I am in university and work around 30 hours a week to support myself as I have no parental support, I do this on minimum wage at a company that owns a few of different cafes and restaurants so I bounce around between them ( I am a trained barista) I have been doing this for around 7 months, about a month ago I asked to be put on living wage instead of minimum as the responsibilities that I have are worth far more then minimum, I open and close by myself often, I do cash up, balance the tills and do the banking forms, I train other employees often, order supply’s, and do stocktake all while still doing the regular barista work and often working by myself in the small cafes, I effectively do the work of a manager a lot of the time. I also realised that many of the teenage employees ( who don’t have rent to pay or food to buy and do a fraction of the work I do) get paid more than me, granted like 50¢ but still. When I presented this to my boss he seemd pissed but he couldn’t really argue and I got my raise, now though he has cut my shifts down to 10 hours a week, I can’t afford to live on that amount a week. I asked him why that is and told him I need more hours and he made up some bullshit about how it’s winter now and they need less people ( it has been winter for like 2 months already) . I’m a fairly certain that he is just mad that I deemed myself worthy of making more than minimum and that I called him out on how he was underpaying me. ( I tried to be as polite as possible when I asked , he was really pushy about the whole thing though) I am obviously looking for a new job but I have no idea what to do in the meantime time, I am like 100$ off of my rent which is due tomorrow, I have never been late on rent before and idk what to do, I hardly have any food left in the house and I don’t think I can afford groceries. I have this overwhelmingly nauseous feeling in my stomach all the time I am just so worried about money. I have no idea what to do, like should I try get a loan? ( idk I’m 19 I have no idea ) . I’m so stressed and I have a bunch of school work on top of this and honestly I just want to cry and give up.
I am just so fucking pissed that my employer can basically ruin my life on a whim and there is nothing I can do about it. Seriously this is so fucked up