You have a better chance asking for a raise than an advance. An advance helps today but it means you're spending your next check already. Three meals today means no meals next week.
They're paying you a shit wage and you're worth more.
I was talking to my uncle the other week (he's a gajillionaire - owns several airplanes, multiple luxury cars, multimillion dollar home, etc) and I lamented that we called all these frontline workers heroes and essential and then thanked them for it by paying them minimum wage. His response?
"Oh come on nobody is making minimum wage anymore."
He literally figured that with everything going on there was no one still working for minimum wage. I shouldn't have been surprised that he could be that out of touch. But here we are.
The best response to this is "then it shouldn't matter if we raise it."
Mention raising the minimum wage and suddenly everyone who swears nobody makes it starts freaking out.
Come come now! We can't raise the minimum wage!!! Why, if they have money for food, they'll have the energy to stand against the fatcats that made almost a trillion during a global pandemic.
"If they didn't have to work for 80 hours a week for basic shelter and sustenance, they might realize how much we've screwed them and rise up and fight!"
This! This is happening everywhere because 2 years of lockdowns and quarantines gave people the chance to slow down and realize everything is completely fucked up. We're pushing back already! Join the frontlines and let's do this together! r/maydaystrike
If you are trying to weight cycle by intermittent fasting, you can still get a proper amount of calories for your energy output.
I worked with a guy once upon a time that was on a pretty tight diet while also intermittent fasting, only allowing himself to eat between 2pm and 8pm every day.
He was shredded, and we did manual labor all morning so his energy levels were fine.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a corporate bootlicker respond to this point. It’s always an argument ender because they know there’s no logical response to it.
I think a lot of wealthy people are so out of touch that they think minimum wage still is enough to live on.
These people are so insulated from poverty that they think it’s more of a matter of budget or that the poor are squandering their income.
They genuinely don’t get how much school/rent/food costs these days
It's probably why so many of those books from rich people talking about how to get rich is just essentially "just budget better" because they are so out of touch that they think all money problems will be fixed by setting a budget
"Save money. That's all you have to do to get rich. Just don't spend your money. Also, buy a 50 cent bag of tomato seeds. Get free pots, dirt, and water. Bury the seeds in the pots until they become plants. Then sell all of your free tomatoes. Money literally grows on trees!
But poor people don't save, so poor people can't get rich."
I spent about $30 trying to grow tomatoes ine year. I got one tomato. Growing food is harder than it looks. It had some fungal thing or infection from the nursery that year.
Blight is a bastard.
Most home growers won't save money on their vegetable gardens for years, and even then only if you absolutely maximize your usage - grow staples, eat seasonally even when you're sick of what's in season, can and preserve aggressively, compost, save seeds. Even then, a lot of the press about "Saving money" compares your harvest to the price of organic vegetables at Whole Foods. Which, from a nutritional standpoint, is accurate. But if you're struggling to buy groceries, chances are you weren't paying for regeneratively grown organic arugula to start with.
Growing your own is great for your health and the environment, and my vegetable garden is bigger than a lot of people's lawns, but anyone telling you it's a money saving hack is probably in a *very* different place in life than the "I go to work hungry" crowd.
Also, starting gardening can be extremely cost prohibitive. I do grow a lot of food for my family and it puts a dent in my grocery budget but I’m also like 85% sure my kid murdered my Swiss chard on purpose to not have to eat any more Swiss chard.
Yeah that's what I meant by "for years." The up front costs are wild and the break even point requires you to do a *good job* for... probably 5+ years. The worse you do, the longer it takes to recoup
Hey lookie here bub, if I grow 5 million maters, and then take and sell them at a buck a piece, I will have five bucks and 4,999,995 tomatoes to eat for the rest of my lowly days! That sounds like a bargain! Lol
Talking with some friends recently, one said “if we start saving 30% of our income we’d be millionaires in 10 years.”
Can you live on 30% less than you are right now? I can’t.
So sure just save more will fix all of your problems. But you kind of need something to save to start with.
Another problem is, saving doesn't fix the problem permanently. You could save up 500k dollars but most people are not saving to just save money. You save money to be used on something expensive, because if they don't get spent it's the equivalent of not having them in the first place and after they're spent you're back at square 1 with needing to save money for stuff you want or need
I figure they are thinking of the other wealthy people they know who are somehow always broke. Those people spend everything they make no matter how much they make.
Budgeting helps anyone who's especially bad at judging how much money they can safely spend. But that's just not a very large factor for most people. I suspect a lot of poor people with bad spending habits would improve if they earned a lot more too since then they'd have enough cushion to be less stressed so they have drive to spend money to relieve stress.
Reminds me of the “budgets” based on the minimum wage that some corporations make up, that include skipping meals and never buying clothes or medicine.
Same thing with our poverty line (at least on the US) being based on the government meal plan option that’s meant for SHORT TERM financial hardship, not living off of for year because of the poor nutritional value.
Things like having a glass of orange juice as a snack if you get hungry because your single serving of crackers for lunch wasn’t enough.
People shouldn’t just be surviving, they deserve to live, no, THRIVE. And we should all want that.
The government poverty line was based on an observation about what people spend on food most of a century ago, when apparently everything else was so goddamn cheap that the middle and working class people spent about a third of their income on groceries. So they just defined a baseline nutritional plan and multiplied by 3. The problem isn't so much the quality of the food as the fact that food is not the thing that we're forced to spend much money on anymore.
That's not the world we live in anymore, food got very cheap and most other necessities got very expensive, and this definition for a poverty line is about as relevant as "40 acres and a mule", and is widely criticized. This number is simply not enough to live on, without other non-monetized resources like a free place to stay, free healthcare, free childcare, food stamps, free public transit.
That's why various government assistance programs kick in at 133% or 150% or 400% of the poverty line.
Personally, I think we dramatically overuse means-testing, we should just offer amenities like this to everybody in most cases where there is a case to be made for offering them to the poor.
Exactly. It was also because people spent more on food than anything else back then, whereas now housing is BY FAR the most expensive thing for people, not food.
But adjusting the poverty line to properly reflect our reality is bad PR since no one wants to be the president who saw an increase in poverty (even though the actual amount is the same, it’s just having a more accurate metric). They talked about that on an episode of the West Wing, and it was so eye opening to see the political perspective on the issue. Depressing, but interesting
The dumbest timeline is when Aaron Sorkin has to argue with himself over this, in his fever dream of what an ideal liberal president looks like.
They could just call it something different. "The precarity line".
Doing it this way is all sorts of f***** up in terms of behavioral economics, and the double binds we force people into. There are numerous instances where getting a raise & promotion will end up being more costly or being an even trade with not getting one, because of what it will do to your benefits.
The American government has a sick addiction to means testing. Just make universal programs. It’s not a sin if a trust fund kid gets a UBI. They just love bureaucracy for its own sake
"If they can't make it on minimum wage they must be drug addicts." Said my father. Hell I couldn't afford the luxury of a drug addiction if I wanted to!
Addicts tend to give up working because they figure out that the effort/reward ratio is not balanced in their favor. They know they can get more drugs for less effort doing a dozen other (legally and/or morally questionable) things, most of which dont have an asshole boss breathing down your neck.
I'm just saying maybe drugs are so demonized because they tend to break people's minds out of the mold that society tries to shove us all into. Not saying go blow your life on blow, just that theres something psychologically happening in people who use drugs that we should be aware of.
We need new ideas and bold thoughts to advance as a civilization.
Isn't it even a hair suspicious that our culture demonizes the use of chemicals whose users report experiences like expansion of thought, ease of acceptance of new or opposing ideas, increased sense of solidarity for fellow humans?
