So, for the fun of it, I decided to take two similar positions, a diner line cook and a retirement home cook, and I decided to break it down. These are two jobs that I could probably get pretty easy, since I have experience working in a restaurant, especially in a kitchen capacity as an expo. Both don’t require any formal background cooking, so for the fun of it, I said what if I worked at both of these places at once hypothetically, I was actually really disturbed.
So the diner has you working 5 eight hour shifts, and 1 nine hour shift a week; already we’re at 49 hours a week. The pay rate for them is 14/hr. So if I just worked there, it’s 32,928 a year; not very good.
So, I added in the retirement home, pretty possible to work both since the diner closes at 1:30pm, and the shift at the retirement home is 2pm-8pm. Retirement home pays 15 an hour, doing 6 seven hour shifts a week, so about 630 a week, 2,520 per month, 30,240 a year.
All in all, to even make 63,000 a year in my town, I’d need to work 2 jobs, work everyday of the week at 1 of them(the diner gives Sunday’s and Monday’s off), get up at 5:30am Tues-Thrs, and on Fridays at 4:30am for the diner, work until 1:30pm, then be to work at 2:00pm for my shift at the retirement home, where I’d work another 6 hours.
Get home after 8:00pm, try to find time to do dishes, do laundry, maybe have enough time to sit down and enjoy my free time, and then probably by that time it’s 10:00pm or 10:30pm, get to sleep so I can wake up at 5:30am or 4:30am and do it all over again.
All that for 63,000 dollars? If I decided to go through with that I’d probably be dead within a few years after pulling in 91 hours a week working a kitchen line. Something is just actually disturbing about that, that doesn’t sit well in my stomach knowing there’s probably someone who does this. If your reading this and you do this to make a living, I hope your okay.
Edit: the average salary in my town is below 40k, and the average rent per month is closing in at 1,500 to 2,000.