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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

I'm most surprised that they have this whole system for how drive-thru interactions should go. Positive tone. Saying "you rule" like their exceedingly-irritating television commercials. Like... what if you don't? "If you don't follow the four Sales Best Practices, you're gonna be flippin' burgers for a living. Oh. Well. Oh." They're getting paid $6 an hour. The microphone/speaker system can't reproduce audio to an extent where a customer could ever be sure if you said "you rule" or that your tone is positive. They are thrilled if at least a few items they ordered are in the bag they collect. Why write software to micromanage minimum wage employees?

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> They're getting paid $6 an hour. [...] Why write software to micromanage minimum wage employees?

Ironically, the less a job pays, the harsher and more demanding the bosses tend to be.

Earning six figures as a software developer, working from home, and you have to take a week off sick? No problem, take as long as you like, hope you feel better soon.

Earning minimum wage at a call centre? Missing a shift without 48 hours advance notice is an automatic disciplinary. No, we don't pay sick leave for people on a disciplinary (which is all of them). Make sure you get a doctor's note, or you're fired.

That's a correlation to how easily replaced you are.

On the other hand, i can't imagine it's easy to find a legal citizen willing to work for that wage. Especially when school's open.

I think there's a U shaped curve here. Make it all the way to Principal software engineer and you might be expected to work longer hours and bend your personal sense of ethics in service of the company's mission.

[flagged]

>There’s nothing wrong with flipping burgers for a living.

There is if it relegates you to shitty work environments and doesn’t afford a decent living as is generally the case in the US.

I'm not making a value judgement. I'm saying, how are they going to punish you, as a burger flipper, for not saying their TV commercial tagline? Demote you to burger flipper? That's already your job. So why pay people to build a system to track their metrics, when they realistically have no way of making this happen.

Pay people $30/hour and I bet they'll say it every time without software yelling at them. (With the software in place, I have never heard the line "you rule" at Burger King, but I also only go like twice a year. So why write it? It doesn't work.)

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