Know Your Class War: Walmart & McDonald's Because You KNOW

Two stories from customer-service land have warmed the cockles of my holiday-readying heart, and wonder of wonders! They come from two of the biggest names in American business! The first story come from Walmart, where bins have thoughtfully been set up to let Walmart associates donate to their less-fortunate co-workers.  The second comes from McDonald's, who have some awesome tips for helping their associates weather their meager income situation, through the power of shutting up and scrimping. 

Oh, wait. By "warmed the cockles of", I think I meant "was made sick enough to pour booze over the cockles of". Because that is so very close to an awareness that their workers don't really make enough to live on, and yet such a fail at figuring out the surest remedy of that problem. Big hint: it would be that they get paid more for the whole working thing. Your welcome, major US corporations!

Now, I know that this whole "working to make a living thing" has become a radical idea in a world where there are some people who seriously maintain that there shouldn't even be a minimum wage at all. (Like, what should people even work for? Room and board and go into debt to the boss for sundries? Wow. That almost sounds as bad as rich people paying down the national debt--huh?)

But you know, if you break it down to whether the work of any person should earn them enough to afford a "living"--what are you saying? They shouldn't be able to afford--to live? Because that is the meaning of the word, and people need things like food and water and shelter and clothes and all that.  Those basics make the worker. They make them capable of doing the work. There needs to be a non-negotiable understanding that a worker is a human being and has to be treated like one.

Otherwise, the options left are that Uncle Sam (us) picks up the tab for feeding them and basically subsidizes the profits for those at the top of those respective companies' food chains, or they really decide that associates are disposable, in the literal sense. And I just don't see that as acceptable--do you?