It’s a joke that people toss off without much thought when you tell them you have a degree in some area of liberal arts that people deem ‘worthless,’ typically because it’s difficult to find work in that area (especially in the given economy). People with English degrees, for example, especially if they’ve been silly enough to go to graduate school.

‘Do you want fries with that?’

Implication: The only thing you’re going to be able to do with that degree is work in food service, specifically fast food. Instead of spending your life doing something useful, you’ll be standing at a drive-through window or a counter asking people if they want fries with their order. Supersize this, right? You’ll get covered in grease and filth and you’ll be treated like trash, your skin breaking out from harsh restaurant work. Your whole life is pathetic and your degree is wasted.

It’s a joke middle class people like to make when interacting with other middle class people, with a high element of snobbery. Food service work is awful and beneath them, but fast food in particular is the bottom of the barrel. Few things are less ‘classy’ than serving burgers and fries to a screaming, hungry public (one filled, of course, with greedy-eyed fat people, squalling brats, and shiftless slobs). There is something that middle class people find deeply and viscerally gross about fast food work, the people who do it, and, of course, those who consume it.

Which is, I think, why so many people were puzzled and confused when fast food workers started rising up in 2012 to demand fair wages, fair treatment, and fair lives. This was something that people didn’t know how to handle because it was so alien to them: fast food workers as human beings. People who needed to survive. People who were even, gasp, educated and well-spoken, just like the middle class people who looked down upon them. People who had their own organising ideas and didn’t need middle class interference to tell them how to create a movement and drive it forward.

Labour activism in the US is exploding right now, which is fantastic news for labour organisers and workers, but it’s also serving as a wakeup call to many of the middle classes. Those labourers previously deemed unworthy of attention: janitors, fieldhands, fast food servers, hotel cleaners, train drivers, the people who make society run and provide those comforts many people assume are natural—many people assume they are in fact entitled to—they are rising. They are being vocal and they are angry and they’re not interested in mealy-mouthed promises. They want deals and guarantees for themselves and the workers marching in solidarity with them.

Because here’s the thing: labour is not demeaning. Being a labourer is not evidence of failure, and working in fast food isn’t something that people should be ashamed of. It is a job, providing a service, and while it may be classified as unskilled labour for which one doesn’t need advanced training or experience, the person who performs it is still deserving of respect. Because behind the voice in the drive through asking if you want fries is an actual human being. The fast food industry is driven by the labour of millions of human beings from field to processing plant to counter, and those people matter.

In ranking some types of labour as better or more noble than others, as gross or elevated, middle class people want to find another way to put themselves above people in lower social classes, further adding to class stratification in the US and reinforcing the divide. It’s not just about making more money than other people; it’s also about being ‘better.’ Having completed more years of education. Working in a respectable field. Being a person with more ‘drive,’ ignoring the fact that complex factors go into the kind of work available to people and the choices people make (and are forced into) when it comes to work.

Many fast food workers would probably agree that they don’t really want to work in an industry with a high risk of occupational injuries, an industry where they’re often treated very badly by customers and managers alike, an industry where the pay is dismal, an industry that society looks down upon. Many would love to have work in other fields; even work in other restaurants, for example, where the conditions might be marginally better. But what fast food workers generally wouldn’t agree with is the idea that they aren’t human beings, or that they should be made the butt of jokes by people occupying positions of social power and control.

There’s nothing particularly funny about ‘would you like fries with that?’ It’s a joke that relies on the idea that fast food workers are pathetic lumps, and that people who end up in such jobs just didn’t try hard enough, and are clearly lesser than the rest of society. That those people, indeed, were born to serve, and you’d have to be taking a serious step down, ‘falling’ socially, to end up in fast food work. That sounds suspiciously like historic attitudes that some people were born to service work while others were born to be served.

While it may be fun to watch Downton Abbey, that is a world that should be dead and buried. The fact that it’s not should be troubling, and the fact that society continues to subtly reinforce many of the attitudes that existed in that era is disturbing. There’s nothing wrong with labour, whatever labour it may be, and all labourers deserve fair pay, a safe workplace, and respectful treatment as people who are contributing overall to society.