How to Even…Pay Your Student Loans While Working Fast Food

By Michael Gushue & CL Bledsoe

So, you fucked up and got a degree in the Humanities. Sure, you know how to think and feel and appreciate beauty, but you can’t eat joie de vivre, even with ketchup. Now, you’ve graduated, and while your classmates have gone on to destroy the economy and steal their grandparents’ pensions, you are left with your self-respect and a worthless piece of paper. Luckily, Arby’s is hiring.

There’s a myth that only teenagers work at fast food restaurants. The reality is that a lot of the employees you’re liable to encounter will actually be adults. Some will be women whose children are old enough to go to school, so they work to supplement their income, i.e. survive. Some will be folks who lack the training and education to get higher paying jobs, or maybe they have scheduling or transportation issues. Some might have had higher paying jobs elsewhere, but were laid off. Some will be supplementing another job with this one.

None of this makes them less worthy of respect. They work hard for miniscule pay and are seen as easy targets for disrespect and abuse by a certain population of customers, i.e. jerkwads. There are all sorts of perfectly respectable reasons why a person works fast food, and judging a person based on their job is some bourgeois bullshit.