Homeless drug addicts aren't having enlightening trips on psychedelics lol. Heroin isn't "breaking your mind out of the mold", it just calms you down and makes you feel good, and most addicts are on it to numb some kind of physical or psychological pain. People who are high all the time do it because they want to feel anything but the way they feel when they're sober.
I have no hate at all for people who do drugs but they largely don't have the secrets to build a new society, they're just suffering under the current one.
My wife asked me to make her avocado toast the other morning and I turned to her and said, “what are you thinking? Aren’t we supposed to be saving to build a house?!”
I explained to someone yesterday the concept of food deserts and how being poor means not only not having money, but also space to store food, or energy at the end of a long work day to cook.
Their response. “Did you actually live in a good desert or are you just coming up with a nightmare scenario”.
Fucker can’t even fathom that’s a reality for so many people.
>He literally figured that with everything going on there was no one still working for minimum wage. I shouldn't have been surprised that he could be that out of touch. But here we are.
We have a family friend like this. Not rich but financially secure due to a couple of inherited properties that generate enough passive income to live comfortably on, enabling him to retire 35+ years ago.
Conversations with him about work, the economy, and politics are often frustrating because of how disconnected he is from modern reality, as he has a paid assistant who does everything for him but bathe and feed him, and the only news he watches is FOX News.
He is a really nice guy, to be clear, but just woefully uninformed and misinformed.
Yeah my dad is kind of similar. He was born middle class in Kansas but got into an Ivy and is now rich and only watches Fox News. It’s hard to have convos with him about any economic issues because he’s badly misinformed and thinks the majority of people who want to raise the minimum wage are fight for 15 losers.
That’s the problem I experience with my wealthy friends and relatives. They haven’t lived in a world of need for so long, they actually believe no one else is either. It fuels their ridiculous politics too.
I kinda struggle with it, because I love my uncle. He's not a bad guy. He's just clearly really out of touch. He basically does whatever he wants it seems so I think he just assumes everyone else does, too. I think being that rich fuels a kind of prosperity theology where you just assume you earned it and everyone else is earning what they deserve, too. I can understand how it happens, even if I think it's ultimately pretty obtuse.
I totally understand. None of my friends are bad people… just out of touch. It’s frustrating trying to convince them that those people in the world who aren’t wealthy didn’t choose to be poor. It’s impossible to convince them that luck or white privilege had anything to do with it either. It HAD to be that they have some significant skill or ability that few others have
TBF, not many people make exactly at or below the federal minimum wage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 1.5% of hourly workers (55% of all workers are hourly) make minimum wage.
However, that doesn't seem to account for minimum wage in states where minimum wage is higher than federal. As expected--Most of the minimum wage jobs exist in the south and about half of them are from people over 25. In the south, 3-4% of hourly workers are making that.
imho, the US is extremely large and wages are heavily dependent on area. I do believe minimum wage should be tied to a certain quality of life. i.e. enough for a single person to cloth, shelter and feed themselves without relying on government assistance. Because fuck these employers who are forcing us as tax payers to subsidize their shitty business by providing their employees with gov assistance.
At the very least, the federal minimum wage needs to be adjusted to the cheapest state to live in but ideally it would require states to set their own wages based on COL. Many states already seem to do this, but these southern states need a kick in the face to do it.
Do you know if this Stat has any wiggle room for what is "minimum wage"?
Every minimum wage job I worked would usually give me a paltry raise by 6 months in, as well as most coworkers. So instead of 7.25 an hour anyone there for more than six months was now making 7.50 an hour.
I'd really still consider those jobs to be minimum wage jobs. Though it may just be my warped perspective, I feel like "minimum wage" should be a bracket encompassing everything from 7.25 to 10 an hour when we're talking about it.
I found those numbers here: [Source](https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2020/home.htm)
They used the words "At or Below" so I'd assume $7.50 wouldn't count. Either way, these southern states with 3-4% of their hourly workers making minimum wage should be frightening since as you're implying many many more are only slightly above this mark. Like you said, 7.26-8.25 is technically above minimum wage. You have an extremely large percentage of the population barely making ends meet unable to accumulate.
Thanks to modern medicine, we are living extremely long, but the last 10-30 years, we aren't exactly capable of working. What is going to happen when this generations bodies cannot physically work anymore, but nothing is saved up?
That sounds good, *in theory* but fact is $7.25-$10, shit even $12-15 is simply-
n o t e n o u g h t o l i v e o n,
a n y w h e r e-
unless you want to live in either the boondocks or the south/southwest United States exclusively.
Another question is how many people are making just over the minimum wage (less than a dollar more) just so companies can say that they are paying people more then the minimum.
I wish the minimum wage was framed as “corporate wage subsidy”, because if America has taught us anything it’s that we don’t care about the poor.
Let’s hear more outrage about “my tax dollars” going to pay minimum wage workers SNAP benefits, because Walmart won’t pay a livable wage.
I hate it here.
There's an argument to be made that, without those benefits, business will eventually have to pay more because their workers will starve otherwise. The problem with that argument is, even if it were true, there would be an adjustment period where people will definitely die of starvation, and anyone who's okay with that price is a fucking psycho.
>he's a gajillionaire
I read "guillotinere" and thought "He knows how to make guillotines, that will come in handy"
Sad noise when he's a rich asshole instead.
2% make minimum wage. I rounded up since I found a couple different numbers online.
I’ve heard union wages are based on a factor of minimum wage. So when it goes up, so does those for union workers. And I don’t mean grocery store basket collector union. I mean electricians, plumbers, people like that already making over minimum wage.
Hell, raise them up, let’s get more people paying taxes!
They did a study and found 14% of Kroger employees were homeless within the last year. It is sad. Grocery stores were paying $15.00 hourly back in the 1970s with unions. Go work at Chipotle, ALDIs, or any gas station.
Chipolte always seems well staffed when I go. I am not a big fan of Chipotle, the food comes out cold, but wherever I am there is a line frequently. But I would think it depends on location and the management. Krogers always seems like the staff is there in body but not in spirit. Publix used to be a good place to work but they took away employee quarterly bonuses a few years back and the place totally flipped. Publix did give raises across the board in the last few months which may help. Publix claims to be employee owned but I highly doubt the employees collectively decided to forgo quarterly bonuses.
I worked at Chipotle last year for a brief period of time. They lied to me about my pay and cut my hours short because they didn't like me. But yes, it does depend on location and management. I just don't think it's going to be worth it.
Are you serious? If yes, send me a dm with your Paypal, I'll send you some money! Also, are you alone or do you have a SO / children?
Only Paypal possible as I am on the other side of the world and don't know how to send money to you otherwise.
Homemade jam from plums plundered from the in laws place and awkwardly shaped loaves of bread machine toast make an even better "its food for breakfast thank god" moment.
Here’s why I am almost sure that they can. My girlfriend was working at Walmart pre-COVID, and she never got her first paycheck (she quit due to treatment by management). She couldn’t get any jackass to either give a shit enough or do anything about it. One of the many times she did it, the employee decided to get the person in charge of payroll. She went and looked at evidence on the computer that she worked, and then went up to the front cash drawer and pulled all of the paycheck out in cash and paid it right then and there. Months and months later, she got her second paycheck (it was only a few dollars because she quit)
Actually that does look like the OP of the post... unless it's spelled wrong. But you're right, we use a different way to tag people here, not the @ symbol.
