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Antiwork

Quit today in the middle of my shift

I'm a student and I worked part time as a dishwasher in a restaurant. When I started this job 1,5 years ago, I was just a dishwasher, therefore I was okay with being paid the minimum wage, which is around 14$/h here. For the info, nowadays, if you pay less than 16$/h, it's basically a poverty wage. Over the time, my responsibilities started to multiply. Suddenly I was expected to do everything, whether it's waitressing, cleaning, or food preparation. Yet my wage remained the same and everyone else got paid 16$ for essentially same amount of work. I liked the job and people I worked with so I didn't say anything, but eventually I couldn't live on the minimum wage anymore. So I asked the boss to give me a raise to match the wage of everyone else and he refused, saying he can't afford it, despite owning the most…


I'm a student and I worked part time as a dishwasher in a restaurant. When I started this job 1,5 years ago, I was just a dishwasher, therefore I was okay with being paid the minimum wage, which is around 14$/h here. For the info, nowadays, if you pay less than 16$/h, it's basically a poverty wage.

Over the time, my responsibilities started to multiply. Suddenly I was expected to do everything, whether it's waitressing, cleaning, or food preparation. Yet my wage remained the same and everyone else got paid 16$ for essentially same amount of work. I liked the job and people I worked with so I didn't say anything, but eventually I couldn't live on the minimum wage anymore. So I asked the boss to give me a raise to match the wage of everyone else and he refused, saying he can't afford it, despite owning the most expensive Asian restaurant in the city. That's when I decided to quit without notice next month.

Today though, I came to work and the boss was there instead of our chef, which normally doesn't happen, for the info. After doing all my work, there was nothing to do. Nobody had anything to do. Nothing to help with. The boss ordered our kitchen assistant to do some heavy manual work completely unrelated to his job and then saw I'm not doing anything and said “well, if you have nothing to do, clean all the fridges and freezers, organise shelves, scrub all the walls, etc.”. I told him that's not my job and that if he wants me to do extra, he has to give me a raise, because minimum wage = minimum effort. He started arguing with me that that's not how it works and if he's paying me, I'm supposed to do whatever he tells me to do because he owns me while he's paying my wage. After some more arguing he said “anyway next week I'm already training a replacement for you”.

I was planning to quit next month, to get my paycheck and support from the government. But this was the last drop today. And seeing as he apparently plans to replace me anyway, I quit today, in the middle of my shift, and walked out. I wouldn't do it without you guys tho, you gave me courage after seeing all those posts. So thank you.

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