I see all the talks of minimum wage, and how almost all minimum wage jobs don’t pay enough to be worth anything and never give enough hours. Most numbers I’m seeing are around the 6-8 dollar mark.
I live in Texas, and here it is PERFECTLY legal for a restaurant to start wait staff at 2.13/2.15 an hour plus tips. They do have to shovel out to get us up to the minimum wage but also, you aren’t just wait staff. You’re wait staff, cashier, kitchen prep, busser, scrub the floors to a polish at night, bartender, slipping in the kitchen because someone decided to throw soap water on the floors three hours before close, getting called into a managers office for taking too long in the bathroom, and making….2.13 an hour……. Yes, this all happened. As a female, it was BEYOND humiliating and dehumanizing to explain to my MALE GENERAL MANAGER why I was in the bathroom for that long. Also when I was hired on and he told me it was going to be 2.15 not 2.13 he acted as if that was MAGICAL and a complete blessing.
This is why, “our generation” doesn’t want to work. We have grown up watching our parents with 4-6 year degrees slowly get closer and closer to pay check to paycheck, get angry at the price tag at grocery check out, and come home ready to die day after day. No one wants to be in that, I don’t care how much you lie to yourself.