Grow Up': Blaze Readers React to Matt Walsh's Message for Fast Food Workers Who Demand $15 an Hour

TheBlaze’s Matt Walsh wrote a column directed to fast food workers earlier this week, explaining why they don’t deserve to earn $15 an hour, even as protests from them ramp up.

In this photo taken Aug. 1, 2013, demonstrators protesting what they say are low wages and improper treatment for fast-food workers march in downtown Seattle. (Image source: AP/Elaine Thompson, File)

"I want to talk to those of you who actually consider yourselves entitled to close to a $29,000 a year full-time salary for doing a job that requires no skill, no expertise and no education," Walsh wrote.

Walsh's now-viral column, which has exceeded a million shares, went on to say that such a demand is economically unfeasible and that if fast food workers want to earn more money, they should pursue careers that warrant higher pay.

Here's what readers of TheBlaze had to say about Walsh's message:

StanSmith

We don’t eat fast food a lot, but I can honestly tell you 100% of time my order is jacked up.

Recent incident ordering 10 Taco Bell taquitos. No lie.

Fast Food Worker: “We don’t sell 10. We sell them in fours and in two.”

Wife: “We'll get two packs of four and one pack of two. That equals 10, right?”

Fast Food Worker: “Hold on, I have to ask my manager.”

Will $15/hour fix this? No way.

bondroid

That and good luck trying to collect ANY pay when people stop coming in because the burgers cost $12 bucks and the business closes its doors. I hear panhandling is quite lucrative when you’re looking for that new job. Dolts.

tcpubelle

Mickey Ds already has a drink machine that fills your cup automagically. How tough do you really think it would be for the guys at Burger Engineering U to create a burger flipper and assembler/wrapper?

If you’re a young enterprising student at MIT, you may want to get out the AutoCad and start inventing, ’cause there’s a whole lot of burger places that have overpriced workers now.

Rosech

Some businesses have already started up with robots so these stupids will definitely be out of their jobs and with no jobs in sight. They need to wake up and smell the coffee – you're in a starter job and not a lifetime career which involves education and experience. I was a college graduate earning $200 a month working for attorneys, and that was considered a great wage at the time. I started working when I was 10 years old, babysitting for $1 total! And maybe a paid ticket to the movies with the kid. No food, no drinks, no TV, just be with the kid. Then at 14 with a special working permit, I started earning 40 cents an hour to help pay for my uniform and books at high school. Then $1.20 an hour while attending college, which paid for lunch, bus fare, some clothing, etc. You deserve what you accepted taking the job. That’s it. It is up to the business owner to increase your wage. Get off your behinds and take on another job, get some education, and then see how you can truly move on up to a better life. If you have a family or want to start a family, you'd better prepare to move on up because fast food jobs are STARTERS for teens and not anyone supporting a family. You brought on the family, so find out how you can forge ahead to care for them! In other words, grow up.

MrBenton

No employer can base pay structure on what an employee needs. What if the single mother has another kid…does her pay go up automatically?

Pay is based only on the value the employee makes to the profit of the organization. PERIOD.

proliance

A few years from now I’m going to walk into a McWendyKing, push a few buttons on a touchscreen, slide my card through the reader, and one minute later my meal will slide down a ramp onto a tray.

I won’t talk to a person to order, and no one will bring me my food.

Because they’ve been replaced by robots that DON’T GO ON STRIKE.

Micdavtay

I had been in the Marines about 13 years and was a SSgt/E-6 (this would be roughly 2005) for about 4 years when I (apparently) started making a comfortable living. Please, somebody explain to me how a freaking hamburger engineer gets to make what I did only after 13 years in the service.

