This week: human signs; signs of-the-times; more dollar signs; and a poverty-wage stop sign.
It’s like seeing a theme park character take off their head, except without the emotional scarring
Most of us experience less self-determination at work than basically anywhere else in our lives. But we hardly ever talk about that, which may be why an honest, matter-of-fact, and right-up-close look at the weird specificity of life on the job can be a kind of therapeutic liberation for everyone. At least that’s the theory on what makes this Reddit thread about someone who works waving a sign outside a tax preparation place just so fascinating.
It’s not what you think: he doesn’t wear an Uncle Sam hat or a Statue of Liberty crown. Instead, he's dressed as a giant maple leaf, because it’s Canada, and also because it’s Canada. But the day-to-day details of the job are extraordinarily relatable. His supervisors at Liberty Tax regularly but randomly check how “hyped up” his dance routine is. He likes when people honk. He tried to do the worm once…but it looked like he was having a seizure… and his managers didn’t care. Someone threw a metal water bottle at him. And he finds it “EXTREMELY hard to believe” that his job provides any benefits to Liberty Tax at all.
For richer & richer, for poorer & poorer
A national survey by The Knot finds that the average wedding in the US costs $31,213 — not including the honeymoon. That number might sound vaguely familiar, because it’s just $13 more than total annual paycheck of a $15/hour full-time worker.
People say burger flippers aren’t worth that much, but the $14,006 average cost of a renting a reception hall could buy a year’s rent. It’s even possible that wedding planners spend more money on rice than poverty wage workers do.
Next time you see a ______-less in Seattle construction, just assume the whole thing is false
Some bizarre conjecture by local second-tier glossy Seattle Magazine briefly broke the #tcot internet because it purported to prove that restaurants were closing down and workers were left “jobless in Seattle” on account of the $15 law. However, the article didn’t offer a single shred of evidence about the impact of the minimum wage, and it actually even named more new restaurant openings than closings.
Then the less-glossy Seattle Times and top-10-doctors-cover-piece-rival Seattle Met talked to the actual restaurant owners involved and got them on the record…in support of the $15 minimum wage. The reporting is valuable of course, but the true public service may be the valiant effort by the Seattle Times Life & Arts social media team to troll Seattle Magazine into a twitter war.
People do talk about “winning the franchise” in civil rights movements, but they're not talking about Subway sandwich shops
In Japan, Burger King outlets are advertising Whopper-scented perfume for sale 4/1/2015. It remains unclear if the whole thing is actually a joke, but it does seem like fast food chains would be trying to find a way to charge employees for ending the day smelling like grease.
In Peoria, four attacked a cashier with squirt guns and drove off instead of paying for the double cheeseburger they had ordered. It remains unclear if this whole thing was a setup so the reporter could write that “they didn’t find the meal happy”, but it’s true that the location is only named in this item in order to note here that the crime didn’t play there.
In Washington, Governor Jay Inslee told the internet that his favorite non-franchise burger is offered by the Rawhide Bar N Grill, in the town of “Starbuck.” It remains unclear if that’s a real place, because it seems like that would have come up.
In Seattle, a Federal judge rejected the International Franchise Association’s claim that the city's $15 minimum wage law is unfair to McDonald’s. It remains unclear if the franchise folks have yet learned the intent of the equal protection clause or the actual meaning of the word “discrimination”.