Category: Journal

Sitting out on the porch during the first rainstorm we’ve had after a nearly a month of 95-100 degree highs this spring. It feels good. It feels necessary for some reason. It’s been a rough month. They all seem rough these days, don’t they? Nicole made me some genmaicha to bring out here. I’m a very fortunate gent. Today I Learned: Marie-Therese, the daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, was the (disputed) Queen-Consort of France for 20 minutes in August of 1830. We were watching Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and I did a little googling to see what became of the kids. Marie-Therese, the eldest child, lived quite an interesting life that was probably a good deal more eventful than her mother’s. Apparently, and it is not impossible that I’m not fully following the bouncing ball here, royalists would periodically try to restore the monarchy and prop up some fellow claiming to be Marie-Therese’s brother (both of her brothers died young) and she would inevitably be involved in some fashion. Anyway, the thought of someone holding an office for 20 minutes or so is the sort of thing that interests me and I thought y’all might find it interesting as well. I did get a little joy today from an unexpected source. I saw that Sunderland A.F.C. were promoted from League One in England (which is, inexplicably, the third highest level of English football) and I thought of an old friend who has remained a loyal Black Cats supportor. I shot off an email and he responded almost immediately, which delighted me no end. Weird little connections like that are disproportionately delightful, aren’t they? We visited my mother for her birthday last weekend. I’m not gong to lie: She looks Old. That’s to be expected as, in point of fact, she is old, but it’s still….I’m proud of her. She’s still learnng things, still changing her mind, and still muddling through trying to do right under the assumption that, if people just do the right thing, then things will work out. She adores Nicole, which speaks well of the both of them. You can’t tell by reading, but I just stopped typing for ten minutes thinking about mom. She’s a good egg. A lot of what I like about myself came directly from her. We are, all things considered, relatively well off. I’m employed, insured, and we can make ends meet even if there isn’t quite so much slack in the rope as there was a few years ago. I can only imagine how bad some people are feeling the rising price of everything right now. Just like with the people who get the disease, COVID is going to have serious long-term affects on the nation and, specifically, the economy. I don’t have any idea how to fix any of this; when so many of the links in the chain break at the same time, even trained experts struggle to come up with solutions. I can say that diminished buying power plus food supply chain shortages are a recipe for Very Bad Things (side note: Perhaps the biggest problem the Louis XVI faced was inflation brought on by deregulation and poor harvests. Weird how relevant that feels now). All this and the fact that the pandemic hasn’t been resolved in any meaningful way (unless you find “just declaring it’s over because you’re tired of it” meaningful) makes me very nervous. This doesn’t end well. I have quite a bit more on my mind, but the rain is nice and I’m no longer in the mood to grip. Tomorrow is the last day of the Premier League season, so I’m getting up early(ish) one last time and really ought to be hitting the hay. Goodnight all, and I hope things are good in your neck of the woods tonight. -RK

Hey everyone (my beloved handful o’ folks)! It’s been quite the year/month/week/day already hasn’t it? I won’t try to recap the last six weeks. They’ve been a lot. They’ve been a lot and then some. Work has been whelming, I’ve seen so very many doctors (largely preventative/precautionary stuff), Nicole had to take a trip for family stuff, Nicole came back. It really feels as though an entire year has been crammed into a few months. Here’s hoping things unwindulax a little in the summer. Today I Learned: You know those round things you see on the Buddha’s head in all those statues? I always assumed they were a very specific hairstyle. I was wrong. Those are snails shells. I had no idea. They are known as the 108 snail martyrs. I won’t spoil the story, but it’s a good one. I’ll certainly never look at the statues the same way again. Anyway, after all of the busy, busy weeks of April and March, I just wanted to remind everyone to feel grateful for what’s good in your life. Odds are pretty good you deserve those good things, but that doesn’t mean you can feel gratitude. Besides, “deserving” is no guarantee of “having.” Nicole planed a garden to provide a home for the baby snails we have in our tank that we can’t keep. Here’s the first one we saw on a big piece of leaf of lettuce in the middle of the garden. That all for now. I hope everything is going well for you, and that you’re in a place where you can appreciate it. -RK

