Jacquelyn's Space

Debates in the news and on social media lately have pissed me off—should minimum wage be raised? Do fast food workers deserve to make $15 an hour for unskilled labor?

There is skill involved in doing fast food work–probably more skill that it takes to be a secretary or receptionist who sit on their asses all day—more skill than a lot of different jobs. Sure, working in fast food isn’t brain surgery but you have to develop speed in cooking, food prep, you have to know basic sanitary procedures and all the other procedures deemed necessary by the restaurant you work for. You also need to learn customer service skills—to be able to serve mean, nasty people (or slow people who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground) with a smile and quickly too. After all it is supposed to be fast food. You also need to be able to multi-task and fast.

Now do I think fast food workers should be paid $15 an hour?—I am ambivalent about that one. Probably not but certainly minimum wage should be raised. If places like McDonald’s and Wal-Mart, who owe their very claim to fame and fortune to the working classes, are boasting record profits year after year and their CEOs make ridiculous amounts for sitting on their asses most days (or hitting the links) then surely they can pay their workers more. Fuck, corporations everywhere are paying their CEO’s ridiculous amounts of money and we got lots of ASSHOLES in America that resent the fact that service workers (busting on fast food workers) want to make more money—what, afraid you aren’t going to get your $1 double cheeseburger anymore?

Just think, if minimum wage is raised it will probably force others to raise wages too (because who would want to waste time going to college to make the same as a fast food worker?) and other low paid workers, such as teachers and public safety workers might just get paid closer to what the’re worth.

There are too many people trying to make ends meet on minimum wage jobs. They work their asses off too even if it is seen as unskilled labor. Not all fast food workers are high school drop-outs, lazy and stupid. Some may have lost better paying jobs and are stuck in low wage service jobs because there are not enough good paying jobs to go around. Some people have made bad choices, yes, but that doesn’t mean they are lazy and stupid. Some people just aren’t as lucky as others. Some people just may not have had the opportunities others have had or were willing to suck dicks, lick balls and asses and/or stab people in the back to get ahead. It takes all kinds, eh?

What I do know is that if you don’t pay people a living wage and all they can find is low paying menial jobs, pretty soon nobody is going to be able to afford the products and services that keep fat ass secretaries at their desks, receptionists at their beauty salons, and CEO’s in their fabulous mansions.

And before you bust on somebody else and the job they have think about it, if hard work, skill, and education were all truly the measures on which the wages you earned were based would you be able to make ends meet?

This semester I took a class in creative writing against my better judgment. I really shouldn’t have taken 3 classes but the teacher for the writing class is retiring and I absolutely love her so I couldn’t resist taking the class. Plus it was all about writing short forms. How hard could it be?

It isn’t easy but so far it has been my favorite class.

Though I am learning I cannot write flash fiction or write short very well (500-750 words), I am writing shorter and more focused pieces. This last unit has been all about short fiction and I had to write 4 short stories. I received compliments from my professor on all 4 pieces which has been gratifying. It has been the last two pieces I am most excited about. I wrote a story about a woman leaving her husband of 42 years (not fiction really but you use material from your real life)– my classmates liked it, my professor loved it. Best of all my professor said that with a small bit of editing and polishing it is publishable!

This past week we were given a prompt to write a story with an O.Henry twist. I hemmed and hawed all week but finally wrote a story about a ghost hunter and her boyfriend. It was read in class and the class loved it, my professor loved it. They were actually laughing their asses off. Now that was wonderful for me. My professor said, “Jackie, you have a knack for this!” Wow! I am going to polish up these stories and start sending them out to see if I can get them published. I also want to keep writing more and more. If only I could get all this tedious homework out of the way.

I also need to be able to keep up the creative writing after the class is done and I don’t have my favorite professor there to nurture me. How am I going to do that?