Dear Editorial Board,
In response to your recent article, “Out of Service,” maybe the problem is that most of the employees at Rite-Aid and Taco Bell are earning $5.15 an hour for their stressful, frustrating work. Picture yourself waking up early and riding SEPTA to work so you can sit there and serve a bunch of college kids who often times are disrespectful and treat you as less than human, just so you can make minimum wage.
You cannot expect a worker to be extremely motivated and eager to please when they work a full time job and cannot live off their wages. A full time job at minimum wage earns you less than $900 a month, before taxes. It is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to live off of $900 a month in Philadelphia.
Maybe the problem doesn’t lie in rude workers so much as it lies in our states un-changed-for-over-a-decade minimum wage and employers’ unwillingness to pay competitive wages. The problem lies with the system, not with the workers.
Hell, if I was making crap money for stressful labor, I would resent my job, and the customers, too.
-Mike Benner
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