i figured i’d let you all know i was able to change their minds because god knows i hate that dam mindset older people have.
So a little about me because it pertains to the story. For the longest time i had odd jobs. When Covid hit, i (like many others) was forced to stay home and collect unemployment. In Ny it was whatever you would normally get ( for me was $400) plus the $700 the gov’t gave because of Covid. So for a year i was bringing home $1100 a week. For someone who was used to bringing home $400/700 this was a massive jump. So during covid i decided to go back to school and finish my B.A and i started and finished my M.B.A ( all done online) Unemployment was only for a year but i was able to save so much i didn’t have to go back to work after the unemployment finished. So when i graduated i was able to be a tad bit picky and say “i’m not going back to work until i make X amount, work from home and a few other things” after i graduated with my M.B.A i went 5 months turning down job offers and interviews unless they checked all my boxes.
For those 5 months my mom and aunt ( both very lovely ladies just stuck in the past) kept telling me how crazy i was because no one ever gets what they want and i should just take the first job offered to me and work my way up the corp ladder. So what happened? After 5 months i got 10K MORE then i wanted plus all my boxes checked…
Today my mom and aunt start with the whole no one wants to work anymore blah blah blah because they see and hear all the signs and all the news blah blah blah and THEY started working IMMEDIATELY after high school for pay next to nothing.
My mom and aunt are both ( specialty) nurses…i asked them what did they do after high school and they said they both went to work in a hospital right after high school because during their senior year they volunteered as “Candy stripers”. For those that don’t know a “Candy Striper” is a someone ( usually young) who would had volunteered as a nurse in the 50’s and 60’s.
So anyway, i asked them how much money did they make with their first job out of high school considering that they were working in a hospital as teenagers. They said they were making $6.50. They then started with the whole schpeel that NO ONE today would start work for that price like their generation did. Because they come from the hardest working generation.
So i asked them what was minimum wage when they started working at the hospital making $6.50 an hr. They thought about it for a second and said around $2.15… i let that hover around us for a bit to see if they would get where i was going with this and they did not.
I told them “ out of High School you were making 3X the minimum wage. For that to happen today they would have to pay someone fresh out of high school $45. Do they really believe no one would wanna work for $45 an hr?” They stayed silent. I told them i currently get $49 an hr and i have 3 college degrees ( no debt luckily). So when i broke it down for them how i technically make what they made with my 3 college degrees when they just got out of high school they looked at each-other and stayed quiet. I told them its not that no one wants to work. Its that $15 an hr is not a livable wage. The conversation continued after that where i broke down inflation and corp greed and a bunch of other things and they both now understand. Plus they said they wont every say again “ no one wants to work now a days”