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would you want to work hard and put effort in if you were payed very little I do not think many people would.
yes... if I agreed to the job, then why wouldn't I work hard and put in effort?
if I didn't like the pay, I wouldn't take the job
do you think everyone who volunteers do a poor job because they aren't paid at all? having a work ethic is not tied to how much you are paid, it's about your integrity
I disagree. They're doing the same work at $15. They're not going to generate more gross profit just because they're getting an additional $5/hr.
Is this the same argument you use with the utility companies when rates for electricity and water go up? The electricity doesn’t generate more sales than it used to, so you refuse to pay 3% more?
you know they didn't "decide" to become quality employees after they got paid more right? they were already quality workers which is why someone was willing to pay them more
you are putting the cart before the horse if you think increasing minimum wage makes minimum wage workers better at their job
Wow...So now minimum wage earners are a group? Sounding a lot like discrimination....Do we even need to go there?
I think a lot of people here don't understand what it means to run a small business. I have one shop. Costco is HUGE. I don't get a lot of slack when it comes to expenses relative to the income I generate.
If I could get out of my business today, I would. I have a lease with a personal guarantee to consider, and I am unable to sell.
I completely understand the need for a higher living wage. I don't feel entitled at all, as I have worked my ass off the last twenty years for my tiny little company. But perhaps we should look at reducing the cost of living rather than raising the minimum wage, so that people can actually live off the MW like they used to when I was a kid. I live in California and don't see my kids being able to buy even a starter home one day unless they make over $100,000 a year.
I think a lot of people here don't understand what it means to run a small business. I have one shop. Costco is HUGE. I don't get a lot of slack when it comes to expenses relative to the income I generate.
If I could get out of my business today, I would. I have a lease with a personal guarantee to consider, and I am unable to sell.
I completely understand the need for a higher living wage. I don't feel entitled at all, as I have worked my ass off the last twenty years for my tiny little company. But perhaps we should look at reducing the cost of living rather than raising the minimum wage, so that people can actually live off the MW like they used to when I was a kid. I live in California and don't see my kids being able to buy even a starter home one day unless they make over $100,000 a year.
i disagree. You feel that your marginal business entities you to cut rate labor in order to stay afloat. At its core, that is what you are saying.
I am sorry that you feel trapped. It isn’t a good feeling. My prior career was in an industry that is busily imploding because of technological change. I saw it coming and sold out years ago. The people who purchased it from me ran it for an additional 7 years before they closed it down.
Technology has allowed amazon and Costco to flourish. If you cannot find a niche for yourself, you are going to have problems, but that doesn’t give you the right to benefit from historically low minimum wages at the expense of others.
As for lowering the cost of living, that is simply another way of saying that you want to personally benefit at the detriment of others. If you reduce top line revenue for any industry, it will cause problems, including downwards pressure on wages and business closures.
I think a lot of people here don't understand what it means to run a small business. I have one shop. Costco is HUGE. I don't get a lot of slack when it comes to expenses relative to the income I generate.
If I could get out of my business today, I would. I have a lease with a personal guarantee to consider, and I am unable to sell.
I completely understand the need for a higher living wage. I don't feel entitled at all, as I have worked my ass off the last twenty years for my tiny little company. But perhaps we should look at reducing the cost of living rather than raising the minimum wage, so that people can actually live off the MW like they used to when I was a kid. I live in California and don't see my kids being able to buy even a starter home one day unless they make over $100,000 a year.
This is the typical reaction when people can't afford what they need, and/or they can't afford what they want.
"I WON'T change, so my pay must go up or my COL must go down."
Back to square one, supply/demand, risk/reward.
There is only one person you are in control of and that you can change, that is yourself. When people believe others should change for them they are up deNile without a paddle.
I think a lot of people here don't understand what it means to run a small business. I have one shop. Costco is HUGE. I don't get a lot of slack when it comes to expenses relative to the income I generate.
If I could get out of my business today, I would. I have a lease with a personal guarantee to consider, and I am unable to sell.
I completely understand the need for a higher living wage. I don't feel entitled at all, as I have worked my ass off the last twenty years for my tiny little company. But perhaps we should look at reducing the cost of living rather than raising the minimum wage, so that people can actually live off the MW like they used to when I was a kid. I live in California and don't see my kids being able to buy even a starter home one day unless they make over $100,000 a year.
I own a small business. I don't hire workers unless I can pay them well. I don't ask anyone to work for me for minimum wage or anything close to that. If I can't afford to pay someone well, I just do the work myself. I don't disagree, however, that the living costs have gotten out of hand in some parts of the country. Not sure how that would work to reduce them, though. Raising the minimum wage is one action; reducing living costs would take a lot of different actions, I would think.