Ever have one of those weeks where every day feels like it’s own week? In addition to work being at one of those crescendos you get when a bunch of big moving pieces trying to all fit into a tiny time window, things outside of work have been…dramatic? That would have been nice. Sometimes, it’s like Ciaran says: “Dull is best.” “Oh Ridley, don’t be such a downer. You don’t want dull!” I beg to differ. Let’s start with the procedure I had this week. A common thing, but not entirely inconsequential as it involved a couple of days of prep, a severely restricted diet, and a little general anesthesia. If you read the last post, you know we were/are having plumbing difficulties. Prep for this particular procedure and plumbing difficulties are a bad, bad combination. To add a little spice to the mix, a truck damaged the only gas line leading into town, meaning that the entire area had no heat. In Texas, that’s not normally a big deal, but we were seeing temperatures in the 30s (outside) and mid-50s (inside). This was unpleasant. Yesterday, we finally got an answer as to the source of our plumbing difficulties: The folks who flipped this house cut one very important corner when putting in the shower. When you merge a shower drain into the main drainpipe, a responsible plumber would put in a t-joint and everything would be fine. If you were lazy and irresponsible, you would just drill a hole in the drain pipe and run a pipe from the shower down into it. Doing it the lazy way meant that there was a length of pipe running across the drain and that length of pipe collected paper and such and eventually clogged. Also, word to the wise: Shitty construction is NOT covered by home warranties. We have temporary relief at the cost of our shower, so yay! We can use toilets and wash dishes again. That’s a huge win. But, the fix is going to be pricey, so significantly less yay. The good news is that the procedure, which was strictly a routine thing and not prompted by any specific concerns, went swimmingly. No problems were discovered, so it’ll be another decade before I have to do this again. For folks approaching 50 and facing their first encounter with this procedure, I can tell you from experience: The prep is far, far worse than the procedure itself. So, we have most of our plumbing, heat has been restored, and a Thing I Was Dreading is in the rear view mirror. Ah well, that’s what therapy is for, right? There’s more going on, but there are stories that are not mine to tell. It’s just a very sad time in too many ways. So, I hope this finds you well and that you’re safe and warm and generally in a good place right now. That’s all I got. -RK

Strange times, no? I’ve been burying myself in distractions and avoiding starting things for the last couple of months. This is partially due to the world being in quite a state in a way that seems to be affecting pretty much everyone I encounter. My attention span can be measured with a stop watch. It’s a general malaise tugging at me, and, quite likely, you’re feeling it too even if you might be reacting differently. There have been some more specific things as well. It turns out that plumbing is a very important feature in a modern, or at least semi-modern, home. When it goes bad, it can go very, very bad indeed. Things are coming out of places that they are manifestly not meant to come out of. Some very disturbing things are coming out of some of the least-appropriate places and no I will not be getting more specific. Here’s a bit of advice to anyone looking to purchase an older home: Be absolutely certain that you have a drain clean-out. I didn’t know what one was, and I wish someone had warned me. It turns out that, if you don’t have one, the things your home warranty will cover are extremely limited. The good news is that we have one now. The not-so-good news is that, one emptied saving account later, we have a clean-out but we still have the aforementioned problems. Our plumber is stumped, which does not fill one with great confidence. This is a problem, as is likely, nay, certain, that I will be in need of stout plumbing in the coming days. The next 48 hours promise to be interesting. Oh, and the situation in Europe is not filling me with hope. I won’t pretend to know the best way for the United States to navigate what looks like a series of “lesser of two evils” choices. I just don’t know enough and don’t have it in me to balance one set of lives against others. But…I have become aware of some very obvious propaganda being spread by people who should know better. I’m not going to be naming names, but I’m disappointed. I just want this to resolve without a world war and with Ukraine’s sovereignty intact and as little loss of life as possible. I’m not sure that those options are on the table, but I can hope. This is a bummer of a post, I know. Honestly, there’s a lot more, but the other stories are not mine to tell so I’ll just leave it at that. I hope I can get through my bits, can resolve what is in my power to resolve, can survive what isn’t, and can help the people folks who are going through it. -RK P.S. It’s not all bad. there have been a lot of good things in my life over the last few weeks, and I’ll get to those. My head’s just not there right now.

