I couldn’t tell you who works at the fast food joints here in my little town, because I never use them. I can tell you who works at the grocery stores though. Some are teens, and there’s good assortment of ages for cashiers. The managers are pretty varied in age.
Unless your state had different laws for fast food workers, you weren’t being paid the minimum wage in 1971. I went ahead and looked up minimum wages from years ago. I was five cents off on my earlier guess.
Back then, Florida labor law wouldn’t allow minors to work a full 40 hours, so it was part time only. We weren’t allowed to work past 10pm on any school nights.
Plus, restaurants were generally exempt from minimum wage law. Our wait staff made way above minimum wage with their tips............