A budget planning guide from McDonald's for its employees, shown above, caught flak this past week for being out of touch. For starters, it didn't account for food and gasoline. The second line on the sample budget leaves room for income from a second job, which many called an admission by the fast food giant that its workers can't live on its wages alone. 
 
 McDonald's (MCD) said in a statement that the sample is a generic example and is intended to provide a general outline of what an individual budget may look like. 
 
 Four real McDonald's workers shared their budgets with us, shedding light on how far their wages actually go. ||||| The more we hear about McDonald's HR resource center, appropriately titled McResources, the more we learn about the darkness of the human soul. Almost one month to the day after learning that their help center tells its employees to sign up for food stamps, Mickey D's has struck again. This time their website suggests its hungry, underpaid employees to break their food up into smaller bites so that it "results in eating less and still feeling full." The New York Times's Steve Greenhouse, a labor reporter, tweeted this screenshot of the McResources page that has many people aghast. 
 
 And here's a closer look of that "advice" in question: 
 
 Greenhouse says McDonald's is actually giving "Ralph" advice on how to "avoid hunger & stretch food budget." In other words, an ultra-profitable company that makes really cheap, calorie-laden food is telling its own employees to nibble here and there to avoid feeling hunger pangs, instead of feeding them more nutritious food or paying them a living wage. 
 
 But is this really what's going on? Is this the same as Wal-Mart holding a food drive for its own struggling workers? 
 
 When you try and rationalize the language, the only other believable theory that makes sense is that this is more diet advice than hunger/budget advice. Maybe it's some health-initiative targeting excessive snacking, and maybe McDonald's is just looking out for the health of its employees? Maybe. However, even in that case, they are a food company. Either way, it's not a good look for a Fortune 500 company. 
 
 After all, it was revealed recently that McDonald's HR helpers actually advise employees to go on food stamps if they're struggling with bills. A help-line call leaked by a fair-pay advocacy group captured a McResources HR operator acknowledging that 10-year employee doesn't make a lot of money and also urging that employee to sign up for federal benefits. Ergo, if McResources operators know that their employees are struggling to make ends meet and pay for food, then it wouldn't be too far-fetched for that company to also tell them how to stretch their budget too. ||||| Economy McDonald’s Advice To Underpaid Employees: Sell Your Christmas Presents For Cash CREDIT: Fast food workers strike in New York in May (Credit: Salon) 
 
 Tis the season for holiday spirit: Yule logs, egg nog, festive lights and exchanging gifts with loved ones. If you work for McDonald’s, though, be sure to save those receipts. 
 
 McDonald’s McResource Line, a dedicated website run by the world’s largest fast-food chain to provide its 1.8 million employees with financial and health-related tips, offers a full page of advice for “Digging Out From Holiday Debt.” Among their helpful holiday tips: “Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash.” 
 
 Elsewhere on the site, McDonald’s encourages its employees to break apart food when they eat meals, as “breaking food into pieces often results in eating less and still feeling full.” And if they are struggling to stock their shelves with food in the first place, the company offers assistance for workers applying for food stamps. 
 
 McDonald’s corporate officers have a history of offering questionable advice to their low-wage workers. Four months ago, the company partnered with Visa to distribute a sample “budget.” In it, the chain suggested that workers needn’t pay for such frivolous expenses like their heating bills, and factored in a monthly rent of $600. To workers living in New York City (home of 350+ stores) and other expensive metropolises, that number is almost comical. 
 
 McDonald’s employees are some of the most underpaid workers in the country. The company’s cashiers and “team members” earn, on average, $7.75 an hour, just 50 cents higher than the federal minimum wage. Responding to rising living costs, many stores have staged walk-outs, strikes and protests, demanding a living wage. In Europe, where the minimum wage for employees is $12, customers pay just pennies more than their American counterparts for the same menu items, while the stores themselves typically bring in higher profit margins than ones in the United States. 
 
 Of course, McDonalds has shown little willingness to negotiate higher salaries for their poorest workers even as labor rights groups up the pressure. Instead, their website has another piece of advice for people who are stressed about their meager paychecks: “Quit complaining,” the site suggests. “Stress hormones levels rise by 15% after 10 minutes of complaining.”
– More handy financial advice from McDonald's, which recently suggested its workers might want to get second jobs: The chain's McResource tip website says readers can make money in a pinch by selling "unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist." The advice comes in a section on "Digging Out From Holiday Debt," ThinkProgress reports. A separate suggestion from the site on how to "avoid hunger & stretch food budget": "Breaking food into pieces often results in eating less and still feeling full." This comes shortly after it emerged that McDonald's was advising workers to get on food stamps, the Wire notes. CNNMoney, meanwhile, compares the budgets of real McDonald's workers to the sample budget the company recently issued. The differences are drastic; for instance, food is reportedly the top monthly cost for most workers CNNMoney interviewed, and it doesn't appear at all on the sample budget. (Meanwhile, Mickey Dee's isn't the only corporation getting kicked for hamfisted efforts at helping workers.)