I do hardwood floors for a living. Last year I took a job getting paid by the square foot (as opposed to hourly) and at first it was great. I was making significantly more than the job I left. But a few months ago my boss took a new client and the jobs from this new client are way less conducive to making good money. Bad jobs always existed. But now there's more of them and less of the good ones. Everybody's feeling it. Not just me.
Well I went back to my old boss (who I left on a very good foot) and he hired me back with a significant raise from what I was making the first time. I gave two weeks notice and I had every intention on staying true to that. But I don't know if I can. I'm making like $150 a day a lot of the time (Back when things were good, a typical day was $250-300). My time is simply worth more than $15/hr. I would rather not work and make $0 then work full time for a poverty wage.
It's worth noting that there's absolutely no bad blood between me and my boss. Hes a great guy. We like each other and have never really had a conflict over the course of my employment.
At what point is it not rude to go “dude I'm really sorry but I just can't do this for such little money anymore. I'm out”.