Define exploitative? As a person that had led these events (not organized them), work basically halts during these events. You are literally showing children how to operate machines. It’s a show for the parents. The kids are not being exploited anymore than if you took them to a ranch and they brushed a horse. The children are not improving operations or efficiency. Bu all definitions, they make work worse.
Comment on Saw this and thought it was fake until I googled. It's real.
voracitude@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoChrist. You’re right that it’s not better. Work experience I can get behind, apprenticeship I can get behind, but this is so blatantly exploitative and dangerous the only thing that surprises me more is that parents are dumb enough to fall for it.
Lowpast@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
slickgoat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
With respect, and I mean it. There is a world of difference between a kid brushing a horse and a training camp for a fast food joint. I mean, really?
ChexMax@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Obviously brushing a horse is an unusual and fun experience, but that guy is right that they’re the same amount of exploration. Kids want to play pretend at a restaurant. It’s fun. Didn’t your school do an “enterprise village” type field trip where you all play act grown up jobs for a day? It’s fun!
This is not exploration. The children are not providing anything of value period, except perhaps good will towards the brand in the future.
slickgoat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I guess that we shall have to agree to disagree.
Kids should have nothing to do with the corporate world until they are old enough to deal with it rationally. Whatever the rationale is for doing so, fast food joints want to materially exploit people and having kids as young as 5 play as burger slingers is beyond creepy. Feel free to have alternative views about it.
Zahille7@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The flyer actually says they’re going to train literal children how to work at Chick-fil-A.
There’s not much room for interpretation there.
Serinus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They’re training kids to be future workers.
slickgoat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Perhaps just let kids play and forget all about training to be “future workers”.
Is this what we’ve become? Jesus!
Lowpast@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Maybe? I worked at McDonald’s for 6 years so what do I know. I never worked at McD as a kid, so I learned it somewhere! As a software developer, McDonald’s was the best job of my career. The kids that I “taught” were not being exploited. Seriously, regular work grinded to a halt. Making 5 icecream cones an hour, albeit with child labor, is not an improvement. 95% of the kids were children of teachers of the local school - it was a big show for all of the regular parents to see their teachers kids serve them food. Dystopian? Maybe. At the end of the day, I believe working food service benefits most people.
Serinus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I believe working food service benefits most people.
I agree with that, for a number of reasons. I just don’t think we need programs from McDonald’s to train 5-12 year olds to be fast food workers.
RoquetteQueen@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I mean, the kids aren’t capable of doing actual work that would actually be profitable for the company. They’re going to slow the entire restaurant way down and probably break things. Honestly this sounds like a bad idea for the restaurant. Imagine the pure fucking chaos if all 30 kids are five years old.
voracitude@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I agree with this in part, but even if they can’t do the literal work listed in the actual ad itself, then that just makes it dangerous. They’re going to be around hot surfaces and boiling oil and sharp kitchen implements. You’re bang-on right that there is no way in fuck this is a good idea.
RoquetteQueen@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I’d never send my kids there, for sure. Although $50 to watch and feed my kid for a whole day does sound tempting.
The increase in child labour in America does seem concerning. I’m not American so I haven’t heard too much but I did hear there are some 14 year olds packing meat? Meat processing plants are awful places to work for anyone but especially kids.
voracitude@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There have been several teenagers severely injured or killed working on and around dangerous industrial equipment in sawmills and meat processing facilities already, yeah, and one company alone had illegally employed over 100 kids for the night shift or illegally hired 13 year-olds (under the minimum age of 14). It’s galling and more than a little chilling, in the context of the sustained attacks on reproductive rights and access to contraception.
MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
There’s a cynical humor in imagining some poor fast food employees trying to be like “Okay settle down, children, we’re gonna show yo–Hey put that down, okay quiet down now PLEASE!” , trying not to lose their minds to a bunch of sugared-up “Braedens” and “McKeinLeighs” who are unaccustomed to listening to anybody that’s not living in their iPads. 😂
Zahille7@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Like the absolute only reason I’d be a tiny bit okay with this (and that’s still insanely iffy) is if the parents were also going to be doing it with the kids as kind of a bonding experience or something, but even then…
slickgoat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Want to bond with your kid, take them to the park, not some corporate hellscape.
ozymandias117@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, just wanted to make sure people knew this wasn’t some new thing. It’s been going on since at least the 90’s, and I’d bet if you found someone older, they’d say it’s been going on longer
OsaErisXero@kbin.run 3 weeks ago
Sure, but also I bet my kids would have a blast doing that for a morning.
MagnyusG@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
kids are dumb, they like things that we as adults wouldn’t even consider ‘enjoying’, an afternoon behind the counter of a fast food restaurant they like going to would absolutely be a blast for a child. same reason why we had the macca’s fisher price thing back in the 90s, or Barbie sets with real world grocery items, it’s a different type of playground for them.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
I think it boils down to the whole “we learn by doing” thing that’s at the heart of a lot of play. And especially for kids, imitating what you see the adults in your life do all the time holds some mystique and new-ness that makes boring tasks seem like exciting activities. To us, filing taxes and loading the washing machine are repetitive tasks we do out of necessity, but to kids, it’s a “grown-up thing” to be able to do.