HabanaJoe

Here’s a thought. If you don’t like what an employer pays you, find another job. If you don’t like what that one pays you, start your own business — and hire some hourly workers for $15, $25, or $50 per hour.

fishydude

My first job out of the USAF in 1983 paid $5.40/hr. I very quickly decided to apply to college and get started on a degree in engineering. Years later I ran into people I worked with back then. I was earning more than 2x what they were. Today, I earn more than 10X that. And I have the added benefit of knowing that components I designed are in the most popular smart phones today.

I graduated high school in the bottom third of my class because I didn’t realize or act like I had a brain. If I can do it, anyone with two brain cells to rub together can do it.

eseera

My husband has worked at the same place, a medical supply company, for 7 years and has done every job there is to do there. He currently does many different things there & does not hold just one job title. He also works long hours, some nights he doesn’t get home until 10 or later. He doesn’t have benefits, he only gets a week of vacation, & he most certainly does not make $15/hr. I think these people are ridiculous.

Besides, I can’t even think of a time when anyone at a McDonald’s or a Burger King had a smile on their face. They are always incredibly rude. Chick-fil-A workers are the only ones who've ever handed me my meal & told me to have a good day. If these people want better pay, be better workers & put a smile on your face. I was a waitress for 10 years. I didn’t always enjoy it, but my customers never knew that because I had a good attitude.

stloocardsfan

This whole $15/hour movement is a union ploy for more members, more dues, more power.

NOTHING to do with improving the lives of workers.

bmtisback

Walsh, quit drinking the Corporate Koolaid. Minimum wage today doesn’t even come close to the buying power of minimum wage 40 years ago. If minimum wage kept pace with cost of living for the last 40 years, it would be more on the order of $20 an hour. So $15 an hour would still have less buying power than it should. By keeping minimum wage low, you also keep wages for all other jobs lower than they should be, even for higher skilled jobs. And one thing's for sure: The people on top haven’t lost any buying power at all; in fact it has done nothing but increased by leaps and bounds — and all at the expense of every working person out there.

Funny thing is, they have you and a lot of others fooled into fighting on their side for you and other workers to be happy making less and less every year through cost of living going up but your pay staying the same and actually making you work for less every year and not even realizing it.

Leerm

Give them all $15 an hour. Then fire half of them to pay for it. Make the remaining do twice as much work or get fired.

Futuredoc

I am a 26-year-old medical student, and I have never made more than $15/hour. I have worked more than 10 jobs over the past decade, ranging from a job at a fast food restaurant when I was a teenager to a job as an Alzheimer’s researcher at a top medical school for a couple years after I graduated from college. I made a whopping $13.25/hour working in research, which was not enough to pay for my necessities + my monthly undergrad loan payments, so I took a job as a hostess at a restaurant on the weekends. I am now in medical school studying 12-14 hours/day to someday become a doctor. So you’ll be rich soon, right? Not really…with still about $35,000 worth of undergrad debt left and then several HUNDRED thousand dollars worth of med school debt when I graduate (with 6-7% interest rate, by the way), I am many years away from living a super comfy life if I want to pay down my debt as quickly as possible. But guess what? That’s OK! Someday when I am debt-free and making a comfortable living and get lunch at that fast food restaurant I used to work at, I will sit there and be reminded that all the sweat, grease, floor mopping, customer yelling, and bathroom cleaning was SO WORTH IT. I wish I could somehow get across to these people that a life of handouts is no life at all and that (wait for it…revolutionary idea here…) hard work ACTUALLY pays off. Making the choice to work hard and achieve goals is a choice you will never regret.

JIMC5499

Have you noticed that the unions are pushing this? Many union contracts have a clause that states when minimum wage is increased, and their pay scale is automatically increased. The people you see protesting for this are just useful idiots. Democrats support this because of the huge donations they get from the unions.

WayTruthLife777

If every single person who earns an unlivable wage went out today and got a degree, would they then (over a reasonable time) be able to find work at a livable wage?

NO, because there are not enough jobs that pay a living wage, and the problem is getting worse not better. If you want to get people off government assistance, then give them an avenue to achieve that goal.

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