The frustration many Americans feel about their daily lives can be attributed to the apparent silence many of us experience every day. We have people speaking for us who know nothing about us or our lives. We have people commenting on our situation with faulty information. Decisions are being made for us by people who never have and never will try to use a little compassion or observational skills to see what the real world is to most Americans.

I just watched a segment on MSNBC where they talked about the strike that took place on August 29 with fast food workers. In studio they had the usual well-heeled talking heads and by satellite they had a Burger King cashier named Kyle. The segment was 8:20 minutes long and Kyle got to tell his story for about 1:20 minutes. The rest of the time the talking heads explained the plight of Kyle and other workers. Wait, isn’t there something wrong with the picture? You have someone on camera who isn’t a statistic, isn’t a strip of polling data but is a living breathing person who lives with the $7.20 an hour minimum wage battle every day, but he is given little time to tell his story. From the minute and twenty seconds he was on he seemed to be an articulate individual, but time that could have been spent humanizing fast food workers wasn’t given.

As I was reading some local accounts of the nationwide strike, it was disheartening to read the comment sections of the local online news outlets. Much like I saw with other strike incidents, most of the public is incredibly short sighted when considering the plight of low wage workers. Many are still under the impression fast food workers are teenagers looking for pocket change. When it is pointed out that many workers are supporting families, some fall back and state if people have poor education they get what they deserve in terms of wages. Of course, there are the people who assume all fast food workers are illegal workers.

The knee jerk reaction of many is to assume the owners of the fast food business, be it a franchise owners or the head office executives, are in the right and the workers are in the wrong. Even though the economy is still recovering and data shows that most new jobs are the low wage, low skill jobs, comments against workers come to the same conclusion; if they are dissatisfied with their jobs, they should leave and get another job.

Just to show an example of the type of comments left by readers, here are three comments I came across on the LA Times website.

MattLATimes at 10:58 PM August 29, 2013
"Teenagers used to dominate fast-food jobs." That is why you don't get paid $15 an hour. It is an entry level job. Don' start a family on $8.75 an hour. Don't be the only one working if you do have a family and only make $8.75 an hour. Don't stay at a job after three years if you haven't moved up or can't and make $8.75 an hour. If you want to make more, go to North Dakota and make $20, which will go a lot further. 

moe_curly at 10:06 PM August 29, 2013
These people offer nothing for $15 an hour. Of course they will NOT get $15 an hour. The real goal is to organize a fast food union and then you can say so-long to a cheap hamburger or taco except in 'right to work' states.  Union membership is way down so creating a flash point for mostly illiterate, uneducated and easily manipulated dummies to rally'round is what it's all about. Remember SEIU is the union of La Raza!

Anthony Alfidi at 9:53 PM August 29, 2013
Stupid unions instigate pay demands in a zero-skill sector. Fast food workers can take a hike if they don't like their low-paying jobs

You can go to many news websites and see the same type of comments left by people. What I find ironic by the comments by the general public is most people making the comments are in the same position as the fast food workers. We work at jobs where we are stuck with a particular pay without any hope of advancement. We are lucky to have health care and while we may want to complain about questionable conditions, we won’t. We are afraid of losing our jobs because we know how tough the economy. How many stories have there been of engineers and other educated people who have put in hundreds of resumes looking for jobs and finding nothing? How many stories have there been of people taking pay cuts so they get some sort of income into the home? How many stories have there been of middle class people discovering the dollar stores, the Salvation Army or local food pantries?

The reality is the recovery in America isn’t as fantastic as many would like us to believe. The jobs that have been created aren’t high end manufacturing jobs but are low wage food and retail service jobs. A few weeks ago I observed a jobs fair in San Diego that was hiring for a grocery store. Hundreds of people lined up for jobs. The people in line weren’t just high school and college kids. There were older people, mothers, and people close to retirement years in line. The pay was for a little over $8 an hour. In San Diego, $8 an hour doesn’t go far for a family, nor would it go far for anyone in the country. So the myth of high school and college kids applying for low wage jobs isn’t correct for today’s economy. Welfare can’t take care of every expense and the jobs being offered, if you can get them for full time, don’t cover all the needs of a family.

There are few fast food places on my route from my apartment to work and the people I see working there are well over 21. The McJob may have been an entry position in the past but now those jobs are vital to many workers. We can’t continue to pay workers barely living salaries and get upset when they demand and deserve more money. The hostility people feel about workers demanding their rights may stem from those people who are afraid, unwilling or unable to stand up for themselves. If the burger flipper suddenly gets $15 an hour, then the Wal-Mart worker will want more money, the store clerk will want more money and the bus driver will want more money. A lot of people will think its ‘wrong’ for them to make so much money for flipping burgers while they toil at a job they think doesn’t pay their worth.