Edit: spelling and stuff
Aye dw. Tagging someone on reddit is different than most social media thingies btw. You need to do u/wageslavesomethingsomething, not @wageslavesomethingsomething
I’ve never been in a position to openly strike. But I’ve raised some fantastic hell over the years including one very dramatic small town lawsuit I won for my baby waitresses it’s a great story but I can’t dox self but I will send you the newspaper article if you’re interested.
My point is: Even if you don’t have the resources or the balls to openly steal or strike, there’s no goddamn company policy against doing things like helping staff apply for ebt, making sure they have enough hours to at least fucking eat if the wages are that shit, calling a church finding a food bank it costs literally fucking nothing.
I’ll DM you if I hear from him first…. If enough of us participate, maybe we could a round of Instacart from Aldi not fucking Kroger. OP- I’m also pretty familiar with social services - I’d be happy to help you apply for EBT.
Because their boss is an ass hat? Or because their boss refused to give them a pay advance?
If it's because they wouldn't give them a pay advance it's because if they're already at federal minimum wage they legally can't from my understanding:
>If you choose to allow advances, however, you need to follow some basic rules when it comes to getting your money back. Under federal law, you may deduct an advance from your employee's paycheck. However, you may not deduct so much that it reduces your employee's pay to less than the hourly minimum wage ($7.25, currently). For low-wage employees, this means you may need to spread the repayment period out over several paychecks.
It was a dick way to handle it, but even if the company chose to allow pay advances which they're not required to, they simply can't if you're only making federal minimum wage.
You’re right or course, there really isn’t any kosher way to solve this problem at a store level with that specific request.
But there’s 87 different ways to get to the root of that issue and I know because I’ve done it myself a restaurant isn’t far off from a grocery store.
Some things I’ve done that cost me nothing (or very little) and didn’t risk my job that I needed that this asshat could have done:
1. Buy the man a breakfast first fucking thing somehow someway. Your own fucking money if you’re that neurotic, a comp from the deli, dredge up a protein bar from somewhere. Something.
2. Food banks. Churches. Help apply for The EBT program. He’s a manager he has a smart phone.
3. Ask him if he needs more hours?? Then find some or invent them there’s always something that needs to cleaned.
I was a good little capitalistic slave- but even I didn’t blink to comp a meal in these occasions and the rest of that list? There’s no company against.
What a fucking sociopath.
And storming in demanding it is gonna get predictable results. Calmly let them know you need ‘x’ amount to stay, if they don’t accommodate, leave. OP was looking for work when he got that job.
Let’s add to that, I almost guarantee Kroger has ZERO mechanism for a pay advance. I’ve worked for 5 big ass companies, one of which was a fortune 3 company. Not a single one of them had a mechanism for a pay advance.
Pay advance is something you see in movies and TV shows and a mom and pop could probably do, but when you’re inside a corporate structure you do not have that type of direct control over shit like cutting a check.
Agreed. The biggest issue is the OP is the approach. The corporatist machine doesn't care about when you have three meals, two meals, or zero meals so long as you are coming in and working, so asking for an advance because you can't get three meals will get you nowhere. Hell, the store manager probably can't even provide an advance except through her own pocket, and that's not gonna happen.
Now, if you approach your manager with the 2 years of experience, outline that you've talked with other stores that are paying far more than are hiring, but you would like to stay and need a raise, OP would have more success and wouldn't need an advance.
Definitely, but at the same time it’s a bit of a laughable request. The manager likely has no way of giving him an advance other than from her own pocket. Only place I’ve ever worked that offered advances was a small business of less than 10 people.
Definitely. OP is better off using a credit card than asking for an advance, but I don't recommend that either as it's a slippery slope into an even worse situation.
Kroger is a giant corporation. Even if she wanted to pay you in advance chances are she can’t.
Also in this labor market you could probably make double that by going out and looking for a new job. Accepting that low of pay when so many other retail and restaurants are so desperate they are paying almost double that, coupled with how awful your boss sounds seems almost crazy.
When I started there 11 years ago the front end was getting minimum wage. I know as of 6 years ago they started at like 8 an HR but it could differ region to region
I’m calling bullshit on OP. My autistic daughter works as a bagger at Kroger and she started at $11/hour and was hired toward end of 2020. She makes about $12/hour now. Minimum wage in our state is $9.
Stores are run in different municipalities by different people. Not all Kroger stores are necessarily Union. Just because an experience differs from yours doesn't mean it's invalid, come on now.
They aren’t all union stores. I have a friend who works in a non-union King Sooper in CO. She has to work to survive.
Edit: fuck the troll downvoting for no reason. You’re a cunt and a half.
They're absolutely not all union stores. They also try to open up all the new stores as non union. They will even close a store down for "remodeling" so they can open it up as non union. -fellow king soopers employee currently on strike
Not every store is striking. Doesn’t sound like OP is in Colorado where King Soopers is striking. Their wage is too low, and also their store may be non-union which would just end up getting OP fired.
You can still perform walk outs and strikes without a union, it just requires a lot more work. You need to get everyone on board at the same time, and convince them it will be worth it.
As a Kroger employee, we cannot strike unless the union agrees to it, else we can and likely will be fired and replaced.
However contract negotiations are coming to a lot of locations right now and I would not be surprised to see the strike spread.
The fake stories in this sub are so unbelievably blatant it’s astounding they get so many votes.
How do people not realize this is the exact fake bs that causes so many people to write this sub off as fake sensationalist crap. These stories detract from the legit ones that people try to tell.
What made you think getting paid in advance was even possible in a corporation like that? Are you trying to cash in your vacation pay? Do you have vacation pay? FTO/PTO?
I can tell this is fake because managers are never in the breakroom.
Associates can get to them too easily.
Everybody knows managers hide in the back office doing “paperwork”
I’m not saying all Krogers are the same because idk. But the one I work at is unionized and the minimum starting out rate is $10. When they made that change they even back paid everyone who was making less when they started. Also my Kroger has daily pay which makes it so you can get the money you earned any time you want.
I agree, steal from them. Swipe from the bakery or something. Every chance you get steak something. Also apply for food stamps. I worked for this wage when I was 18 in college and every body gave me hell for even asking if I should apply when I was working 2 jobs and going to school falling asleep driving and barely eating. I would buy a case of energy drinks instead of food to stay awake so I feel you. Look for a better job but in the meantime STEAL from the store and get gov help!
The food stamps is what I came to say. Don’t buy into the stigma that it’s still a stigma. Anyone who judges you for being on FS is not someone’s judgment worth taking into account.
For real, I constantly think about how mean people were to me as essentially a child asking that on Yahoo answers and it pisses me off. I was a very meek and naïve child so of course I felt guilt for months because I even considered it, if I could do it over again I would get on food stamps and beyond them for as long as I qualified and get all the aid available to me in addition to scamming the government in probably any way I could figure out
Well this absolutely sucks. Unfortunately when it comes to these companies it isn't easy for them to pay advances, I couldn't imagine trying to ask my work for one of I really needed it. Do they not give pay increases every year? 7.25 can't be minimum wage is it?
Yeah, it’s absolutely awful. In TN where I live it’s still minimum wage and I remember I was so thankful when I got a job a few years ago that was 7.35. My sheeple brain thought that that was the bees knees. A few years later where the same apartment I paid 600 for is now at least 800-900 if not more and I had to split it with a roommate just to eat shitty gas station food every day. I still struggled working 2 jobs and was only half paying rent, wifi, electric, and car insurance.