One of the things that never fails to excite me is hearing some new (at least new to me) music that gets under my skin in ways I wasn’t expecting. This used to be a pretty regular experience for me, particularly in the 1989-91 and 2003-06 eras, but I’m not quite the consumer of new music I was so it’s been a while. And then I clicked on Polyphia’s “G.O.A.T.” I didn’t know what to expect but I can assure you I didn’t expect this. I’m not a big fan of “musicianship for the sake of musicianship,” but that’s not what this is. The musicianship is absolutely off the charts, but it’s catchy as hell, it’s a really unusual mixture of genres and techniques, and the composition is masterful. That said, I didn’t really have the vocabulary or the experience to describe it. So, now fully committed to exploring the rabbit hole, I started watching reaction videos. I watched a lot of reaction videos. I find it kind of comforting that a lot of the people doing these videos have the same reaction and the same struggles with coming up with suitable words. Here’s one of the better examples by Chase Carneson: I cannot tell you how many of the videos start with “I’ve never heard of them before, but they call their song ‘Greatest of All-Time’. We’ll see about that…” and then stopping the video after the opening guitar lick and saying “I was not prepared for this. Wow.” What gets really interesting is seeing the different descriptions vary based on where the video maker is coming from. The guitarists are obviously just blown away by Tim Henson but they often struggle with what are unfamiliar rhythmic elements. On the other hand, the drummers tend to be all over the bass and drums and call out the trap music elements immediately. The producers are fascinated by all of the production and engineering elements that seem very out of the hard rock element but fit perfection. My personal point of reference would probably be early-80s King Crimson with Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, and Bill Bruford. There are similarities: The wild mix of guitar techniques, the clean tones, the incredibly tight playing, and the non-traditional song structures. It falls short as an analogy. Polyphia’s approach to incorporating production, samples, hip-hop, and whatever else is unlike anything else I’m aware of. There really isn’t a vocabulary to describe this kind of cross-genre virtuosity. They seem to be not so much breaking the rules of what you can do so much as…ignoring them? Acting as though the rules don’t exist. It’s not so much rebellious in the way punk is/was/was supposed to have been and more like Neo at the end of The Matrix just realizing that the boundaries don’t exist. That might seem like hyperbole for less than four minutes of music but I’ve spent a lot of time with this song over the last month or so and I just start giggling every time I hear it. I’m still loving watching YouTube reviewers see it for the first time and try to describe it. At the end of the day, it wouldn’t matter if the song wasn’t great and, not gonna lie, it gets stuck in my head for days at a time. So, yeah. I’ve been a little obsessed. I wanted to share, and I needed to get some of this down on (not exactly) paper. This song has opened my ears to quite a few newer bands playing in this neighborhood: Animals as Leaders, Yvette Young and Covet, Sarah Longfield, and Ichika Nito (plus, of course, more Polyphia songs too). I’m not even a guitar guy, but…man, it feels good to hear stuff that excites me. I hope you enjoy it too. -RK

A couple of weeks ago, we got to meet capybaras. I’m just going to pause for a moment to let that one sink in. If you know anything about me or, even better, you know anything about my wife, then you know that capybaras are a sort of platonic ideal animal for us. (Side note: I’ve found I am drawn more and more to gentle creatures: Snails, capybaras, sloths, turtles, etc. I’m not sure if this is a function of getting older or just refining my tastes as there are too many variables for me to be certain.) They’re beautiful, they’re peaceful, they get along with every other creature if the photos are to believes (except for jaguars, piranhas, and, of course, pelicans), and they’re good comrades. Unlike in countries like, say, Japan, where capybaras are accorded the