Re: Last night was "surf and coop."

On 3/14/2025 6:05 PM, Dave Smith wrote:

On 2025-03-14 2:49 p.m., Cindy Hamilton wrote:

On 2025-03-14, Jill McQuown <j_mcquown@comcast.net> wrote:

 

Employees are required to pay them more if their tips don't bring
them up to $7.25/hour.  Still a pittance, especially considering
how hard they work and what they have to put up with.

  How hard they work and what they have to put up with?  I realize they have to hustle and have to deal with idiots but my sympathy my be a little restrained when I think back to some of the jobs I had as a kind that paid peanuts. I was a paper boy who had to deliver a heavy bag of papers on a two mile route regardless of the weather. I was out on the hottest days of summer and the coldest days of winter, in the heavy snow and pouring rain. I made next to nothing doing it  and I also had to go around and collect every week which  took 5 times longer than delivery, and trying to squeeze that 60 cents a week out of adults.  Then the summer I was 14 I worked for a house builder making basements for $1 and hour, sweating my ass off in a huge hole in the ground and and pushing around a bug  construction size wheelbarrow loaded with gravel or cement. I picked strawberries in a field in the glaring sun for what amounted to about 55 cents an hour.
 I had a much better summer job while I was at university. I worked in the furnace room of an alloy smelting plant.  I rarely had to work more than 15-20 minutes  every hour but when I did it was usually hotter than an oven. I had to wear long johns and a heavy wool coat to protect me from the heat. I got burned almost every day on the job and one day someone was  killed in the job. Hell I was  replacing a guy who had been injured on the job and was off for four months. I later worked for the highways department in various positions. Four people I had worked with were killed on the job.  And servers have to carry heavy trays and be nice to people?

>
Let's see some server jobs available near me.
>
$14-$20/hour
$14-21/hour
$15-$50/hour
$20-35/hour
$15-25/hour
>
Now, maybe there's some kind of bait-and-switch, where these are
estimates that include tips.
>
Shit, McDonald's is offering $17/hour for "Crew Team Member" jobs.
>

 

Hard to put that into perspective.  In 1966, I earned $5760. At that time, I had a decent used car that was paid for.  i got married.  We bought a house and furnished it. In 1970, I earned $8300, had a different used car, same house with two kids and my wife was always a SAHM.
My first house is now valued at about 20X what I paid.