In my second job at a Major Fast Food Chain (MFFC), it has recently occured to me the principle reason that such jobs experience as high a turnover rate as they do. Sure, they suck and they pay beans, but there's a far more important reason, one entirely within the control of the business owner.

See, fast food managers aren't taught to actually MANAGE! There's a whole set of skills involved in management, skills that a dextrous burger flipper may or may not possess, but which haven't been identified positively or negatively by his experience in removing 4 ounce hunks of charred animal flesh from a hot grill.

Fast food managers are often good burger flippers promoted in lieu of giving them an actual raise and pressured into being on call at every hour the store is open. They are taught how to enter numbers in the computer, and given a set of keys and the responsibility of carrying cash bags with large sums of money to the owner's bank, but they aren't taught how to identify problems with employees, how to communicate with employees to get the most out of them, or how to respond to an employee's legitimate concerns even when it seems all but impossible.

When an employee performs at a level these management personnel deem unacceptable, their response, rather than coaching and mentoring the employee, is to cut the employee's hours, regardless of the employee's attendance and performance thus far, or the external circumstances that may have motivated the problem in the first place. The employee then quits, or is fired after frustration from the management's response causes their performance to deteriorate even further.

This wouldn't be such a problem if it were confined to the service industry; the problem is, all too many of these "managers" are taking their resumes and moving their methods of "management" into other fields of employment. And they are slowly ascending up the food chain within these businesses (an unfortunate side effect of affirmative action, among other things) to where they are in positions of influence, positions to teach other aspiring managers their flawed techniques.

And we are all the worse off for it.