Minimum Wage

So I have been hearing a lot about minimum wage and raising it to a "living wage." When I first started working as a teenager, I started at McDonald's at minimum wage. The job sucked. It really sucked. I had to clean bathrooms, mounds of old, used grease that was scrapped off the flat tops. Empty spoiled food from containers into the garbage. Clean the restaurant for the next day's service. All when I was underage and still in high school.

I got out of high school and went to Penn State, and decided that I was more interested in partying than in going to school. After floating around for awhile, I finally found a sales job where I was out on the road on my own without a boss breathing down my neck, and where I was in charge of earning my paycheck with commission sales. I got married, had 2 kids, and eventually had to leave that job due to the long hours being away from my wife and kids required to make a decent living.

So back on the hunt for a job, I was once again finding myself only able to find a minimum wage job. Those jobs sucked too. I mean really sucked. I was a stockman for Wal-Mart. Getting carts from the parking lot. Cleaning the bathrooms, and a special thanks to all those wonderful human beings that find it necessary to shit all over the floors and walls in public restrooms. Carrying heavy furniture and electronics to way to small cars. Who really believes that they should buy a 40+ inch T.V. and bringing a compact car is the greatest idea of all time really?

Through it all I slowly came to the conclusion that I should have came to when I went to Penn State the first time...I needed a skill to make myself more appealing to employers if I ever wanted to make more money than minimum wage, working shitty jobs. So I went back to Penn State and received my first college degree in 2002. I started working for my employer in 2003 and started at $11.75 an hour plus full benefits, something I never had ever before. I took advantage of my company's tuition reimbursement package and received my second college degree in 2012. I am currently making over $23 an hour, and have 2 college degrees in IT to my name. I don't know many people whose aspiration in life is to be a stockman at Wal-Mart, or a busboy at a restaurant.

My point in all this is that you have to have some type of skill that makes you valuable. If you want to be in a job that a trained monkey can do, then an employer shouldn't be required to pay you the same amount of money that is paid to someone that has worked hard to not only do a good job, but who has also educated themselves with the knowledge needed to do more complex tasks. There is this simple-mineded notion that if you pay someone higher wages, for low skill labor that they will be able to live life as a no skill worker and be happy. It doesn't and it just breeds something very dangerous that I have seen happen many times over my years in the work force. It breeds a false sense of complacency. People get comfortable doing things after awhile. The problem with this is that they never take any steps to better themselves. When they do not have the motivation to better themselves, they stagnate and often become bitter to those that are moving ahead with their lives or are the ones that are providing their jobs in the first place. It becomes someone else's fault that they cannot get ahead. It becomes someone else's fault that their job sucks and is unfulfilling. It is that bastard's fault that I ca't pay my bills or buy my kid's the things they want. They don't pay me enough. No, they pay you exactly what the job is worth, and if you do a good job, you can get incremental increases based on your performance. If that isn't enough for you, then take your skillset and go work for someone else that will pay you what you are worth, or start your own business and charge what you feel your skills are worth. The government shouldn't spoon feed you via your company, you should make yourself as valuable as the money you want to make.

What I am saying is, get some skills if you want a better job. If you have more skill than the job you are doing, find another job. If you are happy where you are, stay there. Do you think your job sucks? What makes you think that making an employer pay more is going to make your job suck any less? Get something different that you will enjoy. Go be a plumber, electrician, carpenter, accountant, lawyer, roofer, painter, seamstress, whatever you want to be. Just get a skill, and get a real job. Let teenagers learn the value of skills by working those minimum wage jobs. If you are 30+ years old, and still only working minimum wage jobs, and never having had anything better, then you are the one to blame. Not low wage paying employers.