Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Well, there's something you don't see in chemistry

Via Marginal Revolution, this amusing story: 
A McDonald’s in Florida is paying people $50 just to show up for a job interview. But it’s still not attracting many applicants.

Blake Casper, the franchisee who owns the restaurant, told Insider that a general manager and supervisor came up with the idea for the interview reward after he told them to “do whatever you need to do” to hire workers.

“At this point, if we can’t keep our drive-thrus moving, then I’ll pay $50 for an interview,” said Casper, who owns 60 McDonald’s restaurants in the Tampa, Florida area.

I don't have a broader political point here. It is interesting, though, to note that no one is paying chemists to show up to interviews - they just do. I imagine that there is more in it for the worker to work at Forest City Chemicals than it is to work at McDonald's, though. 

2 comments:

  1. PhD Chemists show up to interviews because of what is called "Escalation of commitment" effect, also referred to as "the sunk cost" effect. And no, it does not draw from the higher functions of the human brain. Its down there, in the reptilian core section.

    Elon Musk, BSc; Steve Jobs, drop out; Mark Zuckerberg, drop out; Jeff Bezos, BSc; Bill gates, drop out; These are the kind of people that were not susceptible to the sunk cost effect.

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  2. I'm seeing an awful lot of want ads recently for jobs like fast food, warehouse, retail, etc that don't require much experience. The ads are appearing outside of traditional job boards - Facebook ads from big companies, or signs in the front windows of small ones. I think we're looking at a period of inflation starting soon when the going rate for unskilled labor starts to get bid up.

    I wonder if we might start seeing a return of high school kids working in pizzerias, fast food joints, retail stores, etc. When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, places like that were mostly staffed by teenagers. I see way more adults working in crappy minimum wage McJobs now than in decades past. I wonder how much of that is driven by regs, insurance companies, and liability fears, versus the supply of desperate adults willing to work part-time for minimum wage.

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20