I’m (21M) a linecook at a chain restaurant whose name sounds like (is) an innuendo. I make an even $15/hr with no benefits at full time. I work my ass off 5 days a week, Thursday-Monday. I live in a college town, in a 1 bedroom, unfurnished apartment, and I’m fortunate enough that I can pay my bills on time.
However, all that said, I’m a young guy with no extended responsibility other than my dog. I don’t make car payments, I’m on my parent’s healthcare, i don’t pay for my phone bill, I got into a bad situation with credit card debt, and I had my mother to fall back on. I’m successful for my age and circumstances, and I make decent money, competitive with an average teacher’s pay.
So why, when this month’s rent, Internet, water, electricity, and fuel costs were surmised, I came out with $8 in my account over all.
For two weeks, I had no money in case of emergency. I had no lifeline other than my parents, which many others don’t have. And the sad part is, it’ll only get worse from here. My only escape from this hell hole of a career is to either keep working in the kitchen and hope to eventually move up to Kitchen Manager, or go back to college, accrue another $75,000 of debt, and pursue my dream job of (ironically) teaching.
And here’s the best part. My $15/hr wage means I make about $120/shift. Usually, the restaurant gains around $20,000 per night. So out of that income, I make a nice 0.6% of the profits from a restaurant that ceases to function without my role.
“But Nedmak, they have other employees too.” Yes. They do. However us line-cooks make the most out of all the hourly people. Servers get no money from the restaurant at all, barely enough to cover taxes in fact. Bussers/takeout make $10/hr plus whatever the tip out is, so 0.4%. And hosts make $8/hr, So 0.32%. At one (very busy) time, there are maybe 10 line-cooks, 3 bussers, 5 takeout, and 2 hosts. That adds up to around 6% for line-cooks, 3.2% for bussers and takeout, and 0.62% for hosts. Or for those that hate math, 9.82% of the income goes to employees. The rest is profit. $18,036 of profit A NIGHT.
“But Nedmak, they spend money on maintenance and keeping the lights on and buying more ingredients.” Right again my friend, but if you think management isn’t trained to make the most cost efficient decisions, you’d be sorely mistaken. We could probably take one night’s worth of profit, and that would pay a month or more of bills.
“But Nedmak, you work for a chain restaurant, so corporate pays your bills, and they have way more employees. I’m sure they’re paying you as much as they can!” Whoever is writing these is getting on my nerves. If you wanna look at corporate, fine, let’s look at corporate. They’re based in California (Another hint). They have around 200 locations across the US. Taking $20,000 a night as an average (some make 10k, others make 30k), you can apply that to every restaurant. That’s a clean 4 MILLION USD A NIGHT. There are 365 days in a year, so every year, corporate makes $1.46×109 (1,460,000,000). 1.46. BILLION. USD. So bullshit they can’t pay any more.
My point is: If corporations are able to exploit workers (that without them they would not exist) to this extent, what are they doing to the ones they can do without? Don’t get me wrong, I love my job. But there’s no way in hell I can survive and live my life with the wages they’re willing to pay.
Tl;Dr: Fuck corporations, fuck fellatio’s, and tip your servers.