UnGrateful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps2WXDEZ-Po

I got my first job when I was 15 years old.  It was working as a busboy/dishwasher at  local mom-n-pop joint near my house.  I made a wapping $2.15 + tips when I started.  If I was lucky I could be given 20hrs a week.  At the time, I thought I was rolling in the cash.  I had money to buy almost anything I wanted (junk food and video games typically).  That blissful existence was short lived.  Upon my graduation from high school I quickly learned that life cannot be lived earning $2.55 + tips (earned a couple raises for good behavior).  At which point I realized that if I wanted to pay for college, car and dating; I was going to need more cash coming in.

It was then that I started working for a local construction equipment rental yard.  The pay was better and they were willing to give me full time hours plus benefits.  I again believed that $10.50 an hour was living high on the hog.  I was able to cover car payments, insurance, something called a cellular phone and the occasional Schmidt lady charming.  That job lasted for 4 years and I was able to work my way up through the ranks adding additional responsibility and reimbursement though larger paychecks.  However, I never expected that job to be my final destination.

Looking back at those jobs, they really sucked; whether I was cleaning a restaurant kitchen by hand or huddled around a propane heater with my fellow employees because the garage heater could not keep up with the frigid Wisconsin winter.  Once I left those jobs for a full time 9 to 5 gig, I promised myself I was done with the crap work.

Unfortunately, times change and so does the place life leads you.  When my wife and I decided to buy a house and start raising a family, we realized that our current income was not enough to do both.  I once again found myself working wicked hours (graveyard shift at a hotel) and back into the elements (graveyard shift delivering the Journal) all while still holding down a 9 to 5 job.  While not ideal and I hated them at the time, the payoff has come with a strong, health and large family.  A family that has now also required the sacrifice of all of my earning potential being a stay at home dad.

Throughout my working life, I never once expected that my employer should pay me more.  Please don’t misunderstand.  I wanted more money.  I have always wanted more money, along with a laundry list of other material possessions I have yet to own.  Still, I never expected that my employer should simply pay me more.  I have quit jobs because I was not being paid enough and I have worked my butt off gaining both education and responsible in order to prove to my employer that I was worth the additional money.  Yet, when I needed a part-time job for my family I settled for what I could get, knowing full well it had no opportunity for advancement, increased pay, benefits and at times personal enjoyment.  It just simply was what it was, I needed to work.

So when I see a bunch of fast food employees marching around, bitching that they DESERVE better pay?  Deserve?  As if they have a right to a wage?  We as a nation have the ropportunity to work in any field we wish.  Many require training or formal education and some take years of corporate ladder climbing to achieve.  If as a fast food employee, you believe you have reached your maximum potential; then you deserve the wage it pays.

Now some will argue that the country should institute a ‘living wage’.  However, the premise behind that notion is bass ackwards.  Your living should not determine your wage.  Your wage should determine your living.   The instituted minimum wage, is just that, a minimum wage.  It is designed as a step up to bigger and better things.  That wage was never designed or expected to exist as a one that supports a family.

In the end, this boils down to a country that has lost its way on two vital issues:

First, is a political leadership that gives the impression that unlimited amounts of money are available just around the corner.  We only need to increase tax revenues by ‘X’ percentage and our troubles will go away.  In the words of J. Wellington Wimpy, “I will gladly pay Tuesday for a hamburger today.”  Now our society is starting to believe the same story.  These fast food workers want the higher wage today, without earning it.  Why?  Because they have been told that Tuesday is a greedy rich bastard.  Yet, who is the greedy one, the people who earned their pay or those that have not?

The second is the misguided understanding that the Constitution gives us a right to material possessions.  The Constitution gives us the right to a government free from tyranny and controlled by the people.  It is not a wish list for the citizens to present before Santa.  Unfortunately, as the progressive agenda has perverted that original document; more and more social wishlist items have taken hold.  As those progressive ideals entrench themselves into our culture, the responsibility of the individual to be self sufficient has been eroded.  As a result we have people who have accepted fast food work as a career that is the pinnacle of their working lives.  That destruction of ambition brought on by progressive government policy, gave birth to a group of people demanding the rest of society support their lust for life.

Now let the comments rain down about how I don’t understand the lives these people lead and the hardships they must endure.  We all have hardships that we must struggle through; whether that is material, medical or emotional, we all have our cross to bear.  The government and society can not take the responsibility for your life simply because it sucks.  

But go ahead.  Demand the $15 per hour wage.  Then when you get it and your job is eliminated because the the fast food joints must cut their staffs in half, then you will see the responsibility was yours.