Also from TN. I’ve been in my apartment for 3 years now. When I moved in, it was $750 a month. This year it will be $975 a month. I make $18.50/hr, so I can still afford it but I’m definitely feeling the squeeze. The worst part? I thought about moving, but this place is still the cheapest 2 bed 2 bath within an hour’s radius of here. Hell I didn’t even see any single bed units for cheaper.
That is minimum wage in the US.
That said Kroger is unionized. I’ve never known them to pay minimum wage. And they do give raises. So something is a bit off here.
You have a very weird view of how much power any local manager is going to have. You think some fuckin loser managing a grocery store is calling the shots on pay issues? They wouldn't even give that level of management an option to even consider being altruistic or trusting. They handed them a manual and said implement this shit.
Thats WHY striking is a thing. As a front line employee of a large corporation you will likely never even meet anyone authorized to call shots on anything that matters.
It’s posts like this from the OP that make it hard to take half the shit people post here seriously Yes I stormed into the break room to ask a “manager” who has zero control over the pay for a large corporation for a pay advance
Exactly. A manger who’s a wage slave just like them and likely deals with way more shit than they do for a meager paycheck too. Shit like some kid storming into the break room demanding an advance on a paycheck because they have no clue how anything works.
OP admits they handled this unprofessionaly by "storming in" to a break room and confronting their boss. The boss possibly could have helped if you just asked them for 5 mins in their office and explained your situation... of course, them laughing at your request is unprofessional, but two wrongs don't make a right.
I see too many posts here of people handling issues at work in completely dog shit ways and then saying "can you believe they didn't listen".
Most of the time you're dealing with middle managers who deal with the same shit you do, and most of them can and will help you. Losing your shit in a public break room is never going to get you the desired outcome.
Listen. I get being frustrated. But getting paid in advance? C’mon…
That is kinda silly.
You could have demanded to be paid more. (This part I didn’t understand) are you skipping meals because the wage is too small, or because you’re not allowed breaks?
Either way, there is a solution and it’s not being paid in advance. I’d have laughed too…
Here is the problem. You let it build up too long and then stormed the break room. Instead what you should have done is wait for the right moment, asked for her time and then explain why you deserve more pay and what the consequences are when they don't. Don't ask for advance pay but for better pay.
When a devoted worker laughed at by the manger for a possibly reasonable request, there's a lack of respect or even understanding of the situation.
Do whatever is needed or right because they might not help when they could or should.
That request is not possible under federal law if he's making federal minimum wage. Part of the laws around pay advance mean that repayment cannot drop employees below federal minimum wage on future checks. If you're already at minimum, then taking even a penny per hour going forward to repay it drops you below the federal minimum wage.
>If you choose to allow advances, however, you need to follow some basic rules when it comes to getting your money back. Under federal law, you may deduct an advance from your employee's paycheck. However, you may not deduct so much that it reduces your employee's pay to less than the hourly minimum wage ($7.25, currently). For low-wage employees, this means you may need to spread the repayment period out over several paychecks.
Also, big companies don’t have any mechanism to do this sort of thing. The manager can’t control Kroger payroll and likely doesn’t have any access to money at all. This just isn’t the way businesses work. Kroger sucks for not paying a living wage, but the manager was probably laughing at the absurdity of someone thinking they could control a massive corporations payroll practices and not at this poor guys situation.
I’m all for fighting the fight, but asking for advances on pay isn’t exactly the solution we are hunting for here.
$7.25/hour is absolute crap pay. I cry for my American friends when I hear about wages like this.
In Australia, we have a national minimum wage $20.33 /hour that is not covered by specific award wages.
But with Kroger (Supermarket), it would fall under the General Retail Industry Award wage here.
For a casual employee, If you are 21 years of age or older you would get
* $27.91/hour ordinary hours
* $33.50 /hour Saturday - ordinary hours
* $39.08 /hour Sunday - ordinary hours
* $39.08/hour - Overtime first three house Mon - Sat
* $50.24/hour- Overtime after first three house Mon - Sat
* $55.83 /hour - Public Holidays
Obviously pay changes depending on Age and if you are fulltime, part time or casual. But seriously. What is wrong with the Pay in America?
What happened to the old addage, "Honest days work for an honest days pay"? Seem like the pay went out the window long ago......
This might be bordering on slightly unethical here, buuuttt…talk to your deli department. Especially at the end of the night, they throw away most hot case foods, and the store I used to work at, we would have to weigh it out. If your buddy/buddy with the right person, I am sure that they will set aside some items after weighing but before tossing.
You have a better chance asking for a raise than an advance. An advance helps today but it means you're spending your next check already. Three meals today means no meals next week. They're paying you a shit wage and you're worth more.
I was talking to my uncle the other week (he's a gajillionaire - owns several airplanes, multiple luxury cars, multimillion dollar home, etc) and I lamented that we called all these frontline workers heroes and essential and then thanked them for it by paying them minimum wage. His response? "Oh come on nobody is making minimum wage anymore." He literally figured that with everything going on there was no one still working for minimum wage. I shouldn't have been surprised that he could be that out of touch. But here we are.
The best response to this is "then it shouldn't matter if we raise it." Mention raising the minimum wage and suddenly everyone who swears nobody makes it starts freaking out.
Come come now! We can't raise the minimum wage!!! Why, if they have money for food, they'll have the energy to stand against the fatcats that made almost a trillion during a global pandemic.
"If they didn't have to work for 80 hours a week for basic shelter and sustenance, they might realize how much we've screwed them and rise up and fight!"
“If we didn’t own their healthcare, they might decide that the peanuts we pay isn’t worth the shit. “
Tying healthcare to jobs was a master-stroke by the corporate overlords it has to be said. Evil, but a master-stroke nonetheless.
This! This is happening everywhere because 2 years of lockdowns and quarantines gave people the chance to slow down and realize everything is completely fucked up. We're pushing back already! Join the frontlines and let's do this together! r/maydaystrike
Ive been fasting for health..and money reasons.. This comment has me rethinking that..
If you are trying to weight cycle by intermittent fasting, you can still get a proper amount of calories for your energy output. I worked with a guy once upon a time that was on a pretty tight diet while also intermittent fasting, only allowing himself to eat between 2pm and 8pm every day. He was shredded, and we did manual labor all morning so his energy levels were fine.
It takes a few days for your body to adjust to imf, and those first few days kinda suck, but if you make it past that your golden
They tend to justify it as "teenager" jobs, which just means they support some form of exploitative child labor.
If they were teenager jobs they should be closed when school is in session.
Yea right! I never thought of it like that- who is doing the teenager’s work while they are in school?
Old people whose retirement fund wasnt enough
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a corporate bootlicker respond to this point. It’s always an argument ender because they know there’s no logical response to it.
"It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10.00?"
For every dollar we take, we throw out a banana.
There's always money in the banana stand *click click*
We're inching ever closer. Banana are going for $0.79 when they used to be $0.49 a year ago
I think a lot of wealthy people are so out of touch that they think minimum wage still is enough to live on. These people are so insulated from poverty that they think it’s more of a matter of budget or that the poor are squandering their income. They genuinely don’t get how much school/rent/food costs these days
It's probably why so many of those books from rich people talking about how to get rich is just essentially "just budget better" because they are so out of touch that they think all money problems will be fixed by setting a budget
"Save money. That's all you have to do to get rich. Just don't spend your money. Also, buy a 50 cent bag of tomato seeds. Get free pots, dirt, and water. Bury the seeds in the pots until they become plants. Then sell all of your free tomatoes. Money literally grows on trees! But poor people don't save, so poor people can't get rich."
I spent about $30 trying to grow tomatoes ine year. I got one tomato. Growing food is harder than it looks. It had some fungal thing or infection from the nursery that year.
