After the beginning of fall quarter, I took a look at my bank account statement to see that all those text books I bought had taken a serious hit on my remaining balance. I decided the best course of action would be to pick up a part time job. Luckily for me (or so I thought), I found a job at a certain popular teen clothing store the first day I went job hunting. My managers claimed I would be able to schedule my working hours so that they wouldn’t conflict with the hours I had classes because the store was “sensitive to employee’s needs.” I soon found this not be the case after I received my first work schedule. I had blocked off Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from my availability because I had class all day on those days. I had also scheduled to work no more than 20 hours a week so that I could still focus on my studies. However, when I looked at my schedule for the upcoming week I found that I had been assigned shifts on all three days I said I was unavailable along with both days on the weekend which put my total working hours somewhere near 40. I did my best to make due but as this trend continued I finally decided to take up my complaints with my manager. I explained that my past few schedules had pretty much ignored the guidelines I had placed upon being hired and I wondered if there was anything I could do to change this. In so many words, I was told no and I would just have to deal.
Though this treatment at the work place made no sense to me at the time, I now understand what was going on. The job that I had been hired for was minimum wage and with good reason, because honestly how difficult is it to fold clothes, sprtiz nauseating amounts of perfume, and ask “Hey guys, have you tried our new jeans?” In Chapter 6 of our text book, it is said that the minimum wage has the “greatest impact on the market for teenage labor…as a result, the minimum wage is often binding for teenagers than for other members of the labor force” (122). So basically the minimum wage acts as a binding price floor which creates a surplus in the amount of people (or in this case, teenagers) wanting to work at minimum wage paying jobs. The minimum wage seems appealing to teens who are strapped for cash and so the demand to work at places like the one I worked at is high. The reason my scheduling needs weren’t met is simple. Just because I didn’t like the hours I was being assigned didn’t mean that the many people who wanted my job wouldn’t like those hours. Rather than changing my schedule, it was easier to the company to just hire someone out of the multitude of other teenagers who wanted to work at the store.
Just reading through your post I believe that the only topic pertaining to your story is not just minimum wage. I believe that opportunity cost is also relevant. You believed that your studies were of greater value than your job at this point in time. I always think of opportunity cost as what you could be doing instead of what you are doing, and you could study instead of spritzing teens.
ReplyDeleteThat's unfortunate, lucky for me for the last three years I have had a part time job that has respected my studies. My boss actually asks for a copy of my school schedule and tells me to go home if I'm at work during the hours I am supposed to be at class. I think the whole long term short term idea applies here too, you said that for a while you dealt with it and I assume that means you missed class. So short term you were able to hold everything together but long term that would have had a drastically negative effect on your grades... It reminds me of what we talked about in class the other day about shutting down vs. exiting because of costs.
ReplyDelete