I work as a waitress at Cracker Barrel in Brighton, Michigan, I make $3.25 an hour plus tips. At the end of each shift I have to declare what is in my pocket of on hand, physical tips.
When working, I notice how much I am tipped by a table it has become a habit because for each shift I would tailor a goal to that day of the week and take into consideration how busy I believe the restaurant will be that day. I come into work knowing how much I need to roughly make that day to pay my bills.
Usually, what you would expect is the big party table of 6 demanding, middle-aged, white couples that are running the waitress all over the restaurant, just getting lunch after a church service with a bill of $150-200 to tip nicely, right? Wrong, these are almost always going to be your worst percentage of tip for the day. These are the people that don’t see me, a waitress, as a real human being trying to have them as pleased as possible. The bigger percentage compared to bill size tips come from those teenage boys or younger couples, they see me as more than just a waitress that serves them but more like a young college student waiting tables for a living.
When taking the “Spent” project, I played as a restaurant employee, knowing this is something I can relate to. While some questions involved having a child, I could not exactly relate to those, but the hypothetical situations containing the car payments, rent, insurances, I actually was able to step back for a second and think about my current life situation.
While I am only almost 20-years-old, I consider myself to be almost financially independent. I make my own payments for my car and phone and I am paying for college almost fully by myself.
The scary part of the end of the project was that I only had $84 left the first time. This is can be a scary reality to me, because I do know a lot of waitresses that live off their tips and support their children off that $3.25 hourly wage.
In the article, “Low-Wage Workers: Poverty and Use of Selected Federal Social Safety Net Programs Persist Amount Working Families” it is discussed that according to a study by the U.S Government Accountability Office
“About 20 percent of families with a worker earning up to the federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 per hour), 13 percent of families with a worker earning above federal minimum wage to $12.00 per hour, and 5 percent of families with a worker earning $12.01 to $16 per hour were in poverty in each year.”
Minimum wage jobs are a common thing among workers, and if the government can’t see for itself, even after collecting their own data, that minimum wage rates should be high enough for workers to be able to live off of, there will be more and more people and families living in poverty.
Now I know, one of my personal worries is being a waitress for the rest of my life. Not because I hate it, I actually love it. Also, not because I have bigger dreams, there’s nothing wrong with waitressing for a living. I just personally am already starting to worry about my future family if I only waitressed for the rest of my life.
This is a real issue that real people are living with, as a society we may not realize it as much because it is not talked about enough.
Poverty is always portrayed by the media as poor black communities, they don’t emphasize that other social groups are struggling too. Single moms, broke college students, people with disabilities.
In the article, “Faces of poverty: What Racial, Social Groups are More Likely to Experience it?” It states how 23.6 million women, 592,588 recently single mothers, 9.6 million American’s with disabilities, and 9.1 million Black and African Americans living in poverty. These numbers should not have to be this high.
Notice how it’s more than just Black and African Americans? It effects so many more people than we think, but because of the way the media controls our minds we are looking through a microscope of the real situations.
No one thinks about poverty, the impact it is having about people around the, or how it is all around us. People don’t seem to notice, until it’s happening to them. Poverty can happen to any race, gender, social class – it can happen to anyone.
Comments