I‘ve been working at my retail store for five months now and have had two reviews in total, with literally all good things in them. I make $18/hr and they told me I needed to wait until my six month review because that’s generally when they do raises. I didn’t even call it a raise, I just told them that in Los Angeles, $18/hr is not a living wage. They didn’t even disagree with me, they just told me that the pay is good for a retail job.
I’m nearly 30 years old and I’m expected to work my ass off for this company, open to close, with constant improvement— all while they cannot even provide myself or any of my coworkers with enough money to cover the average rent of $2500/mo to live in the city they built a store in. I feel so discouraged and defeated and disrespected.
The owner came to talk to me later (interrupting my lunch break with “I heard you’re unhappy”) and the longer I think about our hour long conversation, the worse I feel about it. I feel undervalued and l don’t know how to move on. I can’t find anything in my area that pays even the same amount that I’m making now, and all I qualify for is “unskilled labor” so now I feel doomed to a life of rubbing pennies together and hoping to god I can scrape enough money together for rent and gas.
Something’s gotta give, right? This isn’t sustainable.