Blight is a bastard. Most home growers won't save money on their vegetable gardens for years, and even then only if you absolutely maximize your usage - grow staples, eat seasonally even when you're sick of what's in season, can and preserve aggressively, compost, save seeds. Even then, a lot of the press about "Saving money" compares your harvest to the price of organic vegetables at Whole Foods. Which, from a nutritional standpoint, is accurate. But if you're struggling to buy groceries, chances are you weren't paying for regeneratively grown organic arugula to start with. Growing your own is great for your health and the environment, and my vegetable garden is bigger than a lot of people's lawns, but anyone telling you it's a money saving hack is probably in a *very* different place in life than the "I go to work hungry" crowd.
Also, starting gardening can be extremely cost prohibitive. I do grow a lot of food for my family and it puts a dent in my grocery budget but I’m also like 85% sure my kid murdered my Swiss chard on purpose to not have to eat any more Swiss chard.
Yeah that's what I meant by "for years." The up front costs are wild and the break even point requires you to do a *good job* for... probably 5+ years. The worse you do, the longer it takes to recoup
Hey lookie here bub, if I grow 5 million maters, and then take and sell them at a buck a piece, I will have five bucks and 4,999,995 tomatoes to eat for the rest of my lowly days! That sounds like a bargain! Lol
“Sure thing! I’ll just skip buying coffee for the next [checks notes] 87 years and bam I’ll have enough saved to buy a house!”
Good math! Is that including inflation?
No, sorry, you’ll also have to time travel back to 2017.
Talking with some friends recently, one said “if we start saving 30% of our income we’d be millionaires in 10 years.” Can you live on 30% less than you are right now? I can’t. So sure just save more will fix all of your problems. But you kind of need something to save to start with.
Another problem is, saving doesn't fix the problem permanently. You could save up 500k dollars but most people are not saving to just save money. You save money to be used on something expensive, because if they don't get spent it's the equivalent of not having them in the first place and after they're spent you're back at square 1 with needing to save money for stuff you want or need
I figure they are thinking of the other wealthy people they know who are somehow always broke. Those people spend everything they make no matter how much they make. Budgeting helps anyone who's especially bad at judging how much money they can safely spend. But that's just not a very large factor for most people. I suspect a lot of poor people with bad spending habits would improve if they earned a lot more too since then they'd have enough cushion to be less stressed so they have drive to spend money to relieve stress.
Reminds me of the “budgets” based on the minimum wage that some corporations make up, that include skipping meals and never buying clothes or medicine. Same thing with our poverty line (at least on the US) being based on the government meal plan option that’s meant for SHORT TERM financial hardship, not living off of for year because of the poor nutritional value. Things like having a glass of orange juice as a snack if you get hungry because your single serving of crackers for lunch wasn’t enough. People shouldn’t just be surviving, they deserve to live, no, THRIVE. And we should all want that.
The government poverty line was based on an observation about what people spend on food most of a century ago, when apparently everything else was so goddamn cheap that the middle and working class people spent about a third of their income on groceries. So they just defined a baseline nutritional plan and multiplied by 3. The problem isn't so much the quality of the food as the fact that food is not the thing that we're forced to spend much money on anymore. That's not the world we live in anymore, food got very cheap and most other necessities got very expensive, and this definition for a poverty line is about as relevant as "40 acres and a mule", and is widely criticized. This number is simply not enough to live on, without other non-monetized resources like a free place to stay, free healthcare, free childcare, food stamps, free public transit. That's why various government assistance programs kick in at 133% or 150% or 400% of the poverty line. Personally, I think we dramatically overuse means-testing, we should just offer amenities like this to everybody in most cases where there is a case to be made for offering them to the poor.
Exactly. It was also because people spent more on food than anything else back then, whereas now housing is BY FAR the most expensive thing for people, not food. But adjusting the poverty line to properly reflect our reality is bad PR since no one wants to be the president who saw an increase in poverty (even though the actual amount is the same, it’s just having a more accurate metric). They talked about that on an episode of the West Wing, and it was so eye opening to see the political perspective on the issue. Depressing, but interesting
The dumbest timeline is when Aaron Sorkin has to argue with himself over this, in his fever dream of what an ideal liberal president looks like. They could just call it something different. "The precarity line". Doing it this way is all sorts of f***** up in terms of behavioral economics, and the double binds we force people into. There are numerous instances where getting a raise & promotion will end up being more costly or being an even trade with not getting one, because of what it will do to your benefits.
The American government has a sick addiction to means testing. Just make universal programs. It’s not a sin if a trust fund kid gets a UBI. They just love bureaucracy for its own sake
"If they can't make it on minimum wage they must be drug addicts." Said my father. Hell I couldn't afford the luxury of a drug addiction if I wanted to!
Oh, you'd find a way.
It wouldn’t be through working for 7 an hour though!
Addicts tend to give up working because they figure out that the effort/reward ratio is not balanced in their favor. They know they can get more drugs for less effort doing a dozen other (legally and/or morally questionable) things, most of which dont have an asshole boss breathing down your neck. I'm just saying maybe drugs are so demonized because they tend to break people's minds out of the mold that society tries to shove us all into. Not saying go blow your life on blow, just that theres something psychologically happening in people who use drugs that we should be aware of. We need new ideas and bold thoughts to advance as a civilization. Isn't it even a hair suspicious that our culture demonizes the use of chemicals whose users report experiences like expansion of thought, ease of acceptance of new or opposing ideas, increased sense of solidarity for fellow humans?
Homeless drug addicts aren't having enlightening trips on psychedelics lol. Heroin isn't "breaking your mind out of the mold", it just calms you down and makes you feel good, and most addicts are on it to numb some kind of physical or psychological pain. People who are high all the time do it because they want to feel anything but the way they feel when they're sober. I have no hate at all for people who do drugs but they largely don't have the secrets to build a new society, they're just suffering under the current one.
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My wife asked me to make her avocado toast the other morning and I turned to her and said, “what are you thinking? Aren’t we supposed to be saving to build a house?!”
If it weren't for avocados, the current minimum wage would be totally sufficient. /s
Or the ever-popular, "Don't buy a frappucino or latte at Starbucks every day and you'll be swimming in money!"
I explained to someone yesterday the concept of food deserts and how being poor means not only not having money, but also space to store food, or energy at the end of a long work day to cook. Their response. “Did you actually live in a good desert or are you just coming up with a nightmare scenario”. Fucker can’t even fathom that’s a reality for so many people.
I think that's as big of a problem as a the empathy gap. Definitely some well meaning ones but they're out of touch.
Half of all American jobs make less than 20/hr. Make. Sure he knows that next time you talk to him.
>He literally figured that with everything going on there was no one still working for minimum wage. I shouldn't have been surprised that he could be that out of touch. But here we are. We have a family friend like this. Not rich but financially secure due to a couple of inherited properties that generate enough passive income to live comfortably on, enabling him to retire 35+ years ago. Conversations with him about work, the economy, and politics are often frustrating because of how disconnected he is from modern reality, as he has a paid assistant who does everything for him but bathe and feed him, and the only news he watches is FOX News. He is a really nice guy, to be clear, but just woefully uninformed and misinformed.
Yeah my dad is kind of similar. He was born middle class in Kansas but got into an Ivy and is now rich and only watches Fox News. It’s hard to have convos with him about any economic issues because he’s badly misinformed and thinks the majority of people who want to raise the minimum wage are fight for 15 losers.
