I don’t mean to be dismissive, though I can’t help being reductive given my “only as a customer” experience this decade. To me, and my interaction group, fast food jobs appear to be a bunch of stuff that seems like it should be a minimum baseline for logical people to accept.
no professional org limiting membership
no special credentials needed to be hired
no minimum educational requirement
extremely available geographically
lots of competitors / options for getting hired
lots of labor needed / advertised for anyway
Most of the negatives I’m aware of would apply to what I know of the jobs paying less than fast food. And going back to my college days, for someone in poverty / worried about paying for basics - working in food service often has a less advertised benefit - cheaper / free food while you’re on shift during your food break. I’m not claiming any job is for everyone, but I am suggesting if you could do elder care or work at Wal-Mart, you likely could work at a local fast food place and (now) make more money, so I do wonder why people don’t. At least as long as seemingly every fast food place is advertising for workers.
I fully understand not wanting to go after maximum earnings as the only consideration in a job - I could very likely make more money in a different job (I guess theoretically most people could), but would take major hits to work/life balance, flexibility, etc etc. But I’m also not in the market at minimum wage - and when I was working minimum wage jobs, I switched in a heartbeat when I could get a dollar more an hour across town. The one thing that would differ is if I could go full time vs part time at a slightly higher rate. And I don’t actually know if that’s what’s hurting the fast food companies filling their staffing needs. If they’re not offering full time to all the employees they already have when they have to close sometimes due to lack of staff - well, that’s another one of those illogical things to me. “Saving money” on benefits while not being open to make any money always felt like knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.