Obligatory statements: first post on reddit, and on mobile so things might be junk.
I've only just realized after several months just how much one of my recent jobs took advantage of me. I was in my first year of college and we were in the midst of covid and since I had been displaced from the dorms I needed to find a job to be able to afford to stay in an apartment. I got a job as a cashier/food prep worker for minimum wage + tips. Now this should have been the first red flag, both a cashier and food prep? However I was a dumb kid and this job was one of the first that actually got back to me about my application.
Second red flag? I was asked to come in for training literally the night that I got the phone interview. I was just happy to be employed.
All in all it wasn't too bad of a job – the customers were mostly old people and kids so I didn't get many bad interactions. My coworkers were also very nice and I got along with all of them well (we were all college/high school students). We usually worked alone on shift though (which meant literally everything there was to do to keep the store running was on just one teenager).
I was initially trained to be a closer – which entailed the usual food prep and customer service as well as dealing with the cash at the end of the night and cleaning everything (looking back that place is probably not food and health safety compliant). I was then trained in opening after about five months or so of working there. I tended to alternate between opening and closing, and at no point did I even think about my pay since we tended to do okay with tips. Then the main person in one of the locations I worked quit (there was no manager at those stores, just people who had been there a while). This meant that I was to take on the extra responsibilities that she had been doing. This included unloading and putting away the items and food on delivery days and doing stock once a week. I'm definitely frustrated with myself that I didn't ask for an increase in pay to go along with the increase in responsibilities. This was before I had gained any confidence to speak up for myself. There's no flashy ending, I resigned half a year ago because I had to move back away for college.
TLDR: I ended up working as an opener, closer, cashier, stockboy, and food preparer at one job for only minimum+tips with no increase despite working there for almost a year.