McDonald's worker explains how the rise in minimum wage proved to be a bane: 'It is insane'

The service industry has been receiving a lot of bad reputation lately due to employees exposing their mismanagement, poor wage structures and tedious working hours. Kai—who goes by @kaisbubbletea on TikTok—came forward to express her frustrations while working at the famous American fast-food chain McDonald's. She starts her video by announcing that the minimum wage in her home state recently increased to $15 per hour, which was a positive sign for her because previously, it was only $13.50 per hour.

However, then she had to face another blow when the store's management where she worked started cutting her work hours even during rush periods. Kai and the staff of that particular McDonald's were aware that one of the Fridays would be extremely busy, with college students returning to campus and young customers pouring in to grab a bite. But Kai was not informed whether she would be working the actual work hours.

The other employees at the McDonald's who worked with Kai also revealed they won't be working later to handle the rush either. The chaos ensued when Kai decided to stop by her workplace to pick up her paycheck. "Guess what? We needed people and it was absolute insanity today," she explained in her video. "We weren't that understaffed since I started working in 2022." She added that staffing issues became a problem, which got worse after the wages' increment and cutting down of work hours. "We have at least 18 people working when we're sufficiently staffed. For an overnight for Friday and Saturday, it's 20 people," she revealed. "We had nine today—nine total and it was insane."

She wonders if this is how the management decided to tackle the wage increase by cutting down the work hours of the staff so they don't have to pay them $15 for more hours. "I'm just like, why do they cut so many people? Are you that cheap that you don't want people working because the minimum wage went up by two dollars? This McDonald's makes so much overnight off of these college students—literally thousands of dollars—and then they decide to cut the staff in half. We cut our labor in half on the busiest days of the week because why? Because you want to save a couple of pennies?" Kai said while concluding her video.

Fellow TikTok users spoke in her support and expressed their astonishment as well. @bunnibbi wrote, "Yeah, same happening in my store. Ours was raised to 20 and they're cutting all hours and overworking us." @kittypridexoxo disclosed, "My job is doing the same thing and I'm the manager. Wages went up and my labor cut 50 hours a week, same sales!" @wes.cxx advised, "Don't go above and beyond. Do things at your normal speed so management will learn not to understaff." @cheliniengo8 chimed in, "A multi-millionaire company can't pay their employees 2 extra bucks an hour??" @tensleftcheek gave their opinion and added, "The managers are getting controlled by the higher-ups and making them have certain hours."

Editor's note: This article was originally published on August 28, 2024. It has since been updated.