if you'll allow it:

Long long ago there was a bakery, the owner baked cookies and sold them. People were able to buy the cookies. He made a living doing that. We've somewhat upgraded the process from there.

We went from factories full of people producing many cookies to halls full of machines. We went from really expensive custom machines to unbelievably cheap ones.

The maintenance engineer works many lines, he has to do some work when something breaks but between those repairs tens of millions of cookies are produced. The designer does his job every 1-2 billion boxes of cookies but only if it is a custom job. If it is a generic machine it will be many billions more. He costs 20-30 boxes of cookies per day. If they pay him 15 or 45 it changes nothing.

Ford wanted his employees to drive cars. Do you think 35 euro per day is a budget with room for cookies? Do you think it is justified for anyone to complaint about my salary? Show me the man brave enough to say it to my face? Each of these jobs involves someone having to tell you your salary. The body language is roughly that of a doctor telling you you have 1 week to live.

I just needed work asap, this was what was available. Not very surprising, no need to ask why the last guy left. I cant say I didn't enjoy it, it was a marvel of engineering that few get to see from the inside.

I remember a time in the 80's when manual labor paid really well. About 4000 vs 700 per month and purchase power was infinitely greater* People were proud, they cared about the company, they made an effort to keep things running, meet deadlines, run the extra mile. No one asked if they wanted to work overtime, it was obvious when the job had to be finished. People had a sense of duty.

Now the cookie factory has 5 job agencies with ~50 people looking for the next idiot to enslave in the factory only for the victim to vanish unexpectedly creating a constant state of panic and increased pressure on the recruiters.

It was hilarious how they shouted at me over the phone when my time to vanish came. Apparently they lost 3 that morning. During the call I looked up his salary online. I told him 3600 seemed nice but I wouldn't take a job shouting at people over the phone.

I've done cold calling too, I know shouting at people is not very likely to get you what you want. It is hard to convince a recruiter to increase the salary if his salary depends on not understanding it.

The spiel is obvious, they want to throw money at it until they find a stable pool of useful idiots that they won't have to pay.

It's been 8 years and the job offer is still plastered all over the job websites. They promise at least one 5 hour shift, you will be on call all week for all 3 shifts 7:00 till 23:00, have to be there in < 15 minutes.

In a context like that should we really blame those damn cashiers with their 5 euro salary? Oh wait, it is all self checkout now. Strange, the cookies are still 99 cents?

I read UK Railway workers earn wages 70 per cent above the national average. 28% / 1.7 = 16.47% Then they are "overpaid" 11.53% already.

You get 70% more purchase power for shall we say 7% more expensive tickets? (guestimating maintenance this time)

How much extra disposable income would that 70% produce? 1000% ? 2000% ?

It's probably a lot of cookies, cookies every day! I think the economy would like it.