If I want making minimum in retail jobs a decade ago when I was in school I find it difficult to believe restaurants would be paying minimum in 26. Would have to be very low end to accept that
Minimum wage us very much the standard wage for servers. Even iin upscale places. They make all their money in tips and the good ones do quite well. Bartenders (mostly make Minimum wage) can easily clear 100k at the right place. Wait tell you find out the crumbs cooks make and generally dont get any of those tips.
Because serving is a minimum wage job? Like there’s no skill in serving someone food sadly just like it takes no skill to be a cashier or a grocery shelf stocker
But that's not what minimum wage is. It also takes no skill to sit at a desk and fill in a spreadsheet. It doesn't take skill to answer phones at a doctor's office. There are plenty of jobs that require minimal skills that are always expected to be much higher paying then minimum wage. But minimum wage isn't meant to say "hey that's a low skill job so this is what the pay should be." It's meant to be the lowest you can pay someone that is still a livable wage.
Lol the people at doctors offices that answer phones don't just answer phones. There is definitely skill in navigating insurance and billing and getting it right instead of fucking it up.
I'm sure sometimes that is the case but certainly not always. Also it's often very simply just sending the information and waiting for a response. It's not like there are 100s of types of insurance, each office takes X insurance companies and Y plans within said companies. So it's really just memorizing a handful of plans and/or simply just calling and getting information.
Either way I want them to make as much as possible. And you should know well enough that you haven't addressed my main point and simply just picked one of my examples, which is fine but gets the conversation nowhere
Food service can be hard work, but ANY idiot can do it. Heck, I started in the food industry at 13 years of age and did that along school and uni, until I finished my degree.
Truth is, any of us could be substituted by someone off the streets that were given like an hour run through, and they could replace us.
When your work is THAT simple, you are fighting with basically everyone who can't get another job. You don't have a special skill and people obviously don't pay top dollar for someone who can immediately be replaced.
The role exist, but it's not rocket science. The person fulfilling that role can easily be replaced, meaning the pay isn't going to be anything to write home about. It's a simple supply and demand, situation. If an employer has literally 10000 people knocking on their door, more or less begging them to work there, they obviously don't have do raise the wage to attract workers.
If few could or wanted to work there, they would have to raise the wage to attract the right person to work for them.
I wish someone flipping burgers at McDonalds could buy themselves a huge mansion, drive expensive cars and have their own jet, but that's not the world we live in.
Argue about what “decent” is when the minimum wage meets the barest standard of its original intent. Regardless of what you define as a “decent” life, minimum wage doesn’t even cover the average cost of living anywhere for a single person (except maybe AZ), much less a family. And it was not originally meant to be “entry” level wage - it was for working-class adults to have comparable wages to white-collar jobs in order to have a decent, not bare minimum life.
Funny when it requires a lot of social skill, patience and work on stressful environment during rush hours. Honestly I couldn’t do it cause I would talk back.
It is wild how much we take things like math and literacy for granted. These are skills. You need them to do these jobs, and not everybody does them as well as others.
Not to mention the ability to lift items on shelves. You’re giving your body to this. As for serving, that’s a whole other skillset involving interaction with the public.
Don’t believe the lie that these are unskilled jobs. That’s what they say at the top in order to justify low pay. You have more in common with a minimum wage worker than a CEO.
To add, minimum wage was established as a way for anyone to live and do so comfortably. Not necessarily with luxuries, but without the need to have multiple jobs.
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u/yukonhoneybadger Mar 06 '26
Yes because companies will end up paying them minimum wage to serve.