I am perfectly well aware that you can't live like a middle-class American on the minimum wage. It is or should be a stepping stone.
However, I don't hear Mexicans whining like this. Instead, they are scraping together thousands of dollars so a coyote can smuggle them over the border and then they can start out at the minimum wage. Once they get a job, which takes them at least a few hours, they *send money home* to Mexico. It's an ethic that prevailed when my ancestors came here 100 or 150 years ago (without the benefit of a minimum wage) but we seem to have lost it.
If anyone is in the US illegally, there are any number of ways to get by, from working under the table to stealing IDs to living 10 or 20 people to a 3 bedroom house. I'm sorry, but I'm talking about working legally. And the reason illegal Hispanics aren't whining is because if they do, they're likely to be fired and/or caught and deported.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Humble and Kind
Since when was is a rule you can only work 40 hours a week? If that were a rule/law then I'd be done by Wednesday. lol
MW 40 hrs a week, can't make ends meet, living as cheap as possible, get another job. Most everyone I know has had to do that at some point in their life.
If you only want to work 40 hrs a week making MW and barely get by, that's fine if your happy. Free time is more important to some more than others. AND there is nothing wrong with that at all.
Someone also said something about people waiting in line to get checked out cause not enough MW employees, or something like that. That's not a "higher income" trait, it's a personality trait. Most call them a$$h0!es.
We called them lots worse than that, but the point is, that's how they behave and the few minimum wage slaves that are still working at businesses with those customers are the ones that have to grin and bear it. And to be perfectly frank, I really despise being the target of so much abuse because the multi-billion dollar company I'm working for is so cheap they can't pay a few more dollars and hire a few more people.
By the way, I worked at a copy shop on swing shift and one night it turned out there was only me there and a new hire. Everyone else had quit. The new hire taught himself to use the color copier and I taught myself to run the B&W machines and we both helped on the counter. As a business, you can't afford to be in a situation like this. In this case, two of us weren't enough to handle all the business that came in - we needed at least 2 more people, including a swing shift manager. Of course, as fewer and fewer customers came in, two employees were more than enough. This is a good example of a business going downhill because they wouldn't offer enough to attract more workers (I was desperate so I stayed there. What can I say?). And what would have happened if one of us had quit and the other called in sick. Bam! There goes your business.
In fact, my manager at another business I worked at was a franchise owner and if her business was open 24 hours, she got 51% of the profits. If she had to close at night, she only got I think 40% of the profits. So it's not all about the customers. If a business has to cut down or close because they can't find any help, it hurts the business profits as well.
Now let's talk about holding down multiple jobs. Do you know what the new normal for working more than one minimum wage job is these days?
Many times you have to get permission from your first boss to work a second job. You can blow him a raspberry, but if you are found to be working a second job without permission, you may get fired from your first job.
If you work a minimum wage job, expect to be on call all the time for any shift. If you work a second job, eventually there will be a conflict and you will be asked which one you want to keep.
At a minimum wage job, you will be expected to come in no matter if the roads are closed down or whether you've been exposed to scarlet fever. I had a manager that wanted me to come in when I had an active case of shingles - on my face yet!
Sometimes you work back to back shifts and on days like Black Friday, you will be expected to be at both jobs for the entire 12+ hours or whatever the store is open. That's when one of your bosses finds out you have more than one job and you will be given a choice as to which one you want to work for the most.
Your jobs will generally mean that your employers will bend the rules for breaks and lunches. In other words, you'll be lucky sometimes if you get either. So you may work a full 8 hours without a single break and have to immediately go straight to your next job and do it all over again.
And of course, if you wanted to attend college to get out of this rut, that gets just a little difficult when you're working more than one job.
I had a friend who worked with me as a full time vault teller and she took on a part-time evening job for some Christmas cash. She got off at the bank at 5pm, got to the store at 6, and worked till 11pm. She was asked to come in early and stay late on occasion, sometimes without pay. She worked 4 nights a week and after taxes, she was clearing maybe $60 a week. She did this for three weeks to what amounted to about $200 in cash that she didn't get to spend because she was so exhausted from working, she never got her Christmas shopping done that year. We laughed about it, but it's really not that funny.
This is fine if all you want to do is supplement your paycheck. But do really want to work 60 and 80 hours a week for the rest of your life just to survive? Do we really expect people to do that? And what about their health? We already complain because of the costs of health care coming out of our pockets for people who are obese or who smoke, so why don't we complain when people have to work until they drop dead from exhaustion and all the medical problems they face before that happens?
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