I’d Rather Be Poor at Home Than Poor and Stressed At Work
Another take on the Great Resignation.
I have heard quite a lot in the past few months about how employers can’t keep employees. There are passive-aggressive signs on drive-thrus griping about lack of workers. There are whole billboards taken out to encourage people to “get off your butt” and get back to work.
Then there is the Great Resignation, where people are leaving the workforce in droves, many with no backup plan or job lined up. Stories abound of stores being closed because the whole staff quit in one go.
As a result, I’ve seen street-level advertisements in my area for starting wages of $13 to $15 an hour for jobs at Mcdonald’s. Everywhere you look, wages are rising and benefits are sweetening. Heck, Raising Canes is sending corporate executives to work the stores to cover shortages.
Honestly? I think it’s great. The front-line jobs that get so constantly crapped on by the Karens of the world are having their say, and their say is “this isn’t worth the crummy paycheck. I quit.”
Before I got a professional job, I worked a variety of retail jobs for over a decade, including a nearly eight-year stint at a grocery store. I’ve encountered a variety of horrible customers who griped about anything and used their power over me to make my life miserable. The customer is always right, after all, generally at the worker’s expense.
And, as entitled customers have terrorized various retail and food workers over the past two decades, the minimum wage has stagnated since 2009. Quite a few states have raised their minimum wages in that period, but quite a few haven’t. And as such, the retail and food workers that have stocked the shelves and made your sandwiches have become fed up.
I don’t blame them. $7.25 an hour isn’t worth the guff I got from employees in this year of our lord 2021. Heck, I wouldn’t do it for my state’s minimum, which is over $10 an hour. Especially not for the (lack of) benefits that most retail and restaurants offer. If given the choice, I’d much rather sit at home and be poor while looking for a better job than work myself to the bone lifting boxes and dealing with terrible customers and still be poor.
These were the workers that, just over a year ago, were hailed as “heroes” for working during the pandemic. Now, everyone wants to put them in harm’s way to reopen the economy, as though these heroes’ lives are worth the cost of a chicken sandwich and daily abuse from the customers that demand those sandwiches.
It doesn’t help that the cost of everything is going up. Inflation is up over 5% year-over-year. Everything is more expensive, and wages have been stagnant this whole time. Meanwhile, employers cut hours even while they raise wages, and benefits are nowhere to be seen. Employees are treated as expendable with fast food turnover often approaching 150%. And, of course, there’s the constant, rapid-fire abuse from customers that managers often do nothing about.
So yeah, if my choice is dealing with Karens for peanuts or scraping by at home while I wait for better prospects, I know what I’d rather do.
If you liked this, please subscribe to my publication, Thing a Day. I publish something every day on a variety of topics, so you never know what you’re going to see!
Here are some other things I’ve written:
