Saturday, December 7, 2013

Minimum wage in a Maximum world

Somewhere recently, I read the suggestion that pastors should take time off and work at a minimum wage job.  I don’t know if the author of the article was being snarky about pastors in ivory towers or whether it was a suggestion to get in the thick of things to identify with people working for minimum wage.  I did not spend time reading the article.  After all, I’ve been there.  I have worked for nearly minimum wage.  I know what it is like.  Trust me; it’s not a good place to be.

I love doing intentional interim ministry but there is a major downside to being an interim.  Once a new pastor is called and the interim is completed, there is no guarantee that there will be another position waiting for me.  Interim positions are dependent upon clergy mobility.  In recent economic times clergy mobility has slowed considerably. But that is another story.

Three years ago I found myself in one of those furlough times.  There was no sign of something coming on the horizon. I applied to various businesses.  I sent out résumés and cover letters. I tried networking.  I even considered leaving the ministry for secular employment if I would be hired.

It was a tough time.  Peggy was in her last year of teaching full-time.  We had two kids in college.  We had a mortgage, car payments and standard maintenance expenses on our home.

Finally, I was interviewed at The Home Depot and immediately hired as a cashier.  I had retail experience from my college and seminary years.  What impressed The Home Depot assistant manager was my telling how working at JCPenney during the Cold War I sold a U.S. Air Force parka to a violinist from the Warsaw Symphony touring the United State by speaking German to the bass fiddle player accompanying him. He may have been KGB.

On The Home Depot flow chart cashiers are the bottom feeders of the store.  For over a year my hourly wage was 50¢ more than minimum wage.  After 13 months it was bumped up another 50¢.  They didn’t give me all that many hours—less than 20 hours a week.  The head cashier was not very patient with newcomers to the registers.  Cashiers take crap from customers because of the action or inaction of associates in other departments. Some customers are just plain sour. We were motivated by candy bars to get credit card applications so that managers got their chunk of profit-sharing. When there are not many customers in the store the shift is long and tedious.  Cashiers must stay within 10 feet of their register at all times.  (Sometimes I would go 15 feet, envelope-pusher that I am.)

By that time we were really feeling the pinch at home.  Savings were dwindling.  Our frills were eliminated. Things taken for granted like life insurance premiums had to be suspended.

Eventually, I got another interim position but it was a rural, two-point parish that provided a low salary and no housing allowance.  I needed to keep working at The Home Depot.  By springtime, I was experienced cashier and the revolving door of cashiers made me among the “senior cashiers.”  

I often worked at the register in the garden center.  As a gardener myself, I was in my element.  But I soon discovered I knew more than the staff from the garden department.  I was a damn cheap garden consultant as I stood by my register on chilly spring mornings and in the heat of summer.

The interim came to a natural conclusion and I was on furlough once again.  The Home Depot was able to give me nearly full-time hours.  But still, it was a crunch.  I reached 59 ½ and I could draw on my pension principle without penalty.  Standing on a concrete floor for a full shift was exhausting. I would come home with my knees aching. I’m sure that contributed to my current physical state. What really hurt was to have a synod assistant come through my register, give me big smile and say, “hang in there.”  I wanted a job damn it! You bet I was angry at the church; certainly the administration.

As one might guess with minimum wage jobs, it is a revolving door of employees.  But I also got to know a wide range of people.  These were not the same folks that I had coffee with during my seminary years.  These were not the same folks I would see at church because because church surely was not on their agenda.  These are not the same folks I would see in my white bread neighborhood.

I acquired a wealth of new friends.  I think of the young, black woman who was pregnant and couldn't keep working at THD because the scheduler could never accommodate her need to ride the bus to work.  There’s another young woman who watched her beloved pet ferret die because she couldn't afford to take him to the vet.  I have friends who drove many miles to get to work spending a big percentage of their paycheck on gas. I have friends who have had multiple, multiple marriages. I have friends who wanted to find other employment but the schedule was so helter-skelter they could never plan time for an interview.  I have a friend who is politically opposite from me who must keep schlepping shopping carts despite the diagnosis of Parkinson’s. I have friends who wanted to work full-time and qualify for benefits but were told, “It’s not in the budget.”  I worked side-by-side with LGBT individuals and with rednecks.  I heard some pretty tough language. I worked with people with limited intelligence and I worked with people who left successful professions to escape the rat race.  I have friends who have floated from retail job to retail job just barely making ends meet.  But, they are my homies who I cherish and with whom I share the common bond of the orange apron. When I return to the store I feel like Norm in an episode of Cheers. 

I hear of protests in the state surrounding minimum wage and I want to go join them.  I know what these men and women are experiencing.  I've been there.  But yet, I had the good fortune to fall back on some things.  We had excellent health insurance.  We had another income in the house.  These people do not have that luxury I had.  They are a step away from being homeless.  They can never afford a flu shot.  They may have never seen a dentist in their life. So they come to work sick.  They come to work with their kids being watch by whomever.  They come to work weighed down with worry not by the future but by what might happen tomorrow.


Oh for that day when all who work will be earning a living wage.  Oh for a day when the minimum wage removes men and women people from the captivity of worry and fear of daily existence.  Oh for a day when there are no longer those people who accuse those minimum wage employees of greed and sloth.  May those people be forced to wear a cap and ask their former colleagues and associates, “Do you want fries with that?”

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