So much for the American dream…
For my entire life, I’ve held to the belief that the big-name stores are what’s destroying the Main Streets around the country. As a teen, I swore that even if Wal*Mart offered me the best wages available, I’d never work there.
After graduating junior college with a transfer degree, however, the only place to work in this rural buttcrack of a town was Wal*Mart. In hopes of one day achieving my dream of running my own business, I needed, and still need, a way to afford the last two years of my degree.
I was hired on as a cashier, and for the past almost nine months, I have worked tirelessly for this company. I have had three seven-day-straight schedules, two times of which management evaded letting me change it. The fact that management can duck out of the way of fixing the computerized schedules is completely absurd. I have seen a woman in her fifties, also a cashier, work for ten days straight with no days off. The legal limit in my state is fourteen.
In addition to the days being scheduled poorly, the hours are horrific. I may only be part-time, but I can’t honestly say I do part-time work. I’ve been scheduled to work closing [my preferred shift] one night, and be back at 8:30AM the next day. I don’t make enough to afford a car, so I walk to work. My fiance works at the same store, full-time, and we still can’t afford a car. So working closing shift, I get home at about 1AM, and am expected back in seven hours.
Despite all this, I hold my end of the deal. Front end associates refer to me as a sickeningly sweet, over the top ray of -bleeping-sunshine. I smile all day, talk to every customer, and never make a mistake without correcting it. I always look on the bright side…until I get home. I’ve cried myself to sleep on many occasions,
both out of pain, sorrow, and shame. I have never had a chance to cross-train in other departments, although we have openings in said departments.
If it wasn’t bad enough that it was happening to even one associate, it’s worse that it’s all of them. We have every cashier in our store doing the work of three. Unloading is so understaffed that my fiancé in day maintenance has to pull unloader duty, even while he’s fulfilling stockman and maintenance in the same breath.
We get home and can’t move. We get home and can’t heal. We can’t afford to see doctors. He filed workman’s comp last year for a serious back injury, and they yelled at him about missing work to see a doctor. The list of doctors they gave him was beyond outdated. Some of the doctors didn’t even have a practice running anymore.
My ankles have gotten to the point that wearing braces on both AND popping Advil all day doesn’t make a difference. I sprained one of the badly on the way to work last year, and it has never even recovered from that.
They delayed raising wages when minimum wage went up. I make ten cents over minimum wage in my state; he makes about thirty cents over that.
We’re planning on someday having a family and house of our own, but with Wal*Mart’s pay scheme and employee treatment, I’ll be dead before we’ll ever be able to even rent one.
So much for the American dream…
-Miz Yin
