Justice or stigma? The controversial sentence that spotlights America’s bias against fast-food jobs

After throwing a hot bowl of food into the face of a Chipotle employee, 39-year-old Rosemary Hayne of Parma, Ohio was given two choices in court: She could either go to jail for 90 days, or she could have her misdemeanor assault sentence reduced to 30 days in jail if she agreed to work an additional 60 days at a local fast-food restaurant. 

“Do you want to walk in her shoes for two months and learn how people should treat people, or do you want to do your jail time?” Judge Timothy Gilligan asked Hayne at the hearing. She chose the former. 

In speaking with CNN, Gilligan said that he has unfortunately seen other incidents of violence directed at fast-food employees. According to him, there was a case a few years ago in which a customer who didn’t get a cookie in a McDonald’s Happy Meal began punching a worker through the drive-thru window. That defendant got 90 days in jail. 

As Gilligan told the publication, he had never given out a sentence like the one leveled at Hayne. 

On one hand, there’s a certain level of schadenfreude to be derived from the situation because of the dark reality that Hayne is very likely to experience at least a certain level of the abuse she directed at the Chipotle worker. In 2021,  the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) published a first-of-its-kind analysis that put into numbers just how common issues of assault and harassment are at some of the most popular fast-food chains. As The Counter reported, the analysis found that between 2017 and 2020, fast-food restaurants were the sites of at least 77,000 violent or threatening incidents. 

The numbers included conflicts between non-workers on a restaurant’s premises, as well as instances of abuse directed at workers. 

On the other hand, sentencing someone to work at a fast-food restaurant is a curious punishment, simply because it’s not really a sentence — it’s a job, one that nearly 4 million workers in this country hold. And while this has been a major year for labor rights in the food service industry, as both activists and politicians fight for better wages and working conditions, this court case spotlights America’s continued bias against fast-food jobs and the people who hold them. 

Threatening people with service industry jobs isn’t new, of course. “What are you going to do, flip burgers?” has long been a cultural shorthand for “You’d better finish school” or “go to college” or “choose the right degree.” Meanwhile, a seemingly innumerable amount of sitcoms and coming-of-age films feature a scene where the Cool Kids descend upon their town’s local burger joint, only to find the plucky protagonist working behind the counter, typically wearing some doofy uniform. 

The meanest, yet most insecure of the jocks or the prettiest cheerleader will typically say something cutting, then punctuate it with a statement like, “Oh, and I will want fries with that,” much to the tittering delight of their companions. 

Sure, these scenes are supposed to show us something about the bully’s character, or lack of it, but the underlying message isn’t great either. It goes something like: Good people don’t delight in someone else’s humiliation, and don’t get us wrong, this — someone holding a normal job at a normal restaurant — is a humiliating situation. 

In Sam Mendes’ 1999 film, “American Beauty,” Lester Burnham, played by Kevin Spacey, kicks off a corporate blackmailing scheme that ultimately leaves him with a $60,000 pay-out. This helps fund his midlife crisis, which also looks a lot like a total regression. He lusts after his daughter’s teenaged friend, buys a 1970 Pontiac Firebird, starts smoking weed and gets a job in the drive-thru window at Mr. Smiley’s. “There are no jobs for manager, it’s just for counter,” a college-aged employee tells Burnham, who applies after seeing a flier in the window. 

“Good,” Burnham replies. “I’m looking for the least possible amount of responsibility.”

Through the years, Republicans lawmakers have pointed to the purported lack of difficulty of fast-food jobs as a justification for keeping the minimum wage low. For instance in 2021, Senator John Thune of South Dakota announced that he opposed raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour because, when he was a teenager, he was paid just $6 an hour while working as a restaurant cook. 

“Mr. Thune has been rightly and roundly roasted for innumeracy,” the New York Times’ Binyamin Appelbaum reported at the time. “He was a teenager in the 1970s. Earning $6 an hour back then is equivalent to earning more than $20 an hour today, because inflation has reduced the purchasing power of each dollar.” 

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Relatedly, in September, when California passed a law that will raise the minimum wage for the state’s fast-food workers to $20 per hour, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom said specifically he wanted to dispel the long-held notion that fast food work was just for teenagers, rather than household leaders trying to provide for their families. 

“That’s a romanticized version of a world that doesn’t exist,” Newsom said. “We have the opportunity to reward that contribution, reward that sacrifice and stabilize an industry.”

According to the Center for American Progress, 60% of fast-food workers across the nation are over the age of 20, and 1 in 5 are over the age of 35. “The demographics of workers in the industry also indicate that these jobs provide critical support for workers and their families and are not primarily about teenagers earning pocket money, as some opponents of minimum wage increases contend,” the Center reports. 

However, tired attitudes around who does fast-food work and its relative value continue to prevail, which is the main if not sole reason it’s remotely appealing as a form of punishment. Put another way: If someone had attacked their accountant with a stapler, would they then be sentenced to shuffling papers at a competing firm? 

When asked for a comment on the case, Chipotle responded: “The health and safety of our employees is our greatest priority, and we’re pleased to see justice served for any individual that does not treat our team members with the respect they deserve.”