Wednesday, May 11, 2016



Fast Food Workers: If You Want More Money, Drop The Picket Sign And Do Your Job

Matt Walsh

I was in high school the last time I made minimum wage. I earned my first pay bump by coming to work a few minutes early, wearing my uniform, completing the menial tasks assigned to me, and displaying a very slight, but sometimes moderate, enthusiasm for my mundane job. To really solidify my chances at a raise, I refrained from stealing, insulting customers (to their faces), or smoking weed behind the dumpster out back. I stayed heroically committed to this strategy for a while, and for my efforts I was elevated above minimum wage, never to return.

But that was the ancient past. Over a decade ago. Back then, there were only two ways for a minimum wage fast food grunt to change his financial situation: 1) Be a semi-functional, semi-punctual, semi-conscious human who does his duty and has a vaguely positive attitude, and get a raise. 2) Don’t be that, and get fired.

Note that the second strategy would rarely result in immediate termination. I worked with many people who were aggressively dysfunctional, yet managed to cling onto employment for months because they were, at a minimum, warm bodies who could cut a pizza into 8 slices without severing an artery in the process (usually). Sometimes even these types would get raises, although eventually they would quit when they realized more responsibility comes attached to more money. Most of these people are now on welfare or in Congress.

It never occurred to me to explore the third option, which has become quite popular in recent years: Ask that the government snap its magical wizard fingers and double the minimum wage overnight. Of course, even if it did occur to me, I wouldn’t have been able to pursue it. My dad would have, shall we say, reacted unfavorably if I told him I was ditching my job to hold a “Fight For 15″ sign in the parking lot. His colorful response, I imagine, would’ve involved many disapproving adjectives, along with a stern lecture about “hard work” and “discipline” and “character” (his favorite words), and a helpful reminder that if I’m old enough to skip work and protest, I’m old enough to start paying rent. And that would have been the end of my brief experiment with political activism.

But I don’t think this disincentive would’ve been necessary. As much a whiny teenage brat as I was, I still didn’t think I deserved 15 bucks an hour, or its early 2000′s equivalent, for an entry level gig at a fast food joint. I knew I was doing a job that demanded very little of me, and I knew all I had to do was tuck my shirt in and not openly scowl at the customers and already I would separate myself from 80 percent of my coworkers. It would’ve seemed absurd that I could make good money doing a job that requires no education except for a work permit from the guidance counselor, and no training except for a 45 minute orientation video that includes nuanced instructions like “wear pants” and “don’t light your hair on fire.”

I knew – and again, I was not an exceptional kid by any means, so if I could figure this out, anyone can – that if I wanted to make an actual “livable wage,” I had to climb the ladder a few rungs.

It seems many current minimum wage workers fail to grasp this fundamental concept. At least that’s the charitable interpretation. Less charitably, you might say they understand just fine, but are driven by laziness, selfishness and a fantastically bloated sense of entitlement. However you interpret their actions, again thousands of them abandoned their posts last week and took to the streets, demanding that the State hand them a massive pay increase, not because they’ve earned it, but because they “deserve” it.

Thankfully, not all fast food workers are on board with this new “Give Us Salaries Commensurate With What Paramedics Are Paid Because We’re Special And We Know How To Spread Mayonnaise On A Bun” movement. On Friday, a short but glorious video clip surfaced, showing a Taco Bell employee kicking a group of protesters out of her restaurant so she could carry on with her duties. “This is a job that I’m trying to do,” she said. “You may leave the building.”

I don’t know anything about this woman, but already I can say she deserves a higher salary than all of those protesters, most of whom should be fired anyway. She just wants to do her job, which is more than can be said for the people holding picket signs. And I doubt she especially enjoys her work. I’m betting that serving burritos to a hungry herd of impatient customers every day isn’t her idea of a rollicking good time. But it’s the job she was hired to do, so she does it. If you find that logic confusing, you need to grow up.

But one moment in her brief encounter with the protesters particularly stood out. At the very beginning of the video, one of them curiously told her it was “a day of action.” Then, when they were rebuffed, they applauded themselves and went back outside to continue the “action” of spending the workday doing nothing. Many media reports have used this same strange phrase to describe the protests – “a day of action.”

Calling that ”a day of action” is almost as ridiculous as calling it a “fight for 15.” The woman rolling her eyes at the protesters and trying to get back to the duties at hand is the one engaged in a “day of action,” a “fight” for something better. Chanting slogans and whining to news cameras is not “taking action,” anymore than my daughter is taking action when she cries for gummy bears in the checkout aisle.

