Company Raises It's Minimum Wage to $70,000 and All Hell Breaks Loose

Lyrical_sl said:

And I'll use my Grandfather as an example. He worked a shit job, but at least he worked his way up in the environment he had for him. I remember as a kid, asking my Grandma how he was smiling after he just worked a 16 hour day. He would tell me he was just happy to provide for his family. He was the type that busted ass and whistled while he worked.

So much of that is lost on millenials. It's like one of my Estimators right now, he's raised his hand and wants to be a Manager. Remember apprenticeship? That's gone now. When your apprentice is sitting there texting and on Facebook, when does he have time to learn? Millenials want the pay, but don't want to reach out and take the brass ring.

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I won't argue that there are people who just want to take. They exist. They always have. They did in your grandfather's generation too. But let's not pretend that everyone who isn't as successful as we are is just fucking lazy.

Working 16 hours a day and "being happy" even though you never get to see your family is no way to live. Your grandfather did it, but he shouldn't have had to. Do you get that? He was being taken advantage of by the shithead he worked for.

Lyrical_sl said:

He didn't see it that way. Back in the day, it was a great paying job for a minority. That was all we had. He was a different type of cat, he got up every AM and was thankful that he could provide for his six children.

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He didn't see it that way because he was blinded by bullshit. Which apparently so are you.

Ask me to work 16 hours a day for you just so I can eat? Fuck yourself. That's what intelligent people say because they know they are being taken advantage of. And some of those same intelligent people prey on those who don't know any better for their own personal gain.

Why the fuck should someone have to work 16 hours a goddamn day just to eat?

Lyrical_sl said:

I was born in a poor town with almost zero opportunities. Remember in The Wire, with the old lady who lived in a house next to Amsterdam? That's the neighborhood where I'm from.

You have to move to where opportunity is. Most of my family has moved out of Baltimore. Maybe the older generation stayed, but none of my cousins live in Baltimore proper any more. They moved to where the schools were better, and there was more opportunity.

I understand what you are saying about the area, my wife grew up in a rural area, and had to move to the big city to make more than $10 an hour. When we moved her to the big city is when she started making more money. A few years after that, she was making 36 an hour in the big city.

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Baltimore is hardly a good example, there's public transportation (not great but enough to get to another area to work) and stuff isn't that distant. But it's good you've got the idea of what I mean from your wife.

[I was from Westminster myself - even up there amongst the most rural of MD (besides Cecil County at least) it still wasn't THAT terrible compared to my visits to the Midwest to do hiring - our company would actually go out of its way to headhunt in some of those dead towns when an area was giving us trouble for staffing - we'd make a deal with a hotel for 6 months or so for the employees to get established to get them working in a better area, for people earning an average of $10-12/hr start - part of why we were an amazing employer... I hope Donny is handling the rungs like his dad did now that his dad is passed]

fifey_sl said:

Posted while I was posting but that's why if you have no options, you either move out of that city or join the military and get your government handouts. No one forces you to stay.

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Trust me, the military doesn't accept everyone (and isn't recruitment basically zero past 30ish? So if you had a great job in that town that shutdown when you were 35?) - and when you can't sell your home because it's worthless to anyone besides a retiree that wants to live in the middle of nowhere it's incredibly hard to sell your house to move - and many people can't move without completing the sale.

It's not as easy as you make it sound - trust me, there's a reason why the couple times we did the hiring thing I mentioned above (I think twice over my years they had me do it?) - it felt like the entire town showed up to apply and as if I was standing there with halo, wings and the voice of God with how I was treated as a savior because of my company giving them an easy means to get out of there versus the normal challenge to it.

I know LV casinos regularly do the same to a degree as well - a number of friends from EQ over the years were in OK and headhunted by the LV casinos to do tables and they got free rooms for the first X months of their employment to help establish themselves after the move while getting their asses out of OK where jobs were much more challenging.

It's absolutely something I'd agree that everyone in those cases that CAN DO, SHOULD DO - but I'd be hard pressed to say more than half of the men even could - and the women even fewer via those methods, dating/marriage might push them above men however.

Cad_sl said:

All you're saying is, everyone should have X standard of living, and we should all pitch in and pay for it. Which is fine, maybe I don't even disagree. But lets not couch it in any other terms, you want a standard of living for everyone, regardless of how retarded or useless they are, and you want us to pay for it.

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To be fair, unless someone is a eugenicist, they'll agree with that concept to some degree. Disabled and elderly without family will always exist and will need some degree of support.

It's just a matter of how wide-reaching to make it. Frankly to me, I almost look at things like the "terribly small town" issue as almost a form of disability - where you're "disabled by the environment" - and there should be programs to help those people adjust to a new life somewhere else to make meaningful work for their skillset.

Cad_sl said:

Nobody is forcing people to live in the cities where the standard and cost of living are so high. If they don't like it they can go back to the farms where their earning potential will feed them plenty.

All you're saying is, everyone should have X standard of living, and we should all pitch in and pay for it. Which is fine, maybe I don't even disagree. But lets not couch it in any other terms, you want a standard of living for everyone, regardless of how retarded or useless they are, and you want us to pay for it.

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No, I don't want a standard of living for everyone. I want a livable wage for folks who work and make an effort so that our goddamn economy doesn't keep collapsing every 7 years. And yes I will gladly pay for that, we already do. Less people on social programs that we already currently pay for, and instead we can choose whether or not we want to pay the extra 50 cents for a cheeseburger at McDonald's. Let's not pretend we don't already pay for the lower classes.

Lyrical_sl said:

I worked 20 hour days to get ahead. No one asked me do it. I was paid until 5 pm, I kept working off the clock, at no pay. I was going to get ahead by outworking everyone else. Some of us won't be anyone's victim.

I'm going to go produce something, but please feel free to keep whining about how the man is holding you down. I'm sure that will help your lot in life.

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20 hour days at no extra pay? Sounds like you got lucky to me because that isn't very smart. Coulda used those 12 extra hours to better your situation in much more productive ways. I can't think of anything more hit or miss than "Well I'll just work more hours to prove I'm the best". In my experience employers tend to take that for granted and even come to expect it.

This whole "I'll outwork you to get ahead" yea that works for some people, and for every anecdote you provide about how you made your own way I can provide one about some poor sucker who tried to do the same thing and just got taken advantage of forever.

Lyrical_sl said:

I worked 20 hour days to get ahead. No one asked me do it. I was paid until 5 pm, I kept working off the clock, at no pay. I was going to get ahead by outworking everyone else. Some of us won't be anyone's victim.

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Were you salaried? I would've sworn that would be illegal if they did a workplace audit otherwise... (Not that workplace audits are common though...)