proper level of respect, our neck of the woods doesn’t offer many opportunities to do meet-and-greets with the noble carpincho. Nicole got a recording of Fred the capybara at the Dallas Zoo for my birthday. I dropped by to visit when I was in town, but alas, Fred is only available for his public on specific days. There’s a minor zoo nearby that has one capy, but…it’s not a great situation. So, imagine my surprise when I “discovered” that the Austin Zoo not only had three capybaras but that they offered the opportunity to hand-feed them for half an hour. “Discovered” is in quotations marks on account of the fact that a friend called this to my attention three years ago and I completely forget. That is a very me thing to do. So, I scheduled a meetup on the first available weekend and marked the calendar. Before I get into the event, I’d like to give huge kudos to the Austin Zoo, a place I never visited when I lived there. Not only was it a great experience, but I was glad to learn that they are a rescue zoo. The animals are, by and large, surrendered by people who can’t care for them and they aren’t bred in captivity. The goal is to give these animals the best possible life they can if they can’t be returned to the wild. And no one can side-eye like a capybara. So, enough stalling. What is it like to meet a capybara? Well, let’s start by saying that these three were semi-wild. They’re not nearly as comfortable around people as the ones at the Nagasaki Bio Park. They’re very skittish and cautious. But, when the zookeeper led us inside the cage with a big bucket of leaf lettuce, they wandered over from the sunning area by the pond. One slowly approached and, after no small amount of side-eyeing, took the lettuce from my hand. But, before long, all three were literally eating out of our hands. Enthusiastically eating, to be more precise. Diego, Enrique, and Olivia all warmed to us and gave us their undivided attention. A word to the wise: Be careful reaching below their line of sight. I dropped a piece of lettuce and tried to pick it up and scared Diego a bit. He jumped slightly and had to re-evaluate the situation before coming back to continue with his lunch. Now, while they are ever so gentle to other creatures, they can get a little feisty with each other. Olivia and Enrique had a little spat over a particularly delectable leaf and Oliva, the head of the group, would not brook any challenge to her choice of victuals. Spoiler alert: They made up. I should probably note at this point that I’ve never seen Nicole look so happy. I mean, can you blame her? So…what else? Their fur, which we were not allowed to touch, is rough like coconut and not nearly as pervasive as it looks. You can see their skin, which resembles fish scales, through almost any patch. Their teeth are too ludicrously large to be scary. They can move their lips independently like ungulates, which took a little getting used to. They came very close to us, close enough that our hands touched their noses when we were feeding them, but we were never in any danger of a bite. Lauren, the zookeeper, said that there were two kinds of people who did the encounter. The kind who didn’t know anything at all about capys and the people who were obsessed with them. She sussed out which we were immediately but still hand plenty of good info on ‘em to share. She said that, normally, after eating, they vacated the area immediately. We were fortunate in that they chose to just plop down and start resting in a ring around us rather than going back to their sunny spot. The best bit, though? They were so peaceful. They had peace in excess. The exuded peace. It was uncanny. I don’t think I’ve ever met a mood-altering animal before but I felt happy, energetic, and (this sounds so dorky) cleansed after meeting them. So, if you’re interested in capybaras, this is an absolutely fabulous way to meet them. They’re extremely well cared for, they have a lot of space, their own ponds, trees, and folks who seem to genuinely care about them. I can’t recommend it highly enough, but that won’t stop me from trying. -RK P.S. When they were forming their ring around us and about to drop to the ground, we heard them chirping! Oh. Em. Gee. Diego is ready for his closeup. The gloves are as much to protect the animals as anything.

