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I've flipped burgers (literally), delivered pizzas, and worked in convenience stores. In these dead-end jobs, what skills, knowledge, and experience can be obtained to qualify one for a real job?
And I see this as a bad thing because people who need to work minimum wage jobs for a living will be undercut by subsidy kids (teens living at home who don't need to make a living, and college students working for beer money who also don't need to work for a living).
You should have learned food service hygiene & quality control, time management, & customer service, at the very least.
Who are you to day who NEEDS to make a living? When I was a teen living at home, I worked so I could afford a car, nicer clothes than the very basic stuff my parents would buy, recreation, and eventually, college.
The job doesn't pay according to the need of those doing the job. It pays according to the many factors and demands of the JOB. What level of skill, how strenuous the work, how unpleasant the environment, etc.
How does a "minimum wage or close to it" worker without marketable skills more out of it?
To what do they move?
All sorts of ways.
1. Thru the ranks at their place of employment. You must have missed my earlier post about the turnover at fast food restaurants, which creates great opportunities for people to move quickly into management positions, thereby gaining management experience, along with pay rates significantly above minimum wage, whether they stay there or move into another industry.
2. See above - gaining skills where you are and then moving into another industry or simply to another employer if your skills and experience aren't put to their best use where you are.
3. Continuing education after work hours. For instance, a minimum wage person can work toward the Commercial Drivers License and HazMat certifications (neither are very expensive - MUCH less expensive than a college degree) and can begin working in the oil and gas industry within a few months. Starting pay in most oil and gas related fields is about $10-12 an hour, PLUS you get overtime. It's very, very common for an entry level oilfield worker to be making $60,000 a year within one year, and upward from there the longer they work in the industry. Some oil and gas companies are so desperate for people (because of the boom in various parts of the country such as Texas, California, Colorado, Arkansas and North Dakota) that they will even pay for a person to get their CDL and HazMat.
Those are just a couple of ways to move out of minimum wage jobs.
I'm trying to get my mind around the concept of networking for burger flippers.
"I just made a bunch of money by switching to GEICO...I mean Wendy's!
GOOD GRIEF, do you REALLY not understand networking????
Join some organizations - Toastmasters, Rotary, The Sierra Club, MADD - WHATEVER - and get to know professionals in a wide range of industries. Volunteer at your local chamber of commerce or economic development council. If you want to break out of burger flipping, you don't hang around with other burger flippers, you hang around people who DON'T flip burgers for a living!
That is rich - richer than the prepared company sauces which were trucked in weekly. Managers and their assistants did almost all of the pizza making (keading dough, saucing etc) and the drivers delivered pizzas, took phone orders, washed dishes, and did the cleanup.
so AGAIN...more excuses...and blame someone else instead of your self
But most minimum wage jobs do not lead to better jobs. Most minimum wage jobs are dead end jobs.
Remember, the minimum wage was worth much more when it was first instituted than it is today. Periodic raises in the minimum wage have lagged FAR behind the rate of inflation.
Exactly! On another thread recently, someone brought up CNAs (Certified Nursing Assistants) as an example of how a person could "move up" through the ranks. (CNAs make barely over minimum wage in many settings, particularly nursing homes.) Anyway, there is NO position to which a CNA can move up. There are no management positions that want someone with a CNA, unless said person also has AT LEAST a BSN (bachelor of science in nursing). The only hierarchy in CNAing is seniority, and we have seen how sometimes, a person can get hired on at a higher pay rate than someone already working there has. There are no CNA managers.
Now fast food may be one place where people can actually move up through the ranks, but I can't off the top of my head think of any others, although I supposed there are some.
Raising the minimum wage is just ughhh!!!. It is NOT meant to be a living wage. Why raise the minimum wage so an unskilled illegal immigrant can support themselves and their 7 kids when raising the minimum wage will just end up with less jobs for "REAL Americans". If you want to make enough money to support a family go and finish highschool and go to college and then get a real job that is a "living wage".
If you want to break out of burger flipping, you don't hang around with other burger flippers, you hang around people who DON'T flip burgers for a living!
Amen. An ex boss told me one thing I always remember: Never take advice on how to achieve something from someone who has not already achieved it.
99 of 100 permanent minimum wage plus a quarter or two employees consistently seek advice just amongst themselves. IMO, from what I have seen from the few family/friends in that boat, 98 of the 99 offer advice because misery likes company, and they want to make sure you do not leave their "exclusive" club.
Which cost money and take time which many poor people do not have
That's how life works, you have to bring something to the table, nobody ows anyone a living. No one owns anybody a living right that is what the greedy business owners want you to believe. Places where no ones own anyone a living are where you see the worst poverty people living in shacks. People who feel this way are doing so because they are greedy and selfish idiots.
You go to your local community college and take classes that can lead to a job that pays better than minimum wage.
Simple, really.....
Community college costs money I know because I a CNA class which is the cheapest college course in the college and it cost $500 what poor could afford that? Again someone answer this to me if everyone gets more skills or goes to school and gets better jobs how will there be enough higher paying jobs for all those people and who will do the lower paying jobs? Where I work in food service they start at min wage but everyone who works there is an adult and they need adults to work there.
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