Let's take an honest look.

[Truck_1_0_1_]

(06-11-2024, 12:31 PM)HarleyDog Wrote: Wow, you really went all out to blame everything on everyone else here. Granted, some of your points have merit, but you have to consider the way it is. Food servers are paid lower wages because they receive tips. Is that fair? Well, depends how you look at it. If you guarantee a waiter/waitress good money, then what is their inventive to provide good service? However, if their tips are the main source of income, then they are forced to provide good service and if they can't they don't belong in someone else business. 

As for the abuse, where is this happening? It's only abuse if you are led to believe conditions are different before accepting a job. However, to accept a job knowing beforehand what it entails, how can they cry abuse after they went to them for a job? I will agree that hours are crappy, but then again, most part time hours are crappy. I don't see where you get managers and owners working hard to cheat them out of pay either. Not saying it doesn't happen, but yikes. That's not the norm and usually places like that don't stay in business long once the word gets out. Lastly, I will agree customer attitude has taken a downturn lately. Maybe it's time we get rid of the saying, "The customer is always right." Because more times than not, it leads into soapboxing. There are better ways of handling service issues than throwing stuff in the restaurant and punching the server. 

What she wrote is IDENTICAL to how it is here in Canada: this is a worldwide issue, not strictly an American one.

As for us up here, I'm making 1/2 MORE than my salary was in 2019, however I was steadily being promoted and moved up in my credit union. We were swallowed up by a larger one last year and my hours+salary is capped, thus I can no longer work the overtime I used to and I will probably never get a raise ever again, unless I get promoted (which is a crock of shit at this company: nobody gets promoted unless you're a crony), so I have been slowly (but not intensely, as the money here is still good) looking for a new job and I may have 2 interviews lined up in the next little while, so we'll see.

But this has more to do with my specific situation and company and not the economy on the whole: it is amazing how cheap, uncompromising (in a bad way) and toxic this company is, yet the previous CU I was at was a complete 540 (let alone a 180). It's amazing the contrast in companies in the same industry.

As for day to day life, fuel has never been an issue, as I find my way around it and my wife drives for maybe 30 minutes a day (she works in town and has a split shift, otherwise it would be half that), so I fill up every 1.5 weeks (I work from home thrice a week, so I drive an hour 20+, twice a week), her every 2 weeks. Groceries have gone up maybe, MAYBE $20.00 a week, which is a drop in the hat.

We have always been more than fine money-wise, as I have a backup CC that I use only in Emergencies (which currently has a balance of $2,000.00 of a $15,000.00 limit on it, all from Balance transfers when we've needed a bit of a boost) and our total household debt (outside of the mortgage) is a shade over $15,000.00, which is more than manageable.

Also, $7,000.00 of that was for a loan I needed to take out last year, due to my timing belt snapping 2 years/40,000 KMs earlier than the, "expiry date," and putting us in a hole (and despite being in the warranty mileage, they refused to honour it unless it was on their {impossible} terms. Avoid Gates, assholes). We're in good shape for where we are, but we do wish to try for child #2 and buy our forever home, all within the next 2-3 years and for that to happen, one of us (or both, preferably) needs to make more money, otherwise, while we can do it, we would struggle.

We also don't have to worry about healthcare costs (though we are taxed significantly higher than you guys), so that is one major issue we don't have to deal with up here.

I will also add that aside from adding a child in 2022, our lives haven't changed at all for the past 5 years, since we purchased our home: it has been status quo the whole time, even during the pandemic (as financial institutions were all conducting business as usual and children still needed to be taken care of).