I’m seeing quite a few discussions on social media regarding wages that are below minimum wage in the United States. I’m glad this is getting a lot of attention, but it’s raising more questions and spawning incomplete and incorrect answers. I have some experience with this and thought it might be helpful to share what I know. For the purposes of examples, I’m going to use the national minimum wage ($7.25), but it works the same way for all sub-minimum wage tipped employees. I’ve been working in this space for 35 years now, so I may gloss over some things that need explaining because I’m just so used to them, so please bear with me. Here’s how it works: 1. The minimum wage is $7.25/hour. All employees must be paid $7.25 an hour at a minimum. 2. There is something called a “tip credit” that employers are allowed to claim for tipped employees. In most cases, this is an amount of $5.12 per hour. What this means is that the employer can claim that $5.12 an hour worth of an employee’s tips aren’t really tips, they’re wages paid by the employer. 3. To get to $7.25 an hour, the employers must pay $2.13 an hour in addition to the $5.12 an hour tip credit. So, while the employer is effectively paying $2.13 an hour, they are administratively paying $7.25 an hour and meeting minimum wage requirements. 4. Overtime for subminimum wage is weird. The “time and a half” is not $2.13 times 1.5. ($3.20 an hour). It’s $7.25 * 1.5 = 10.88 – 5.12 (tip credit) = $5.76/hour. This is one of the reasons that the distinction between tip credit and a flat $2.13 an hour wage matters. It also affects things like paid vacation, sick pay, etc. If your restaurant is just paying time and a half on a subminimum wage, they are absolutely breaking the law. 5. If an employee does not make $5.12 an hour in tips, the difference must be made up in paid wages by the employer. If the employee only makes (or claims) $4.00 an hour in tips, the employer must add another $1.12 an hour in wages. Employers hate doing this and will usually find a way to get rid of employees who do this. 6. Now, in addition to tip employees being paid at a subminimum wage, there are also indirectly tipped employees and the same rules apply to them. Indirectly tipped employees are employees who are given are paid a portion of the directly tipped employees tips. Jobs within restaurants that qualify to be indirectly tipped are (traditionally) hosts, bussers, food runners, and bartenders (who are directly tipped as well). 7. This one’s a bit technical. There were guidelines for the maximum percentage of a directly tipped employee’s tips that they could be forced to pay to indirectly tipped employees. In Texas, this was 15% of their tips (see section 3b of the Texas Workforce Commission document on Tip Pooling/Tip Sharing). So, let’s do a little math here. I worked 5 hours and I made $50 in tips. My restaurant requires that I contribute 15% of my tips to the indirectly tipped employees, so I pay $7.50 into the tip pool. We’re good, right? Not quite. The TWC document notes: However, only those tips that are in excess of tips used for tip credit…may be taken for a pool. Remember, the tip credit taken by the restaurant means that $5.12/hour of my “tips” are classified as “wages” instead. So, $25.60 (5 hours times $5.12) should be subtracted from my tips before calculating what I contribute to the tip pool. I only made $24.40 in tips, so I should be contributing $3.66. I am actually contributing THIRTY-ONE PERCENT OF THE TIPS I RECEIVED ($7.50 divided by $24.40) TO INDIRECTLY TIPPED EMPLOYEES. 8, There are (or were, in some states) limits to how much non-tipped work a tipped employee can do and still be classified as a tipped employee. This is to prevent employers from using people being paid subminimum wage to do maintenance and cleaning work for most of their shift, knowing that they’d make enough in tips to bring their take for the day above $7.25 an hour. The limit is/was normally 20% of their hours and you had best believe that employers milked this for all it was worth. It’s called “sidework” and it’s pretty unethical. 9. Unfortunately, from 2016-2020, a lot of these guidelines and laws in 7 and 8 were weakened, the interpretations changed, and enforcement of the remaining rules was not pursued. The 15% maximum tip percentage and 20% maximum not-tipped work guidelines are effectively dead in many states. 10. The net here is that tipping and subminimum wage should just be done away with. The practice of tipping is extremely problematic for a number of reasons: It’s racist, it’s sexist, it’s an administrative nightmare that encourages fraud. So when you’re dining out, know this: * Your server is likely making less than minimum wage as a base wage. * Much of their time at this wage is spent doing things that don’t generate tips. * They are forced to share the tips you think you are giving directly to them with the other employees. This whole thing is stupid, too. If tip credit and subminimum wage were outlawed tomorrow, every restaurant could raise their prices by 20%, which would be no net change to their patrons since they wouldn’t be tipping, and could pay their employees exactly what they were making before with the additional money. There’s literally no change to the outcome except that there’s a lot less administration and now the managers control how their employees are paid instead of the customers. So, that’s how it all works. Let me know if you have any questions on this. I know it’s complicated and I know I probably assumed that some of this information was more generally known than it is. -RK

