Had an interesting conversation with my parents this weekend.
I work as a security guard and the pay is barely a single foot past the poverty line. It's minimum wage for shitty hours with no time and a half or double time with overtime, no incentives to work the weekends either. But every now and then you get a site that pays well.
I worked for two days at a site that paid $30/hr, 1 day of 10 hours and 1 day of 7. Every other day was at the base minimum wage rate.
Now my mum is the resident workaholic and when i told her this she didn't understand. “How can they pay you $30 on one site and then $22.75 the rest of the time?”
Now my dad is literally the hardest worker I have ever met. He's been doing the same job for 43 years, its manual labor and it is hard. He is 65 next year and has never argued with my mum about the value of working hard for the company you are employed by. Out of no where he pipes up “for God's sake, it's greed! These companies don't give a shit anymore honey. They just want to maximize their profits. And they'll screw over employees to do it”.
I always thought I was alone in my family in that I hate corporations and government for making so much money.
Just goes to show some of the elders aren't so bad. And if they're anything like my mum and dad, they weren't born into wealth and are only trying to do the best they can with the hand they were dealt. They literally grew up in a tine when absolutely, hard work alone was recognized and rewarded and it just doesn't work that way anymore. Sometimes they just need a little help understanding how the world works