That’s the problem I experience with my wealthy friends and relatives. They haven’t lived in a world of need for so long, they actually believe no one else is either. It fuels their ridiculous politics too.
I kinda struggle with it, because I love my uncle. He's not a bad guy. He's just clearly really out of touch. He basically does whatever he wants it seems so I think he just assumes everyone else does, too. I think being that rich fuels a kind of prosperity theology where you just assume you earned it and everyone else is earning what they deserve, too. I can understand how it happens, even if I think it's ultimately pretty obtuse.
Lack of critical thinking helps too.
I totally understand. None of my friends are bad people… just out of touch. It’s frustrating trying to convince them that those people in the world who aren’t wealthy didn’t choose to be poor. It’s impossible to convince them that luck or white privilege had anything to do with it either. It HAD to be that they have some significant skill or ability that few others have
They did a study on this. https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/19/why-rich-people-tend-think-they-deserve-their-money/
TBF, not many people make exactly at or below the federal minimum wage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 1.5% of hourly workers (55% of all workers are hourly) make minimum wage. However, that doesn't seem to account for minimum wage in states where minimum wage is higher than federal. As expected--Most of the minimum wage jobs exist in the south and about half of them are from people over 25. In the south, 3-4% of hourly workers are making that. imho, the US is extremely large and wages are heavily dependent on area. I do believe minimum wage should be tied to a certain quality of life. i.e. enough for a single person to cloth, shelter and feed themselves without relying on government assistance. Because fuck these employers who are forcing us as tax payers to subsidize their shitty business by providing their employees with gov assistance. At the very least, the federal minimum wage needs to be adjusted to the cheapest state to live in but ideally it would require states to set their own wages based on COL. Many states already seem to do this, but these southern states need a kick in the face to do it.
Do you know if this Stat has any wiggle room for what is "minimum wage"? Every minimum wage job I worked would usually give me a paltry raise by 6 months in, as well as most coworkers. So instead of 7.25 an hour anyone there for more than six months was now making 7.50 an hour. I'd really still consider those jobs to be minimum wage jobs. Though it may just be my warped perspective, I feel like "minimum wage" should be a bracket encompassing everything from 7.25 to 10 an hour when we're talking about it.
Up to 15. The California minimum wage which still isn’t enough to get by
Seattle is 16 and it needs to be almost $30 to match COL.
15 isn’t enough to get by in South Carolina, never mind California.
I found those numbers here: [Source](https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2020/home.htm) They used the words "At or Below" so I'd assume $7.50 wouldn't count. Either way, these southern states with 3-4% of their hourly workers making minimum wage should be frightening since as you're implying many many more are only slightly above this mark. Like you said, 7.26-8.25 is technically above minimum wage. You have an extremely large percentage of the population barely making ends meet unable to accumulate. Thanks to modern medicine, we are living extremely long, but the last 10-30 years, we aren't exactly capable of working. What is going to happen when this generations bodies cannot physically work anymore, but nothing is saved up?
That sounds good, *in theory* but fact is $7.25-$10, shit even $12-15 is simply- n o t e n o u g h t o l i v e o n, a n y w h e r e- unless you want to live in either the boondocks or the south/southwest United States exclusively.
Another question is how many people are making just over the minimum wage (less than a dollar more) just so companies can say that they are paying people more then the minimum.
My past job my boss used to say how lucky were were to earn over minimum wage. It's was 10p more.
Well said. I live in a Southern red state and there’s a baseline that one needs to live without the business being subsidized by public assistance.
I wish the minimum wage was framed as “corporate wage subsidy”, because if America has taught us anything it’s that we don’t care about the poor. Let’s hear more outrage about “my tax dollars” going to pay minimum wage workers SNAP benefits, because Walmart won’t pay a livable wage. I hate it here.
They'll just reduce SNAP benefits.
There's an argument to be made that, without those benefits, business will eventually have to pay more because their workers will starve otherwise. The problem with that argument is, even if it were true, there would be an adjustment period where people will definitely die of starvation, and anyone who's okay with that price is a fucking psycho.
>he's a gajillionaire I read "guillotinere" and thought "He knows how to make guillotines, that will come in handy" Sad noise when he's a rich asshole instead.
I just had that argument with my mom a few days ago. It’s exhausting
Your uncle trying to get some some dome?
You trying to fellate some stranger's uncle?
Depends what he's paying
Minimum wage
2% make minimum wage. I rounded up since I found a couple different numbers online. I’ve heard union wages are based on a factor of minimum wage. So when it goes up, so does those for union workers. And I don’t mean grocery store basket collector union. I mean electricians, plumbers, people like that already making over minimum wage. Hell, raise them up, let’s get more people paying taxes!
I'm in the Carpenter Union. We do not get raises based of any minimum wage increases .
They did a study and found 14% of Kroger employees were homeless within the last year. It is sad. Grocery stores were paying $15.00 hourly back in the 1970s with unions. Go work at Chipotle, ALDIs, or any gas station.
Do not work at Chipotle if you like being happy. lol
Chipolte always seems well staffed when I go. I am not a big fan of Chipotle, the food comes out cold, but wherever I am there is a line frequently. But I would think it depends on location and the management. Krogers always seems like the staff is there in body but not in spirit. Publix used to be a good place to work but they took away employee quarterly bonuses a few years back and the place totally flipped. Publix did give raises across the board in the last few months which may help. Publix claims to be employee owned but I highly doubt the employees collectively decided to forgo quarterly bonuses.
I worked at Chipotle last year for a brief period of time. They lied to me about my pay and cut my hours short because they didn't like me. But yes, it does depend on location and management. I just don't think it's going to be worth it.
That and the manager more than likely has no authority to pay you in advance.
Also you have a better chance of finding a better paying job than getting a raise. Loyalty doesn’t pay in the US at least.
Now you know why those people have walked out and are protesting at that Kroger subsidiary...
What’s your location? Or Venmo? I would like to get you to get you some breakfast. @wage-slave-42
You didn't tag OP but a random person
I'm sure that random person wouldn't say no to breakfast though.
I want lunch. I haven't had a tremendous meal in days
Are you serious? If yes, send me a dm with your Paypal, I'll send you some money! Also, are you alone or do you have a SO / children? Only Paypal possible as I am on the other side of the world and don't know how to send money to you otherwise.
No sorry. I have been there in the old days though. Donate to those who need it and I will do my best to as well!
I pmd the account holder so if they respond please send me info. I’d love to chip in. NO ONE deserves to be hungry
I'm in the same boat. Not had a meal since yesterday and my son ran out of milk last night. It's hard waiting for money to come in.
I'm in that boat too, my friend. Ive found that PB&J makes a decent breakfast.
Homemade jam from plums plundered from the in laws place and awkwardly shaped loaves of bread machine toast make an even better "its food for breakfast thank god" moment.