The obvious Bowie song link would be wildly inappropriate here, but don’t think I wasn’t tempted. Five years ago last Friday, Nicole and I were married. It was both a blessing, in that we got to have a party with a lot of great friends, and a formality, in that we’d been permanently bonded in an informal sense long before the event. Thanks to all of you who were there and those who wished us well from a distance as it wasn’t the largest affair. It was a lovely day and commemorating its anniversary is the most important holiday on my calendar. Of course, he seems to have been well-protected… This year, I took a week off (mostly, because you never really leave work these days) and we got as far off the grid as we can and still remain near enough to visit the kitten because what kind of a person doesn’t go visit kittens? Nicole found a place in Fentress, Texas and, if you’ve never heard of Fentress, you’re not alone. It’s only 30 miles from here, but it might as well be on another planet. It’s a little resort/camping place called Wahwahtaysee on the banks of the San Marcos river on a big patch of farmland in the middle of absolutely nowhere. That it to say, it suited our needs perfectly. Our room was an absurdly large “tent” well worthy of the quotation marks as the walls were wooden and only the top was three layers of canvas. Gorgeous bathroom with a big tub and bigger shower, galley kitchen, comfy bed, living room area, and one of the most over-the-top grilling patios I’ve ever seen, featuring both a gas and charcoal grill. There ought to be a word for “glamorous camping” but I can’t think of anything that doesn’t sound douchy AF. Freed from having to interact with any other humans, either in person or online, we did what came naturally: We relaxed. We grilled, obviously, drank a little, napped a lot, read, chilled, and, of course, missed the kitten. We also saw stars, although not as many as we had expected as the full moon was pretty greedy with regards to the light. The tents came with golf carts which, well, the percentage of the grounds where the carts could go was awfully small. The interesting bits down by the river required navigating trails that were off-limits for the carts, or at least for drivers with my skill. . We made due with taking it off the trail and into a recently plowed field and sitting on the back bench as the sun went down The second-best sunset we saw. We were a little too enthralled with the first to pull out our cameras. What else do people of our age and maturity do when on vacation in the middle of nowhere? Nicole brought bubbles and they were magnificent. What else? Well, the outdoor shower was fantastic. There was more wildlife than we expected. We assumed we’d see deer, armadillos, spiders (oh so many spiders), and birds. What we did not expect was to be awakened in the wee hours by a mountain lion. We only heard it, and if you’ve never heard one, I can assure you that there is no mistaking it. Wooden walls were very, very welcome at that point. Friday was our anniversary night and decided to celebrate it with…lobster rolls, which seemed appropriate as we had a lobster roll truck at our wedding. We hit up Little Em’s in San Antonio which has an extremely limited menu but it also had exactly what we wanted. It’s been years since we’ve been to a fancy restaurant, but they had a lovely patio and it didn’t seem particularly risky. If it was risky, it was worth it. Holy smokes, the lobster rolls were fantastic, just absolutely fresh and loaded with, well, lobster. The tuna appetizer was perfect, and the service was great. Oh, and the people watching? It’s in the King William district of San Antonio, so the people watching was very on point and I’m not just saying that because a dude tried to parallel park his sports car across the street from us and gave up after trying for literally ten minutes. So, wow. Five years that flew by like minutes. Ten years together now, which also seems impossibly long considering how short it seems. My big takeaway here? Find yourself someone you really love being with and make sure you have chances to have some quality, uninterrupted time with them because, from my point of view, there’s nothing better. -RK

