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 Support system for low wage earners: Nickle and Dimed 
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2003 7:42 pm
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finally, I have not been able to log on the last three times I tried. I notice most of the coworkers portrayed in the book have little or no support system, except for each other. This is very difficult for people with children. People in low paying jobs often are without family support. This forces the need for day care or latch key situations. It causes problems with illness and missing work for children. I was lucky in my younger years. I was a single parent slinging hash at Ho Jo's. My family provided me with the support needed to get out of the (I was going to say low-paying jobs, but seeing I'm a teacher I'll say unskilled job) unskilled job market. I was able to go to school and work with their help with my daughter and financial help. At $7 an hour I wasn't going far alone. Our Social Services system could be more help, but is saturated with people who are not using it properly. And I don't mean everyone on SS is lazy. There are those that work hard to become independent from the system. It takes a community, doesn't it???


Sun Feb 23, 2003 8:31 am
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Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2003 1:08 pm
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While I read, I thought about the minimum wage jobs I had while I was in HS and college. They truly sucked and I always felt sorry for the women who had worked there for years and would continue to work there. The experiences I had with some of the managers were terrible. Like at Wal-mart when the manager insisted I come to work the day I was released from the hospital with pneumonia and food poisoning because it was the Christmas season. Or the Bi-Lo manager who wanted me to clean the crap off the toilet stall when I had been throwing up all day with morning sickness, even though a bagboy offered to switch clean-up jobs with me. Or the summer I worked in a mill with no air conditioning where the managers wouldn't let us talk even though we were sitting about one foot across from each other. When I they really ticked me off, I just quit. I knew that my family would not let me starve and that they would help out with tuition, gas, food, etc. I always felt really sorry for those who did not have any other options other than to put up with it.


Sun Feb 23, 2003 9:02 pm
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kelly,
i know what you mean about the experience of working these low wage jobs. i went to work for sears the summer before i went to college. since i was white, i got a job in the air-conditioned part of the building. i had to have a complete physical to make certain i was fit to use a calculator and work in the accounting department. my black friends got jobs in the un air conditioned warehouse where it was so huge they had to wear roller skates to get around.no physical required.
i have never shopped at sear since.
my boy friend got a job working in a truck factory and they didn't give a flip if he was physically capable of doing all the lifting and pulling and tugging he had to do manufacturing trucks. he ended up losing part of his little finger and they didn't want to compensate him for it. he ended up suing them and going on to law school. i know he'll never forget what it was like.


Sun Feb 23, 2003 10:13 pm
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Joined: Thu Jan 16, 2003 6:13 pm
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My daughter is a student at ASU and since (in her opinion) we don't give her enough $$$ she works part time at a bar/restuarant. She was able to come home this week end because they put her on suspension. Get this, they had a real busy night, John Boy and Billy were doing their radio show there. She had tables upstairs and down. 3 tables walked out without paying their tab. She kept the tickets in her book and told the manager she would pay them when she could. (How unfair) The owner came in later in the week and started looking at everybody's books and found the unpaid tickets. He made the manager suspend her for two weeks as punishment. Afterwards, the other servers told her to next time to throw the tickets away and no one would ever know. That's what they do. She feels like she is being punished for being honest. I think I've finally convinced her to quit. Almost all of the servers there are students and they are being taken advantage of. I think another reason she was picked up was because when John Boy asked her for a beer, she didn't know who he was and told him he would have to wait like everyone else!


Mon Feb 24, 2003 8:51 pm
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I agree, he should have to wait like everyone else. What makes him any different from the rest of us?

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Wed Feb 26, 2003 8:07 am
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