40 Year Old's Are Worth More Than Eight-dollars an Hour

I have come to the conclusion that there are no jobs available to people who are talented, hard working and responsible.

Why?

Because under my roof lives a very talented, very able-bodied, extremely hard working and responsible man who is almost 40 years old. This is a person for whom hard work is easy. He enjoys using his hands and his skills and his abilities to bring home a decent wage for us, his family. Unfortunately, for this person it is nearly impossible to do these things. It seems that the working world values people with a silly piece of paper over people with a good work ethic, a strong back, muscled hands, a personal history clean of felonies, and most importantly, experience in a wide range of abilities. The only job that this person was able to find recently was located about 70 miles away from home, which was not that much of an issue for him. Neither was it an issue that his immediate suervisor about 15 years his junior. None of the assumptions that apply to the rest of the world's thinking applied in this case. The problem was not even that he didn't get the job that was offered.

The problem was the pay.

Let it be known now that there are no self-respecting adults of any age who willingly will take an eight-dollar per hour wage and be grateful that his or her abilities are being utilized. (And no, I am NOT talking about those women who choose to have a part time job so that they can get out of the house for a few hours. I'm talking about breadwinners, not bored housewives.) For anyone to assume that just because a person is making any amount of money they will be satisfied is preposterous. I don't know what is more insulting, the idea that the person interviewing someone of the 40+ year old range is thinking that the person in front of them is going to be grateful to have a job and SHOULD be grateful, or the idea that the interviewee is going to be foolish enough to overlook their feelings of insult and take the lousy eight bucks?

I can't answer that question. I don't know what goes through the minds of the people in positions to hire other folks for jobs that entail a lot of hard labor, but are jobs that cannot pay the bills without taking food out of the mouths of those for whom said paycheck is made to take care of. I do know, though, that there is a lot of immigrant bashing going on, and people are saying things that make it seem like it is the fault of these hard working individuals that we the people cannot find good jobs because of.

And yes, there are times when I get pissed off enough to buy into all this hateful rhetoric. Except there is one thing that is always there in the back of mind.

We can all blame the immigrants all we want, but they are not the only reason that people are being paid the way that they are. The real blame is to be rested in the lap of American business. Coporate America has become so blatantly selfish, so addicted to inflating their bottom lines, that they have forgotten the people who get them to that bottom line on a daily basis.

We can all point fingers and say that it is because there is a lack of educated and degreed workers in this country. This country's workers were done no favors when vocational programs started being replaced with service oriented tech-savvy programs. We need people who can build homes, do hair, fix cars. Most computer geeks cannot and will not do these things. Only a skilled person can. There are no geeks whom I know who can operate a forklift as though it were a race car, but there are plenty of blue-collar workers I know who can race forklifts.

We cannot continue to be a nation full of low wage earning angry people. We cannot continue to hope that one day, we will all just accept the way things are and just be happy with it. I don't know any one who is happy to have to choose between eating or paying a light bill, and I don't know anyone who likes working when they are being paid like a chump. The current minimum wage is not a living wage, and it still won't be a living wage when it is raised.

At least in my house, we need to be able to make, at the very bare minimum, 3 thousand dollars a month, after taxes. This is the number which we arrived at when we calculated the mortgage, the one car payment, utilities, insurance, food and incidentals such as gas in the cars and our Netflix account. Put into that factor the care and feeding of three children and two dogs, and you have the grand total of roughly 3 grand each month.

Funnier than that is the fact that my neighbors can't understand how it is that we can survive on that amount, but we can, and we do, because we have to.

So I guess that this is my plea to all those people who are in the position of deciding what wage their employees will earn for the work that they do.

When you hire someone, remember that this is not just a faceless, nameless body which is filling space and meeting a quota. This is a human being with a life outside the walls of your company. This is a living and breathing person who may have people at home to take care of. Understand that there are things that each person brings to your company, and that when you are hiring someone who is at least 10 years older than you are, it needs to be taken into consideration that this person whose monetary fate you hold is paying bills, likely taking care of at least one other person under the age of 18, has a mortgage, a car payment and real life bills.

Remember that when you hire people your own age, there are risks that you take on your part, and normally it is because you may know that the person who is older than you may have experience that you do not, and this might or might not pose as a problem for you. I know well the fear that takes hold when someone with experience, maturity, and I gotta say it- a clue, comes and does things in such a way that there is nothing more than the big boss can say than "Good Job!" Don't worry sweetie, your job is fine. All the new guy wants is fair pay for his efforts, NOT your job. You can have your little manager pin.

He doesn't want it. I promise. He already has way too many obligations and responsibilities. Adding yours to his list is going to take up more space than his already crowded brain can make room for.

Know that whatever petty crap you have in your head against the last person who was in the position you are now hiring for is not for this new person. You may be mad still, but a person in your position should learn to just get over it. These are people, not playtoys, and if you continue your reign of terror on people who are simply looking to work, you are, one day, going to find yourself up against someone who is doing the same thing to you that you did to many, many others, simply based on three things- their experience, their age, and your fear of these two things. If you are fearful for your job, fearful that you will lose it to someone with a clue and a few years on you, that would be your problem, not theirs.

I am not age bashing younger bosses. My husband recently had a younger boss and they are close, like brothers. I like young people. Young people are full of ideas and hope and passion for everything they do and everything they want out of life. This is the energy that makes the world spin. People and thoughts and ideas make the world go round.

One day, all those people who conducted all those interviews are going to be staring into the eyes of someone younger than they are, and when that day comes, they will wonder the same things that lots of people my age do.

Do I feed my kids, or do I keep the lights on?