So, I have worked in my fair share of crazy minimum wage jobs. They range from cafes to call centres. Currently, I am lucky enough to work in a fairly good tech business (a bit too corporate for my liking, but it's still better than most).
However, it just crossed my mind how absurd and utterly insane management can be in minimum wage jobs, and I want to compare management for my current tech job to when I worked in a call centre for a major cell phone company. For context, I make over double now than when I worked in the call centre.
So, at this call centre, they claimed security was a big deal; to the point that if your phone was even seen on you, then you would be punished and written up. They would have you walk through guarded doors with alarms, and there was always someone watching you. All because you look at phone plans.
My current tech job handles legitimate “top secret” information for the government. I had to register with the Canadian government and obtain a special status to handle such information. Nobody follows you around; you're allowed to have your phone, and hell, you're allowed to even bring in cameras.
At the call centre, they had a person who's job it was to seriously sit down and monitor everyone. If anyone took longer than 2 minutes on a task they would call you at your desk and ask why you aren't working (it didn't matter if you were taking long because you were working on something).
Current job? I don't know who my immediate acting supervisor is at my current job and as long as I meet deadlines no one cares what I do.
The call centre required you to change your status to bathroom before leaving your desk if you needed to use the bathroom. They would track this and take it out of pay.
My current job barely even enforces the scheduled hours.
This difference is fucking insane. Minimum wage basically screams “if I could, I would pay you less, but since I can't I'll make sure to bleed you dry”