The Minimum Wage Mindset
Learning how to find value in any job that you do.
After spending 16 or so years fighting my way through the public school system, when I finally reached the finish line—college graduation—I was delirious with the idea of completing one more clear, concrete task: finding a job.
It’s not easy to ignore the call of the rat race. From an early age, my teachers made it very clear that my path was already carved out for me. I would get good grades, get accepted into a nice college, and then use that degree to get a job. The rest was simple: I would then work that job until I died. Or retired. (The two feel a bit synonymous at times).
And that was always fine with me. It made sense; I needed to be doing something to pass the time anyway. Yet when I finally graduated college, shouldering a mountain of student loan debt and a liberal arts degree, my entire life leading to the moment my diploma arrived in the mail, (this delicate little paper that was apparently worth the sum of all my accomplishments) I couldn’t help but feel hollow.
There’s more than this, my subconscious chided. But I ignored it. That was what finding work was for, to ignore that little voice in the back of your head that begged you to try and do things differently. However, I couldn’t find any work, and then months passed and I still couldn’t find work. Blame it on the pandemic or my own personal faults, regardless, the days ticked by and my job search seemed all the more fruitless. I ignored emails piling up in my inbox from my university, encouraging me to tell them what post-grad work I had found. Did we do it? Did we make you successful?
I finally folded and got a job stocking shelves at a grocery store. I spent my first week fretting in the aisles, feeling like a failure. My social media feed was full of my peers flaunting their success at their new jobs, and here I was stacking discounted bottles of wine. It didn’t make any sense—I had followed the path that had been drawn out for me, jumped through every hoop put in front of me.
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” my mom told me over the phone, “I’m proud of you always.” But that’s what parents were supposed to say, and besides, what did she know?
“You’re young,” she insisted over the sound of me lamenting, “Please try and relax.”
But how could I relax when I couldn’t get a professional job in my major, which would mean that I couldn’t buy a house one day, or a car, or afford insurance, or pay off my student loan debt, which would inevitably result in me dying broke and alone in a ditch one day. Or at least, that’s what I had been raised to believe.
Capitalism made a coward of me. I was so disillusioned with the idea that I needed to find a job that made good money and fast, that I didn’t even stop to realize that I was more relaxed and happy than I had ever been. I actually liked my job: my coworkers were friendly, the store was nice and piped in my favorite radio station all day. I had more free time than ever. I got a library card for the first time in years, and spent a whole week feverishly reading late into the night. I went on walks and caught up with friends; I spent some time writing and resting and daydreaming. I didn’t stress about work outside of my shifts, on the contrary, I’d clock out and think about everything and anything else.
Maybe working a nine to five wouldn’t bring me the long sought after happiness I thought I’d find after graduation. All my life I’d been told to go to school so that I didn’t have to work in a grocery store, and now here I was, literally living out the nightmare so many adults had cautioned me about. But it wasn’t the hellfire I’d always envisioned.
“I actually really like it here,” I told one of my coworkers one day.
“Yeah,” they responded, nonplussed, “Me too.”
I am by no means an economist, and therefore do not fully understand capitalism and all its importance and functionality in our modern world. Nor am I trying to criticize capitalism and rally for its dismemberment. But I do know (according to USA Today, at least) that money and careers and material items does not automatically equate to happiness and success. Being born and raised in a proud capitalistic society can make a person forget that—our TV’s and phones are constantly reminding of things we don’t have but absolutely need.
The fact of the matter is that despite being one of the wealthiest countries, about 42.5% of American workers make less than $15 an hour. And 2% of those people are earning at or below the federal minimum wage (that’s about 1.75 million people working for only $7.25 an hour). These numbers are not necessarily meant be celebrated, but to be used as a reminder: you are not alone. The lavish lives that are seen being played out by social media stars and celebrities are nothing but an unrealistic reality.
Money is a necessity—unfortunately, no matter how inclined you feel to reject the way things are, rent needs to be paid. But it does not have to be everything. I refused to allow myself to be happy because I was so hung up on being successful, until it reached the point where I was the real root of all my inner torment.
Success might not be something so tangible. It might not be something that you can show off on social media or pick up at the store. Maybe success is finally finding peace within ourselves— being able to calm that voice in your head that’s trying to remind you that things aren’t okay.
I now believe that you could be the most successful person in the world and still manage to be a miserable human being. The reality is that I do not have a job within my major (yet). And I do not have a house, or a car, or all the other things that I feel like I’m supposed to, and neither do a lot of people. But we can find peace and pride within ourselves, and in a world where success is often measured by a dollar sign, we have to let that be enough. Or else we’re doomed to spend our entire lives chasing after something we could have always had after all.
So in the words of my mom, relax.
Sources:
https://www.nelp.org/wp-content/uploads/Growing-Movement-for-15-Dollars.pdf
https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-people-are-earning-725-hour/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/02/26/does-money-equal-happiness-does-until-you-earn-much/374119002/