I agree, but it is hard for me to find sympathy for businessmen who hold wages so low. This behavior is widespread in the restaurant business, and it isn't limited to the staff stealing from the restaurant.

If you feel your wages are too low, negotiate for higher ones. If that doesn't work, accept it or quit. If you've been wronged, you have access to redress from the courts, and the courts are very sympathetic towards workers in disputes with employers.

>If you feel your wages are too low, negotiate for higher ones. If that doesn't work, accept it or quit.

I wish more people would do just that. It's what I did, after about a month of working as a barback.

>If you've been wronged, you have access to redress from the courts, and the courts are very sympathetic towards workers in disputes with employers.

No, you really don't, and the courts aren't. Where did you get that idea?

Details of cases I am familiar with, and talking with lawyer friends who tell me that, although it is not supposed to be that way, jurors and judges often give the benefit of any doubt to the perceived underdog.

There's a reason why lawyers carefully dress their clients in certain ways, select jurors based on socioeconomic status, etc.

States all have their mechanisms where a worker can file a complaint without needing a lawyer.

Since unpaid wage complaints involving minimum wage or overtime issues may affect other current/former employees who are not listed in the complaint, the department may request the employer conduct a self-audit of its place of employment if the complaint before the department proves to be valid.

Yes that sounds like a fantastically powerful tool for workers to wield against their employers. I bet it keeps everything above board. /sarcasm

First off, you were being paid more than minimum wage, and could be replaced at an hour's notice with someone willing to work at minimum wage.

So at some point you successfully demonstrated a higher value than those others, thereby getting a higher wage.

Secondly, you are no longer there at that wage. So you did something to demonstrate even higher value and a higher paying job.

My advice: do more of that, since it was working for you!

I was simply shocked as to how many people came in every day looking for an application. Every single day. It was amazing. These weren't teenagers either.

Yeah, I'm not working in the restaurant business anymore because I'm a software engineer now. However, not everyone can become software engineers, and there is still a market for restaurants. I know I enjoy them myself. There is also a latency between age of employment and age that one usually acquires skills to be hired as a software engineer and not everyone has rich [read: middle class] parents to support them through that time.

I also don't need your career advice.

I would like to also point out I would never steal from my employer, or anyone else, it still goes against my morals.

That's cool, but you asked and I answered, and I correctly inferred that you didn't need the advice.

Glad to see you doing well, and Peace, dude!

(I started out at min wage jobs, too.)

My somewhat snarky comment was due being felt as if I was being talked down to.

>Peace, dude!

I'm a woman. Please don't presume the gender of an unknown speaker. It's rude and excluding.

Labor rights in this country are so laughable that this isn't a realistic an option. Any attempt towards that end such as simply unionizing has been eroded away by the law written to favor the owners of capital.

The moral way to improve your pay is to find a way to make your labor worth more to the employer.

For a restaurant worker, that could be things like finding ways to boost sales, reduce wastage, find less expensive vendors, improve efficiency, etc. It's highly unlikely that any restaurant has successfully optimized all aspects of their operations.

What, for free? He isn't being paid to do that.

If you choose to do as little as possible, it does make for a tough negotiating position when asking for more pay.

When I've gone into my boss's office and negotiated for more pay, I'd come in prepared to show how I'd already demonstrated higher value to the company. Sometimes I walked out with a raise, and other times I failed and started looking for another boss who did value what I could do for him.

On the other hand, I knew coworkers who were thieves and justified it with their notions of entitlement. I didn't exactly feel inclined to trust them, either, and trust is a basic element of friendship.

So I guess we all get to make our choices and accept the consequences.

I.e., the old crabs in a bucket story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

From a static point of view where the job situtation will never change it doesn't make sense to put in an effort that exceeds the compensation but that 'solution' is certainly non-optimal from dynamic point of view where the employment contract gets continually revised over time resulting in raises, promotions or perhaps shifting to a new employer where your experience and skills result in a better employment situation.