There’s another aspect: there’s a horrible lack of common decency and respect by supervisors and managers of low-wage workers. Having worked menial data entry, warehouse, grocery store, fast food jobs, I’ve interacted with far too many stressed-out and abusive/abused bosses who cannot cope with the razor-thin timelines with minimal workforce (which seems to be the norm) and ultimately exhaust this irritating heat onto their subordinates and fail to show a minimal amount of respect to their employees to the degree of hostility and abuse.

This isn’t so much of an “all bosses suck” trope (I am happy and lucky to be at a healthier work environment at the moment). The sense I have is demands from the top continue to be more and more unrealistic as decisions are made to cut costs without truly thinking about it may start to rot the foundation beneath.

In my case, $18 sounds like a lot of money, but I wonder if this just means the work will be exponentially more stressful and unhealthy.