SOURCE






Another one of Britain's charming multiculturalists



A drunk driver who killed a young mother after smashing into a lorry was going so fast his speedometer became jammed at 162mph, it was revealed today.

Martin Grant, 30, was three times over the drink driving limit when he chose to take home 25-year-old mother-of-one Joetta Shumba at 5am following a night out clubbing.

She died when his Audi S3, which has a top speed of 181mph, clipped a 17 tonne tipper truck in the middle lane of the M62 near Eccles, Greater Manchester on January 23.

The 160mph impact caused the Audi to bounced off the central reservation, career along the carriageway before ploughing into the nearside barrier and exploding into a fireball.

Investigators who examined the wrecked Audi discovered the speedometer had jammed at 162mph with a tachometer showing the wheels of the car had been travelling at 6,200 revolutions per minute.

At Manchester Crown Court Grant appeared in a wheelchair and admitted causing death by dangerous driving and was jailed for eight years and eight months. He was also banned from driving for six years.

He already had previous convictions for having no car insurance, driving whilst banned, resisting arrest and a road rage attack.

The giant Volvo 8 truck he hit also spun out of control and crashed into the central reservation before overturning.

Victim Joetta Shuma, a PR executive was travelling in the back seat, suffered fatal head and neck injuries and died at the scene.

Grant survived the crash and although he suffered severe leg injuries it is thought he will be able to walk again.

It emerged Grant, a former Jaguar factory worker from Edgbaston, Birmingham had a history of motoring offences including driving whilst banned.

At the time of the tragedy on January 23 was in breach of a suspended jail term imposed over a road rage attack in which he punched another motorist with a knuckleduster.

Earlier the court heard how Miss Shuma, from Manchester, a graduate in sociology and journalism from the University of Salford, had gone for a night out with friends - leaving her five year old son Zane with her mother.

She met up with Grant whilst the party of women were at the celebrity nightspot Club Liv in Manchester.

Mark Kellet prosecuting said Joetta was last seen at 2am and when she was phoned by her friends she told them she was getting a taxi home.

He said: 'Background noise gave them the impression Joetta was elsehere than the club and possibly in a car.

'Joetta had not spoken about a boyfriend but it was known to her friends that Joetta had known Martin Grant since the previous July'.

CCTV showed that at 5.25am Grant, who had borrowed the Audi from a friend, was seen travelling in the outside lane of the motorway at up to 140mph.

Grant was cut free from the vehicle and was taken to Manchester Royal Infirmary where despite his injuries a 24 hour guard had to be placed on him after members of his family tried to help him leave.

A back calculation was taken on a sample of blood given by Grant which showed he had around 190 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood at the time of the crash. Experts said the level could have been as much as 248mg. The legal limit is 80mg.

Joetta was initially reported missing when she failed to come home and her body remained unidentified for 30 hours until police realised her disappearance was linked to the tragedy.

Grant claimed he had been with Joetta in the club and had drinking but claimed he did not think he was over the limit and had no recollection of the collision.

SOURCE






NYC Mayor Turns Up His Nose at Chick-fil-A

New York City’s mayor and city council are dismayed that the restaurant with the highest customer satisfaction rating in the industry is expanding in the Big Apple. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced during a press conference that New Yorkers shouldn’t eat at Chick-fil-A because its CEO made comments in 2012 supporting the traditional definition of marriage. “What the ownership of Chick-fil-A has said is wrong,” de Blasio said. “I’m certainly not going to patronize them and I wouldn’t urge any other New Yorker to patronize them. But they do have a legal right.” The restaurant chain opened its first locations in the city last year, and it has plans to open at least 12 more franchises there in two years.

In 2014, Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy said he was distancing himself from the culture struggle over same-sex marriage to focus on the company and improving customer service. In response to de Blasio’s comments, the company said it strives “to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect” — and it seems to be working. Lines at the NYC locations spill out the doors and down the street.

As The Wall Street Journal opines, “Good to know [de Blasio] isn’t trying to ban the business, though give him time. … Mr. de Blasio’s real objection is that the company’s owners won’t conform to his political views.” Unfortunately for his taste buds, de Blasio lets his ideology and loyalty to the Rainbow Mafia prevent him from enjoying one of the most notable chicken sandwiches around — a chicken sandwich born from a work ethic informed by a Christian worldview.

