The Minimum Wage Mentality and How to Fix It

A major hot topic that has come to rise in the last few months is the issue of minimum wage. This issue has been vigorously discussed not only by lawmakers, but by all of the Presidential hopefuls in order to gain some ground with the middle class. Recently, both California and New York, my present and former states respectively, have signed into effect a bill that will increase the minimum wage to $15 within the coming years. I want to be clear: my post isn’t meant to support nor refute the idea of increasing the minimum wage. Rather, it is meant to delve deeper, to understand why people are satisfied with the minimum, and how can we break this habit.

The fight to increase the minimum wage is an interesting one. It is entirely understandable why people would want more money. After all, who wouldn’t? Living is expensive. If you told anyone that they could have more money doing the exact same thing that they were doing now, who would refuse it? However, if you asked any individual fighting to increase minimum wage if they would still fight knowing they were going to be promoted, what would they say? If someone is making $10 an hour, the current minimum wage in California, and they knew that if they put in the effort for two months that they would be promoted and would then be making $15 an hour, would they still be fighting? Ultimately, there is a feeling of complacency and as much as everyone would like to blame the people working minimum wage jobs for that, it goes far beyond just them.

I have been there. I have been working since i was fifteen years old pumping gas at a gas station for $5 an hour, before getting my first “on the books” job at sixteen working at CVS as a cashier making a quarter more than minimum wage ($7.25 at the time). Not for nothing, I am not comparing myself to those who are working these jobs to provide for their families. The debate of whether or not a sixteen year old looking for a little spending money versus a thirty-five year old who is supporting their family should make the same amount of money if they are doing the same task is another can of worms. But what I can tell you is that for the most part, the attitude is the same. When I was working my minimum wage job at sixteen, or any job before my actual career started, my attitude was “let me work my hours and go on with my day”. That doesn’t mean that the work suffers. Simply put, a minimum wage employee is there to do a task, and that is it. It can be flipping burgers or it can be stocking shelves. You are there to do a task. With that being said, at no point working for CVS did I ever have aspirations to be promoted. Mainly because I knew I was sixteen and it would be ludicrous to have a sixteen year old manager at a CVS. However, I did have coworkers who were in their late thirties. I used to work with a gentleman named Tony who was in his mid 30s and was a great employee by anyone’s standards. Tony had been working at CVS in the same position as my sixteen year old self for ten years. He would always tell me that he was supposed to get promoted two years ago, but it always got pushed for whatever reason. I remember going back to that CVS in my junior year of college, about four years later. Tony was still working in the same position, still waiting to get promoted. As bad as I feel about it, that is a reality of many minimum wage employees around the United States.

The major question is, how do we fix this? How do we fix this minimum wage mentality where the general consensus is “let me just work my hours and get on with my day?”. No employer wants to pay their employees more money to do the same task. Ultimately, it falls into the promise of better things ahead. If there is legitimate hope, people will be more inclined to better themselves and move up, as opposed to fighting to make more money doing the same thing.

In all of this, there is another demographic that often gets neglected: college students. College students are truly in a conundrum when it comes to working minimum wage jobs. From what I have seen, college students are some of the most ambitious people out there. They are so full of hope and promise, naive to the actual job market and for the most part have absolutely no idea what they want to do. However, they know they want to make a lot of money. They are not worried about the minimum wage because in their minds, once senior year rolls around, they are going to have their pick of six figure job offers with companies lining up at the door for their innovative ideas. This, of course, is wishful thinking, and for those who have walked across the stage for commencement and thought “Wow…so now what?”, this one is for you.

If there is one thing I learned in my post college years, it is not what you know, it’s who you know. In college, I was a big fish in a small pond. I had a stellar GPA as an engineering major, involved in everything under the sun on and off campus, and had a senior design project that was getting a ton of attention. I thought I was set post college. Turns out, not so much. Don’t get me wrong, I landed a job before commencement, but I had to work to get it. And that was just to get one offer. For someone who was an all star in college to barely get something opened my eyes a bit. That’s the reality of going to a lesser known school. I know so many kids just like me saying the exact same thing: If they just gave me a shot, I would be everything they wanted and more. But the reality of it is, more often than not, it is your connections plugging you in.

Circling back, now you have a fancy degree that you spent thousands of dollars on. For what? To work as a barista at starbucks? While not even moving towards your goals? Well, I think I may have a solution. What if there was a way to build those connections you so desperately need to make your dreams a reality while working a minimum wage job? Would you not be inclined to bust your butt working minimum wage for that opportunity?

How can we make that happen? Well I can tell you, it starts with special employers. America is a great country because literally anyone can start a business and make it a success story. I can tell you that I have zero plans to work for someone else my whole life. With that being said, I do have plans to go to a top business school. That would help to make for some pretty powerful connections. Let’s say down the line I decided to open up an ice cream shop by a local university. I would need to hire some local students. However, my pitch wouldn’t be “Hey come work for me for minimum wage”. It would be “Hey, come work for me, and if you are exemplary, I can plug you into my network”. It honestly does not matter what the roll is, a good employee will always shine.

I am not alone in this. There are millions of small businesses that have great leadership that can be leveraged to get to where you want to be. I met someone who got their MBA from Stanford. They just recently quit their job as a very successful investment banker to open up a poke bowl chain in Canada. For those who do not know what Poke bowls are, think about Chipotle, but with fish. I could tell you from personal experience that if there was a way to get plugged in to the Stanford network by making poke bowls, I would be the best damn Poke Bowl maker Canada has ever seen.

The minimum wage mentality ultimately stems from a lack of hope. If all of the small business owners with strong networks put themselves out there as an asset for their employees, not only will they have much harder working employees, they will have a better business. That is honestly what I plan to do. We don’t grow unless we help others. Everyone wants a shot, but don’t have the means to get one. This isn’t meant to be a fix all solution, but it can effectively kill two birds with one stone.