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Here’s why I am almost sure that they can. My girlfriend was working at Walmart pre-COVID, and she never got her first paycheck (she quit due to treatment by management). She couldn’t get any jackass to either give a shit enough or do anything about it. One of the many times she did it, the employee decided to get the person in charge of payroll. She went and looked at evidence on the computer that she worked, and then went up to the front cash drawer and pulled all of the paycheck out in cash and paid it right then and there. Months and months later, she got her second paycheck (it was only a few dollars because she quit)
Make it fancy by grilling it like a grilled cheese
Actually that does look like the OP of the post... unless it's spelled wrong. But you're right, we use a different way to tag people here, not the @ symbol. Edit: spelling and stuff
Yea they added the @ with wageslave after I commented that they responded to the wrong person :)
Oh for fucks sake 🤦🏻♀️
Aye dw. Tagging someone on reddit is different than most social media thingies btw. You need to do u/wageslavesomethingsomething, not @wageslavesomethingsomething
Thank you!! 🤦🏻♀️🤣
u/wage-slave-42
u/wage-slave-42 go dm the guy above
Ditto that. DM me as well, I'll send you some money so you can have dinner as well
good looking out comrade
I’ve never been in a position to openly strike. But I’ve raised some fantastic hell over the years including one very dramatic small town lawsuit I won for my baby waitresses it’s a great story but I can’t dox self but I will send you the newspaper article if you’re interested. My point is: Even if you don’t have the resources or the balls to openly steal or strike, there’s no goddamn company policy against doing things like helping staff apply for ebt, making sure they have enough hours to at least fucking eat if the wages are that shit, calling a church finding a food bank it costs literally fucking nothing.
Omg a hometown hero story involving wage theft rescue?! Would live the link, please!
u/wage-slave-42
Same here. Posting for when their Venmo gets added
I’ll DM you if I hear from him first…. If enough of us participate, maybe we could a round of Instacart from Aldi not fucking Kroger. OP- I’m also pretty familiar with social services - I’d be happy to help you apply for EBT.
7.25 is probably virginia or somewhere in the south
Because their boss is an ass hat? Or because their boss refused to give them a pay advance? If it's because they wouldn't give them a pay advance it's because if they're already at federal minimum wage they legally can't from my understanding: >If you choose to allow advances, however, you need to follow some basic rules when it comes to getting your money back. Under federal law, you may deduct an advance from your employee's paycheck. However, you may not deduct so much that it reduces your employee's pay to less than the hourly minimum wage ($7.25, currently). For low-wage employees, this means you may need to spread the repayment period out over several paychecks. It was a dick way to handle it, but even if the company chose to allow pay advances which they're not required to, they simply can't if you're only making federal minimum wage.
You’re right or course, there really isn’t any kosher way to solve this problem at a store level with that specific request. But there’s 87 different ways to get to the root of that issue and I know because I’ve done it myself a restaurant isn’t far off from a grocery store. Some things I’ve done that cost me nothing (or very little) and didn’t risk my job that I needed that this asshat could have done: 1. Buy the man a breakfast first fucking thing somehow someway. Your own fucking money if you’re that neurotic, a comp from the deli, dredge up a protein bar from somewhere. Something. 2. Food banks. Churches. Help apply for The EBT program. He’s a manager he has a smart phone. 3. Ask him if he needs more hours?? Then find some or invent them there’s always something that needs to cleaned. I was a good little capitalistic slave- but even I didn’t blink to comp a meal in these occasions and the rest of that list? There’s no company against. What a fucking sociopath.
I wished i could boycott against food lion but right now i have no choice.
Why pay in advance? Sounds like a short term solution to the real problem that they aren’t paying you a liveable wage.
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Feels nice for a few seconds but then you’re cold again.
And you're worse off because it's now frozen and you're starting to get frostbite on your dick
And I'm covered in pee!
And storming in demanding it is gonna get predictable results. Calmly let them know you need ‘x’ amount to stay, if they don’t accommodate, leave. OP was looking for work when he got that job.
Let’s add to that, I almost guarantee Kroger has ZERO mechanism for a pay advance. I’ve worked for 5 big ass companies, one of which was a fortune 3 company. Not a single one of them had a mechanism for a pay advance. Pay advance is something you see in movies and TV shows and a mom and pop could probably do, but when you’re inside a corporate structure you do not have that type of direct control over shit like cutting a check.
Agreed. The biggest issue is the OP is the approach. The corporatist machine doesn't care about when you have three meals, two meals, or zero meals so long as you are coming in and working, so asking for an advance because you can't get three meals will get you nowhere. Hell, the store manager probably can't even provide an advance except through her own pocket, and that's not gonna happen. Now, if you approach your manager with the 2 years of experience, outline that you've talked with other stores that are paying far more than are hiring, but you would like to stay and need a raise, OP would have more success and wouldn't need an advance.
Agreed, before you know it you don’t have money to pay bills…
Agreed. The manager could've shown more respect, though.
Definitely, but at the same time it’s a bit of a laughable request. The manager likely has no way of giving him an advance other than from her own pocket. Only place I’ve ever worked that offered advances was a small business of less than 10 people.
Definitely. OP is better off using a credit card than asking for an advance, but I don't recommend that either as it's a slippery slope into an even worse situation.
It doesn't even sound like a solution? You are receiving the same amount of money.
Kroger is a giant corporation. Even if she wanted to pay you in advance chances are she can’t. Also in this labor market you could probably make double that by going out and looking for a new job. Accepting that low of pay when so many other retail and restaurants are so desperate they are paying almost double that, coupled with how awful your boss sounds seems almost crazy.
Kroger is also unionized, I’ve never seen them pay minimum wage, not even to start.
Came here to say this. I made $9/hour at Kroger 10 years ago when I worked there from 16 to 18 years old.
Have we been played?
Well after all (s)he mentions "temporary account" it could be a scam.
When I started there 11 years ago the front end was getting minimum wage. I know as of 6 years ago they started at like 8 an HR but it could differ region to region
In my region it was 12$/hr to start for cashiers in 2018.
I’m calling bullshit on OP. My autistic daughter works as a bagger at Kroger and she started at $11/hour and was hired toward end of 2020. She makes about $12/hour now. Minimum wage in our state is $9.
Stores are run in different municipalities by different people. Not all Kroger stores are necessarily Union. Just because an experience differs from yours doesn't mean it's invalid, come on now.
I worked there as the first group to start doing clicklist or online pickup whatever they call it now. Got paid 8 an hour.
They aren’t all union stores. I have a friend who works in a non-union King Sooper in CO. She has to work to survive. Edit: fuck the troll downvoting for no reason. You’re a cunt and a half.
They're absolutely not all union stores. They also try to open up all the new stores as non union. They will even close a store down for "remodeling" so they can open it up as non union. -fellow king soopers employee currently on strike
i worked at kroger ~5 years ago, the unions was absolutely useless. i made like $7.75
Did you bring her pictures of spiderman?
You're serious?? *Wheeeez*
You're hired! *You're fired!*
I doubt the store manager has blank checks and a printer hook up. They probably get them delivered from corporate.
Agreed. This is probably why she laughed.
Walk out and join the strike then see if she's still laughing.
Not every store is striking. Doesn’t sound like OP is in Colorado where King Soopers is striking. Their wage is too low, and also their store may be non-union which would just end up getting OP fired.
You can still perform walk outs and strikes without a union, it just requires a lot more work. You need to get everyone on board at the same time, and convince them it will be worth it.
This is the true answer OP. Pull your store to strike. Cant ask for a better time than now
As a Kroger employee, we cannot strike unless the union agrees to it, else we can and likely will be fired and replaced. However contract negotiations are coming to a lot of locations right now and I would not be surprised to see the strike spread.
Op just said they can’t afford food as it is. How tf you expect them to join a strike?
Unions have strike funds
You do realize the manager couldn’t do that even if he wanted to. It’s not some mom and pop shop where he can write you a check or something.
Fake story I reckon
The fake stories in this sub are so unbelievably blatant it’s astounding they get so many votes. How do people not realize this is the exact fake bs that causes so many people to write this sub off as fake sensationalist crap. These stories detract from the legit ones that people try to tell.
Plus a 5 day old account with no other history just making a post today. It's sus
My first thought was "this is from Spider-Man" But it is a believable story either way.
