McDonald's To Low Wage Employees: Don't Forget To Give Your Au Pair and Nanny A Christmas Bonus!

Sometimes, the best thing to keep in mind is if you want to help, don't.

McDonalds (sort of) suggests she just send
back the Christmas gifts she gets so she can
pay her imaginary au pair.  

McDonald's needs that advice.

It seems like every other day, some news trickles out on how they are giving their low wage employees financial advice. (My advice is, hard as it is to do, all you McDonald's employees out there, keep trying to find a job with higher wages)

Anyway, much of the source of McDonald's advice comes from the McSource line, which is McDonald's way of offering helpful lifehacking hints to their employees.

The latest installment gives their often minimum wage employees advice on how much to tip their au pairs, housekeepers, pool cleaners, massage therapists, garage attendants and personal fitness trainers for the holidays.

Because it's no problem affording all those people, and the holiday bonuses on a $7.50 hourly wage with a limit of 30 hours a week, right?

McDonald's tells CNBC that the advice comes from the etiquette experts at the Emily Post Institute in Vermont. They ought to know what's the proper way to acknowledge employees at the holidays, right?

Well, we can't find anything wrong with Emily Post's advice, either. But I wonder if Post would consider it rude to mock low wage employees, however unintentionally, with this advice for people who have money, in other words, people who aren't McDonald's employees.

And I have to note it wasn't Post's idea to give this advice to McDonald's employee. It seems some contractor working for McDonald's lifted the Emily Post etiquette advice from some other side. After CNBC's embarrassing little questions about this matter, the "holiday gift to your au pair" advice has apparently disappeared.

This little crisis I guess is an improvement to previous advice the low wage McDonald's workers got. That was to return the unopened Christmas gifts they got and cash them in, to supplement their poverty level pay.

 Just a little Scrooge-like, no?

Before that, McDonald's helpfully provided sample budgets for its workers so they can figure out how to stretch their measly dollars.  The budgets included no money for heat (take THAT, Minnesota McDonald's workers) and only $20 a month for health care.

No wonder so many fast food workers have been going on strikes this week, despite the fact there's no real organized union backing them.

I remember back in the 1980s or 1990s, when politicians railed against "welfare queens" who got government benefits they didn't  qualify for or deserve.

I totally agree that only people truly in need should get a helping hand from the government.  So why are the corporate CEOs and such getting rich in part by paying their employees so little that they can get food stamps?

My tax dollars, then, are going to enrich the already rich because they're benefitting from food stamps by not paying their employees enough. What, some millionaire or billionaire needs my help to give the annual Christmas bonus to their pool boy at his mansion in Barbados?

Here's my Christmas gift to myself: No eating at McDonald's for me. It'll be a healthy choice anyway.