McDonalds Tells Employees to Get a Second Job

McDonald's restaurants are one of the largest food service employers in the country. The trademark “Golden Arches” have become ubiquitous and there is hardly a town or county that doesn't have at least one McDonald's restaurant. Over the last few decades, the company had gone to great lengths to demonstrate that they are a great place to work. Back when people considered working for a fast food restaurant as “getting a McJob”. The company fought back by showing all of the benefits they offer their workforce.

However, over the past year, many of those so-called benefits have been shown to be false. Just as their new and improved “healthy” menu items aren't really all that healthy, McJobs aren't really all that great. Recently, the company has been under legal fire by some of their employees because the company has switched to paying workers with a re-loadable debit card, rather than a traditional check. It saves the company money, but the cards, which work like a debit/ATM card, are being managed by companies like J.P Morgan Chase, who charge cardholders exorbitant fees like $1.75 to withdrawal and $7 for card inactivity.

Now, McDonald's is at the center of another controversy. It seems that the restaurant chain has partnered with Visa (who makes the payroll cards) to offer their low-wage employees some financial management tools. Although the management tools are designed to be easy to use and very upbeat, they still have that feel of rich people telling poor people to manage their money better. The condescension is very evident and really, it's typical for corporate America, where there seems to be this deeply held belief that the reason that so many people are poor is because they waste all their money buying things like big screen televisions and fancy cars – which we all know is the truth. Personally, I wouldn't have any money worries at all, if I could just stop buying designer fashions, shoes that cost more than some people's rent and cars for every day of the week. I wish someone would have explained money management to me.  Of course you know I am just kidding!

According to an article at Think Progress, the McDonald's budgeting tool has a sample to demonstrate how a McDonald's employee can make their salary last and how to budget a living wage from a paycheck. It's like watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat. On the surface, it looks amazing but in reality, it's just smoke and mirrors. Here are some of the more interesting items in the McDonald's sample budget:

As you can see, this employee has a second job. Which is odd, because it's usually McDonald's policy to not post work schedules more than a week in advance so that their employees can't predict what hours they'll have free for another job, forcing them to be loyal to the golden arches.

Another problem with this budget is that they don't have any bills for water and who pays only $600 for rent? Also, $20 for health insurance is unrealistic, especially since the company tries to not allow their employees to work a full-time schedule. If the employee were to find health insurance on their own, their monthly premium would be at least $150 a month and that's for the most basic of major medical coverage for a young, extremely healthy person. Then, this sample person only pays $120 car payment. That's really amazing. I've never been able to get that great of a deal on a car, even a late model used car. For low-wage workers, the high interest rates (because they don't have high earning power and they may not have perfect credit will exclude them from the 0% interest plans) will make their car payments at least $300 a month.

The budgeting site claims that, “You can have almost anything you want as long as you plan ahead and save for it.”

While that may be true, it would take the average McDonald's employee one million hours of work in a year to earn as much as the company's CEO does. But, I guess the real reason that the employees have such a hard time making ends meet is because they don't know how to budget and they aren't willing to save their money in order to afford the things they want.

Thanks, McDonald's for clearing that up. I'm definitely lovin' it.

Image Source: Practical Money Skills