…is not a shortage of workers. We have a shortage of jobs in these United States of America. Now, I’m going to use a definition of “job” that has fallen out of favor, but it’s certainly in line with historical usage: A “job” is paid work that provides a good living in a standard 40-hour workweek. That’s the minimum standard for a “job.” Anything else is a hobby, a side hustle, or some such thing. Now, since I mentioned the word “minimum,” this is when I should bring up “minimum wage.” If your upbringing was anything like mine, you were probably taught that minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage; it existed to provide work for teenagers and other people who apparently did not need and/or deserve a living wage. This is, of course, absolutely false. Minimum wage was supposed to have been a good living wage from the very beginning. Here’s what the father of the minimum wage had to say about labor during his first term: “In my Inaugural, I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living. Throughout industry, the change from starvation wages and starvation employment to living wages and sustained employment can, in large part, be made by an industrial covenant to which all employers shall subscribe.” — President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 I would say that, while we can argue about the specifics of what constitutes “living wages,” I think the intent is pretty clear. The bare minimum any business should pay any employee is a living wage. I threw in the bit about the 40 hour work week because it’s the only way you get parity with the different classes of workers described in Roosevelt’s statement. In addition, companies have become altogether too dependent on abusing workers who are exempt from overtime: hey Cortana show me "toxic work environment" pic.twitter.com/G5o1oujW5z — Aditya Mukerjee, the Otterrific 🦦 🏳️‍🌈 (@chimeracoder) August 15, 2021 Fun fact: It is illegal to do volunteer work for your employer. Working extended hours for no additional pay isn’t illegal, even though it’s the same thing. This needs to stop. That brings us to “living wage, 40 hour work week.” That’s a “job.” Now, it may shock you to discover that there are many, many “jobs” that do not meet either-or, in many cases, both of these two standards. The minimum wage is nowhere near a living wage and, speaking from experience, getting into triple-digit hours during a crunch isn’t unheard of. Not only do people pay a massive physical toll for doing this, but it is, in essence, volunteering free labor to your company and keeping them from having to hire two more people, depressing wages, and taking away jobs. You might ask yourself “Well if these people are not receiving a living wage, how come they are, you know, living?” That’s an excellent question! There’s no one answer for it. In some cases, it really is a case of teenagers working nights and weekends for spending money. In others, they’re working multiple, full-time jobs, which is deeply problematic. Most people who live on sub-living wages receive assistance. That means that government money (“muh tax dollars!”) is keeping these folks afloat. Or, to put a finer point on it, the government is subsidizing company profits by allowing them to pay a sub-living wage to their employees. Let me restate it for emphasis: Any company paying less than a living wage making its profits off of government subsidies. This brings me to another point: Your employer is your employer, not your family or your friend. You and your co-workers are a cost to the company. Companies try to minimize costs because, you know, capitalism. There’s nothing uniquely sinister about a company trying to pay you as little as possible, trying to get as many free hours from you as they can, or replacing you when it’s cost-effective to do so. The whole system is set up that way. In fact, each company should do all those things in order to remain a company. Laura Ingraham: "What if we just cut off the unemployment? Hunger is a pretty powerful thing." Bar Rescue guy: "They only feed a military dog at night, because a hungry dog is an obedient dog. Well, if we are not causing people to be hungry to work…" pic.twitter.com/Pw5C6n6l02 — Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) August 13, 2021 They probably shouldn’t be so open about how much they enjoy it as this guy, though. This guy is an idiot and he’s wrong about how they treat dogs in the military, too. So what was my point? My point was that, with assistance actually going to people and not just businesses during this pandemic, workers are able to eschew low-wage, dangerous jobs (look up the COVID rates for restaurant cooks when you have a sec; it’s too depressing for me to link) and hold out for jobs that pay a living wage. I don’t blame anyone who does this. No business has a right to cheap, sub-living-wage labor. Now, it’s been pointed out to me that there is no actual need for as many workers as currently exist. This is true. It’s also been mentioned that this model of sustenance being based on work is a crappy way to organize society and this is also true. But, I’m just trying to color within the lines for once. There’s really no way to make capitalism “work.” I’m just trying to highlight the fact that it has been badly corrupted over the last forty years and suggest that going back to the original concept behind minimum wage would make a bad thing better. So, happy Labor Day, y’all.