About three years ago I answered a Facebook post from a La Crosse Tribune reporter concerning a minimum wage idea that was being put on the Wisconsin gubernatorial ballot for the 2014 midterm election. He wrote about the proposal, which was a ballot question and not an actual referendum, the reporter included a quote from me, and I even got my picture in the Thursday edition of the paper.
I was in year four or five of working for my current employer, making $9 an hour, after a long series of bad decisions dating back to 2002 when I dropped out of high school. I was in the midst of my first semester of going back to school (I obtained my GED in 2006) and unbeknownst to me at the time, but I would be proposing to my then-girlfriend two months later. We’re married now and trying to figure out this whole life thing after buying a house in January.
Currently, we make a decent living for the county we live in. My wife, Allison, is the breadwinner of our family of two. Now understand this, because some folks will see that and judge: I am under no illusion that it is a bad thing for my wife to make more money than me. It doesn’t hurt my pride, it doesn’t make me feel less of a man, or any of that stupid bullshit. I’m more than ok with it — she deserves it and more.
I like my job. My boss understood, after I took an interview outside the company, that in order to have a good customer service department you need to pay your employees a livable wage. Now, I did not do this by myself. Yes, I did try to leave my job three years ago because I needed to be paid like I deserved to be. However, it was not just because of ‘hard work and grit’ that I’ve come to this place in life. I’ve had help from my wife, my family, my co-workers, and my employer. There’s some folks out in the world that thing you just need to put your head down and grind in order to better your life, but it’s not that simple. It never has been, especially since the whole trickle-down economics effort failed miserably, and still is. Thanks, Reagan. Your contributions to this world we live in now cannot be understated.
I went back to school in the fall of 2014 with the idea of getting a degree in Supervisory Management to bolster my then-seven years of customer service experience. Now I’m the senior agent in our 3-person department and it’s running like a well-oiled machine. This wasn’t possible if there wasn’t someone helping someone out in one way or another.
The key to our survival is to work together towards one common goal. It’s been true for eons, and it will remain true for even longer. No one ever became someone without help from someone else. Hard work and determination will get you to a certain place but everyone needs someone else to recognize that determination in order to grow and prosper.
How many people do you know putting in the time and hard work but go unnoticed by upper management? There’s countless individuals living in poverty going to work every day, doing hard work that goes unnoticed. How is a 25-cent raise going to help someone making $9 an hour? That’s $10 a week, barely noticeable on a paycheck. One thing that didn’t change, however, is the cost of our products after being paid what I deserve. That’s a common fallacy of rising wages, something so many simple-minded individuals cling to in order to justify their ideals. God forbid if the price on a Big Mac goes up 10 cents. Breaking news: It won’t. Our prices did not go up after everyone in the department got a raise. That’s right, when I got a raise in 2014, everyone the in department got a raise and the entry-level wage was set for our department. That’s correct, everyone got a raise and they didn’t do that themselves.
Somehow, Republicans have brainwashed people into thinking that poor people are poor because they don’t possess the ability to make more money. The idea that they’re stupid — “why would you give a poor person money? They’re just going to spend it on useless shit.” I mean, my wife and I were both making 8–9 dollars an hour for the first year or so we were together and she has a four-year degree! How is that her fault? She put in the work for four years, and somehow making 20k a year is her fault? You know what we did as soon as we got paid? We paid our bills. We went grocery shopping. We put gas in our cars. We did what we needed to do, like most people. We never enrolled for food stamps during this period, however looking back on it we definitely should have. It would’ve made things less stressful and we would’ve had a little money to put away into savings.
People don’t like the stigma of public assistance, like pulling out an EBT card at the grocery store. There’s a certain respectability among poor folks, like you try your damnedest to look like you’re not poor as dirt. I was raised poor, I know that feeling all too well. Try living in a mobile home that was sandwiched in-between two upper-class subdivisions in a town full of yuppie soccer moms and dads that drive brand-new F150s, Hummers, and Jaguars.
The next time you think or read about poor people, put it in perspective. You might actually learn someone about your fellow human beings instead of stereotyping half of the people you meet.