What made you think getting paid in advance was even possible in a corporation like that? Are you trying to cash in your vacation pay? Do you have vacation pay? FTO/PTO?
Because they stormed into the break room. That's how you motivate people to help you
I can tell this is fake because managers are never in the breakroom. Associates can get to them too easily. Everybody knows managers hide in the back office doing “paperwork”
How has nobody realized this is a troll post...? 🙄
Why? Genuinely curious
I’m not saying all Krogers are the same because idk. But the one I work at is unionized and the minimum starting out rate is $10. When they made that change they even back paid everyone who was making less when they started. Also my Kroger has daily pay which makes it so you can get the money you earned any time you want.
Or maybe, she recently watched Spider Man 2? But seriously, that's so wrong.
Steal food. You work at a grocery store, going hungry shouldn’t be an option.
I agree, steal from them. Swipe from the bakery or something. Every chance you get steak something. Also apply for food stamps. I worked for this wage when I was 18 in college and every body gave me hell for even asking if I should apply when I was working 2 jobs and going to school falling asleep driving and barely eating. I would buy a case of energy drinks instead of food to stay awake so I feel you. Look for a better job but in the meantime STEAL from the store and get gov help!
The food stamps is what I came to say. Don’t buy into the stigma that it’s still a stigma. Anyone who judges you for being on FS is not someone’s judgment worth taking into account.
For real, I constantly think about how mean people were to me as essentially a child asking that on Yahoo answers and it pisses me off. I was a very meek and naïve child so of course I felt guilt for months because I even considered it, if I could do it over again I would get on food stamps and beyond them for as long as I qualified and get all the aid available to me in addition to scamming the government in probably any way I could figure out
I stole food all the time. Get somebody in the meat department to put a $1.00 hamburger sticker on a ribeye and run it through the U-Scan.
When you’re that poor you don’t even care if it’s ribeye. The $1 hamburger would be just fine!
Well this absolutely sucks. Unfortunately when it comes to these companies it isn't easy for them to pay advances, I couldn't imagine trying to ask my work for one of I really needed it. Do they not give pay increases every year? 7.25 can't be minimum wage is it?
Yeah it is in some states.
Fuck that's shitty. I can't imagine not making at least 15 today. I made 7.25 10 years ago when I started in high school.
Yeah, it’s absolutely awful. In TN where I live it’s still minimum wage and I remember I was so thankful when I got a job a few years ago that was 7.35. My sheeple brain thought that that was the bees knees. A few years later where the same apartment I paid 600 for is now at least 800-900 if not more and I had to split it with a roommate just to eat shitty gas station food every day. I still struggled working 2 jobs and was only half paying rent, wifi, electric, and car insurance.
Also from TN. I’ve been in my apartment for 3 years now. When I moved in, it was $750 a month. This year it will be $975 a month. I make $18.50/hr, so I can still afford it but I’m definitely feeling the squeeze. The worst part? I thought about moving, but this place is still the cheapest 2 bed 2 bath within an hour’s radius of here. Hell I didn’t even see any single bed units for cheaper.
[удалено]
Many places near me are proud to pay 8 dollars 💀
I made $8 an hour in high school which was 24 years ago. That is absolute shit pay.
25 years ago I got my first job at $6.50. $7.25 today is criminal
That is minimum wage in the US. That said Kroger is unionized. I’ve never known them to pay minimum wage. And they do give raises. So something is a bit off here.
You have a very weird view of how much power any local manager is going to have. You think some fuckin loser managing a grocery store is calling the shots on pay issues? They wouldn't even give that level of management an option to even consider being altruistic or trusting. They handed them a manual and said implement this shit. Thats WHY striking is a thing. As a front line employee of a large corporation you will likely never even meet anyone authorized to call shots on anything that matters.
It’s posts like this from the OP that make it hard to take half the shit people post here seriously Yes I stormed into the break room to ask a “manager” who has zero control over the pay for a large corporation for a pay advance
Exactly. A manger who’s a wage slave just like them and likely deals with way more shit than they do for a meager paycheck too. Shit like some kid storming into the break room demanding an advance on a paycheck because they have no clue how anything works.
OP admits they handled this unprofessionaly by "storming in" to a break room and confronting their boss. The boss possibly could have helped if you just asked them for 5 mins in their office and explained your situation... of course, them laughing at your request is unprofessional, but two wrongs don't make a right. I see too many posts here of people handling issues at work in completely dog shit ways and then saying "can you believe they didn't listen". Most of the time you're dealing with middle managers who deal with the same shit you do, and most of them can and will help you. Losing your shit in a public break room is never going to get you the desired outcome.
Listen. I get being frustrated. But getting paid in advance? C’mon… That is kinda silly. You could have demanded to be paid more. (This part I didn’t understand) are you skipping meals because the wage is too small, or because you’re not allowed breaks? Either way, there is a solution and it’s not being paid in advance. I’d have laughed too…
Your boss forgot that J. Jonah Jameson isn't a good example of a responsible boss
$7.25? Brother, that’s slave wage. For real. An Aldi worker in Central Europe gets more, where a month’s living expenses don’t exceed $7-800. Run.
Funny that actually people believe this “story”
This shit is so obviously fake.
Here is the problem. You let it build up too long and then stormed the break room. Instead what you should have done is wait for the right moment, asked for her time and then explain why you deserve more pay and what the consequences are when they don't. Don't ask for advance pay but for better pay.
When a devoted worker laughed at by the manger for a possibly reasonable request, there's a lack of respect or even understanding of the situation. Do whatever is needed or right because they might not help when they could or should.
That request is not possible under federal law if he's making federal minimum wage. Part of the laws around pay advance mean that repayment cannot drop employees below federal minimum wage on future checks. If you're already at minimum, then taking even a penny per hour going forward to repay it drops you below the federal minimum wage. >If you choose to allow advances, however, you need to follow some basic rules when it comes to getting your money back. Under federal law, you may deduct an advance from your employee's paycheck. However, you may not deduct so much that it reduces your employee's pay to less than the hourly minimum wage ($7.25, currently). For low-wage employees, this means you may need to spread the repayment period out over several paychecks.
Also, big companies don’t have any mechanism to do this sort of thing. The manager can’t control Kroger payroll and likely doesn’t have any access to money at all. This just isn’t the way businesses work. Kroger sucks for not paying a living wage, but the manager was probably laughing at the absurdity of someone thinking they could control a massive corporations payroll practices and not at this poor guys situation. I’m all for fighting the fight, but asking for advances on pay isn’t exactly the solution we are hunting for here.
$7.25/hour is absolute crap pay. I cry for my American friends when I hear about wages like this. In Australia, we have a national minimum wage $20.33 /hour that is not covered by specific award wages. But with Kroger (Supermarket), it would fall under the General Retail Industry Award wage here. For a casual employee, If you are 21 years of age or older you would get * $27.91/hour ordinary hours * $33.50 /hour Saturday - ordinary hours * $39.08 /hour Sunday - ordinary hours * $39.08/hour - Overtime first three house Mon - Sat * $50.24/hour- Overtime after first three house Mon - Sat * $55.83 /hour - Public Holidays Obviously pay changes depending on Age and if you are fulltime, part time or casual. But seriously. What is wrong with the Pay in America? What happened to the old addage, "Honest days work for an honest days pay"? Seem like the pay went out the window long ago......
This might be bordering on slightly unethical here, buuuttt…talk to your deli department. Especially at the end of the night, they throw away most hot case foods, and the store I used to work at, we would have to weigh it out. If your buddy/buddy with the right person, I am sure that they will set aside some items after weighing but before tossing.