Grunt Work

I am very tired of doing an incredible amount of work and being paid the absolute minimum for it. In my entire life I have only ever had one job that paid above minimum wage, and it was great. I felt like I owed the company more and I worked harder. I was happy to be at work because I felt like the company respected the value of my time, on some level. Even on the days, like today, were I woke up tired and didn't want to move; I took comfort in the fact that I was being paid well.

But that day has passed, and today I find myself moving slowly because it is "truck" day at Kinney's Drugs and I am a minimum wage clerk. I get to break my back putting away stock so that I can receive seven dollars and twenty five cents for an hour of labor, before the government takes their piece. Don't get me wrong. I am very happy that I have a job that pays this well, because I can remember not to long ago getting paid $5.15 per hour before taxes. Those days really sucked.

If getting paid little for a lot of work isn't bad enough, I find myself critiquing my supervisors. I find that they make me adhere to a strict policy of one break and one lunch every 8 hours(which I find fair). But, what I don't find fair is that everytime they find someone they know in the store they talk for an hour with them, then they "escort" them out and smoke for fifteen minutes; on top of thier breaks and lunch. And, they make take two breaks already and do this with two to three customers. But, heaven forbid I stop sweeping for two seconds to catch a headline in a paper. Even more troubling than that is the fact that their are more shift supervisors than clerks. This means that I get decent hours, but do the overwhelming majority of the work while they sit in the office doing what ever it is they do. I don't know. Maybe they're making out or something. Who knows? Who cares? My rantings aren't going to change anything, that's for sure.

I guess I'll just have to keep on trucking until I'm a fabulous engineer...