Can we not, PLEASE.

Heeeey. Hey hey. Still here. Just hanging out. And I have a (mildly) entertaining post to share, but first, I need to rant briefly.

I just read this article about fast food workers demanding to make $15 an hour, and I've had it up to here (picture me holding my hand up to my eyeballs) with these types of debates. Do fast food workers deserve $15 an hour? Maybe, maybe not. Probably not. However, I'm SO SICK of hearing the argument, "Do fast food workers think they deserve to make more than dental assistants?!! How about emergency medical technicians?!!!"

Hang on. Stop calling other people idiots for a second, and think about what you're saying.

Fast food workers don't think they deserve to make more than the people who arrive in ambulances and save your grandmother from having her remains eaten by her cat after falling in her hallway. Well, maybe some of them do. And they're wrong. But that's not what this argument is about.

The argument is about the fact that everybody deserves to be able to afford to live. And living has become very, very expensive. Nobody, no matter what their job involves doing, should have to work 40 hours a week and still worry about how they're going to keep their electricity from being shut off or how they're going to pay for their next meal. Just because fast food workers are saying that they deserve to make $15 an hour doesn't mean that they think dental assistants deserve to be making less than that. Nobody's saying that. At least nobody with half a brain. This is about wages needing to be raised in general, not about fast food workers thinking they deserve to make more than the guy suffering through your halitosis while scraping 6 months worth of grime off of your teeth.

I understand your point. I honestly do. If you raise EVERYONE'S wages, cost of living will just become higher, and it perpetuates a vicious cycle. I get that. Someone has to make the least amount of money. This isn't communist China. But maybe if you're trying to make a point, stop being an insulting asshole. Working in the fast food industry might not be an important job, per se, but neither is being a professional athlete or a fashion designer. And for the love of all that is holy, stop saying that fast food work is easy. Working in the fast food industry is among the most miserable, dirty, thankless jobs out there. It's awful. You're on your feet for hours and hours at a time, getting screamed at by the worst of the worst in society, scraping god knows what out of god knows where, you smell like fryer grease 100% of the time (and so does your house and your car, most likely), and you have to deal with constantly being looked down upon by people like the asshole that wrote that article and 80% of the people on my Facebook feed. All of the people complaining about fast food workers demanding a pay raise are the same people bitching that people on welfare need to go out and find a job (newsflash: the majority of people on government assistance HAVE jobs), and now that they have, you're demeaning them for the type of job they have and are saying that they need to find a BETTER job or quit bitching. That's pretty shitty and elitist, guys. And I'm a shitty, elitist person.

My first job was working at Burger King for 2 years, and it was pretty terrible. It's not just about twirling your hair around your finger and pushing buttons. My current job (where I make well over double what I made when working in fast food) is about 50 million times easier than working in fast food was, and honestly doesn't require that much more intelligence. And yeah, I was a hard worker, and there are shitty fast food workers who are lazy and don't give a damn about their jobs. But there are shitty workers in almost every industry, and the majority of people I worked with at Burger King were hard working people who were just trying to get by.

Listen, I'm the first to admit that I'm a bleeding heart liberal, and I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the fast food workers here. I'm just really, really tired of everyone being so terrible. I don't know when it became socially acceptable to just constantly spout hateful sentiment and completely uneducated opinions on social media, but that's basically all I see on Facebook these days, other than get-rich-quick scams and annoying self promotion. If you have an opinion, that's awesome. Definitely share it. But know what the fuck you're talking about first, and maybe try not to insult other people just for the sake of being a dick. People will take you way more seriously.