea if this is still true, but one of the dirty secrets of my time there was that yes, sometimes a flight was delayed so that Congressman or Senator Dipshit could make his flight. It didn't happen very often, if it ever really did. I can go on record as saying in my ten years on the job I don't ever recall that happening with my airline. I cannot speak for any other airline.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. By the late 1970's the prospect of some sort of electronic check-in at the airport was rearing its ugly head. I actually left the job before this happened. But I continued to fly, as a passenger, and saw the creeping, encroaching computerization, or whatever you might call it. For a while I used a travel agent to book my flights. Time passed, and I started booking my flights on line. It was so convenient. At that time I'd check in at the airport, get my boarding pass there. After a while, I'd check in at a kiosk at the airport. These days, like most people who fly, I not only book my flight on line, but I check in on line, even to the extent of letting the airline know how many pieces of luggage I'll be checking. It's wonderfully convenient. But it means that the airline employs a lot fewer people than they used to. As a passenger, I don't give a flying fuck. Unless I'm caught in a major winter storm where a lot of flights are delayed, and others are cancelled. At that point I want to be able to talk to a human being who can re-book me.

I can assure you, it was bad enough back in the day, by which I mean the decade in which I worked, 1969-1979. When things went bad there were never enough of us. There were times when those of us on the afternoon shift -- meaning we were scheduled off between 10pm and 11pm -- called up morning shift around 3am and asked them if they'd be willing to come in early so that we could go home. DCA did not operate 24 hours back then, and yes, that really happened. And this was with a reasonable staffing, long before computerized check in.

Much earlier than that, in 1969, I recall a supervisor commenting that our airline (at the time a small, regional one based out of upstate New York) should staff National Airport (DCA) more than some other stations, as this was the nation's capital, and we should be upholding a certain standard of service. He was right, of course. And of course the airline didn't staff that station any more than any other station. Customer service be damned.

This is only a small window into the entire problem of staffing and customer service. I noticed many years ago, back in those airline days, that the people making decisions about things like staffing have never themselves worked the front lines, have never actually dealt with the customers, haven't a clue what really goes in to the day to day operations of the company.

Some years later I took a few business courses at a local university. One of the truly horrifying things I learned was that in the world of business, all industries were considered fungible, that is that one business was essentially the same as any other. So if you learned to run a dairy farm, for instance, you could also run a women's retail clothing conglomerate. There was no sense whatsoever that any industry or company was significantly from any other. I knew better.

When I started in the airline industry, every airline was still being run by the second generation of men who'd started them. Some of them had started as baggage loaders, and now were presidents, but in any case they'd all been around since the very beginning or very shortly thereafter, and knew where the industry had come from, and probably where it was headed.

By the late 1970's the upper management had been taken over by people who had MBAs. The very same people who'd been told if you can run one business, you can run any other. And they'd never worked a gate or the ramp loading airplanes, and they sure as hell had never written a ticket or checked in a real passenger. Which is essentially why air travel totally sucks today.

I saw the deterioration in the late 1970s, when executives were more and more protected from the realities of the industry. It's only gotten worse.

And so we come to the CEO of McDonald's, who sincerely doesn't think the front line employees need anything close to $15/hour. He has NEVER worked in an actual McDonald's. More to the point, he has NEVER tried to live on minimum wage.

Were I dictator of North America, I would sentence every single person to live for at least six months on minimum wage. Any shorter time doesn't fully uncover what it is like.

Back when I was an airline employee, and making reasonably better than minimum wage, I still had to count my pennies and dimes very carefully. I can recall quite vividly assembling change so that I could buy a meal. And I was, at the risk of repeating myself, making better than minimum wage.