Physics and the Fry Guy

My house, though upwards of forty years old, is a sturdy old place. I could walk out back, do some stretching, maybe a quick warmup, then push with all my might against its walls, but it wouldn't do a thing, no matter how hard or how long I pushed. I could come back inside at the end of the day having pressed against the house's walls from sunup to sundown, but have nothing to show for it except blistered hands and a sore back.

But I don't do this pointless exercise. Why? Well, aside from the fact that I have no interest in demolishing my childhood home, I also happen to know a bit of elementary physics.

The equation Work = Force x Distance explains why all my blood, sweat, and tears won't budge make the slightest difference in my house's end position. Force can be broken down into two separate components, mass and acceleration. Therefore, force represents the mass of the object I am trying to move (my house--several thousand kilograms) multiplied by the amount I want the object to accelerate. Now, I can put as many Newtons (units of force) into the wall as I want, but if the distance doesn't change, no work has been done and the walls of my house thankfully stay put.

Now, let's apply this principle to labor and income.

"Why does my manager get paid so much more than I do? I work just as hard as he does but he gets paid ten times more than I do! And he just sits in an office all day!"

The entry-level employee may put just as much, or even more, work into his job every day, but what is the difference between the results he gets and the results his manager gets? Take a fast-food restaurant as an example. The fry guy probably works as hard or harder than the manager. He stands in a hot kitchen for several hours a day. He deals with irritable fellow employees and downright stupid customers. He probably has a few burns on his hands from handling grease. The manager, on the other hand, deals with paperwork, gets to talk with people who are actually polite, and rarely suffers anything more than a papercut. So the fry guy should get a higher salary, right?

Wrong.

If the fresh-out-of-high-school fry guy is removed from the scene, the restaurant can still function, and will only suffer a slight loss in performance. Training a new employee of his skill level will only take a short amount of time and a small amount of money. If the manager, however, with years of experience and expertise, is taken out of the picture, the restaurant will not be able to function coherently. In all likelihood, the place will not be able to compete with the opposition anymore and will therefore fold like a house of cards.

So who, in the end, achieved more work? The fry guy puts a lot of force into his job, but will likely never create greater profits for the company than the manager does. The manager has earned his position from having patiently gone through many of the same trials of the kitchen when he was just starting out on his new job. While increased effort will likely increase one's salary, results are what employees are paid for in the end.