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Chicago Public School Bathroom Policy Allows Boys to Undress in Girls’ Locker Rooms

Chicago Public Schools announced on Monday that students and staff must be granted unfettered access to intimate school facilities based on their chosen gender identity.

Put concretely, boys now have the “right” to undress in the girls locker room before gym class so long as they say they would feel more comfortable doing so. Kids and teens have many things to worry about as they grow into adulthood and get an education. But having to deal with people of the opposite sex in their bathrooms and showers shouldn’t be one of them.

This latest front in the bathroom wars proves that same-sex marriage was merely the start, not end, of the left’s LGBT agenda. As demonstrated by enforcement actions by the Department of Justice, private lawsuits, and court decisions, the radical left is using government power to coerce children into pledging allegiance to a radical new gender ideology over and above their right to privacy, safety, and religious freedom.

Here’s how it works. First, the left tried to elevate sexual orientation and gender identity to special protected status in law but failed repeatedly using the democratic process. Undaunted, the administration turned to lawmaking-by-rulemaking. Specifically, President Barack Obama’s Departments of Justice and Education issued diktats reinterpreting Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination in federally funded education programs to mean “gender identity discrimination.”

Of course, when Title IX was passed in 1972, “sex” referred then to what it still refers to now: the basic biological reality of being male or female. Nevertheless, having made their discovery to the contrary (over 40 years after the law was passed) the administration went around the country threatening schools with revocation of millions in educational funds if they did not allow kids unfettered access to the locker room of their choice.

Following this lead, the Chicago Public Schools cites Title IX and sexual harassment policies to justify its new policies.

A law from the 70s designed mostly to protect girls and women from sexism and harassment in schools is now being used to grant boys the right to undress in the girls locker room (and vice versa) all in the name of psychological comfort and acceptance.

In a weak acknowledgement of the uproar this will cause, the Chicago Public Schools says students that are not gender confused “should” be allowed access to alternative facilities. So, for example, if there are fifty girls who object to a boy undressing in front of them, it is the fifty girls, not the boy, who must go change in “single stall restrooms” elsewhere. Of course, the odds are high that school officials on the lookout for any sign of “bullying” will take careful note of which students leave the locker rooms, presuming they are allowed to leave at all.

To add to the confusion, the definition of gender identity changes about every three months, so the rules we are supposed to live by are constantly moving. But the latest definition, according to the Chicago Public Schools, is that sex is merely “a label a person is assigned at birth” and that the reality lies in one’s internal “psychological knowledge” of their own gender “regardless of the[ir] biological sex.”

This includes “male/man/boy, female/woman/girl, trans/transgender, gender variant, gender nonconforming, agender, gender non-binary, or any combination of these terms.” Whatever bureaucrat or committee wrote this definition felt compelled to add that gender nonconforming also covers “Gender Expansive, Gender Variant, or Gender Creative,” apparently to cover all the bases, except they may have missed some because the latest count, according to the left and some corporations, is sixty possible gender identities.

Under this definition, the only possible way we can know a person’s gender identity is by asking them, and if they consistently answer the same thing, bingo, that’s their gender identity. If the Chicago Public Schools or the Department of Justice simply required separate private facilities for the minuscule number of students who are not comfortable changing in front of people of their own sex, there would not be a national debate over bathrooms.

Except they require that if a boy says he is a girl, he must be treated exactly like a girl in every respect, otherwise it is psychologically traumatic and illegal discrimination. This means that portions of sex education classes reserved just for girls (so they can speak with less trepidation about sensitive topics, like menstruation) must include every boy that feels like a girl.

And therein lies the biggest affront from these new policies. Not only must government employees play along with a gender confused child’s every subjective wish, so must every other student. In fact, the Chicago Public Schools specify that students must address a gender confused child by whatever pronoun they wish, be it “they, their, ze, he and she.” Failure to do so “will result in appropriate consequences for offending staff and students,” in other words, discipline up to and including expulsion from school.

But many people of good will and faith conviction will simply refuse to put aside their legitimate privacy, modesty, and safety concerns. Many children of good will resist being forced to say “she” when speaking of a boy they have known for years just as they would resist being forced to say “5” when asked “what does 2+2 equal?

The left for years claimed that all they wanted was for LGBT persons to be left alone but this was a lie. It is now clear that liberals and their enablers will not leave anyone alone and will use the full force of courts, lawsuits, and government to ensure any resistance to their new gender ideology “will result in appropriate consequences.”

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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