I don’t want to give too much context about my job for privacy reasons, but i run a site for outdoor recreation, so we have shop staff and operations staff. Shop does the retail and checking in, operations does the manual labor to make guest experiences happen
I had an absolutely fantastic crew this year. I’m in my 20’s and this year, my crew was all teenage boys who go to the same high school, first job, and they fucking killed it. I mention that they go to school together because this is labor that breaks spirits and that rapport is invaluable in the way that it makes a terrible job almost fun (been in their shoes at this job)
I try not to ask them to do something unless I was able to do it with them (unless multiple tasks needed to be done at once, it’s a site that can potentially see 1,000 people in a day). I say this again to express that I’ve been in their job position and refuse to act above them aside from delegating task.
Only issue we ran into is they always want to stop what they’re doing to find me and tell me new developments in their lives, management had an issue w this despite us being the most profitable site, sorry to be human! Anyway
The short and skinny of it is that they were criminally underpaid compared to what fast food restaurants and other places are offering. I also made it my mission to be very transparent about pay this year and we found out that the operation staff is consistently paid two dollars less than the shop staff.
I almost got fired for doing this and honestly, I’d be fine with it because I will die on this hill and get reincarnated and climb back up and die on this hill again, and pay still wasn’t adjusted. My heart feels so heavy that I couldn’t get these boys what I promised, which was to get them a raise to match their counterparts. And even though Shop staff made more, they were still underpaid. I feel like these were all my little brothers and we became very close over the summer and I now feel very overprotective of them, I’m so mad that I couldn’t be a successful advocate or role model for them.
I know that their life isn’t dependent on a career or a job yet but I hope that if they choose to get a job, I’ve provided the example of wage transparency and standing your ground, since I failed to get them adequate pay. I want the boys to have gotten at least something from this job since I couldn’t help them