What's the latest excuse...

Jonnycoupe · 19 Jul 2006 at 23:34

Jez said:
Doesnt sound as though its THAT far off what we get here in general, as a reference i used to earn about £7 ($12) stacking the shelves at my local supermarket ($24 on sundays), probably far below what you are doing skill wise but outdoor jobs here never seem to be more than about £10ph or so normal rates.

#

His job sounds far more skilled than yours, epecs with forklift skills and welding, your looking atleast £10 an hour for those skills over here. Its not even comparable to shelfstacking.

Is it true the US minimum wage is only $6? Its like £5.05 here and is set to rise to £5.35 in October.

Jez · 19 Jul 2006 at 23:51

I wasnt meaning to compare it directly like that, merely the fact that outdoor type work is not paid hugely well over here either, between £9 and £12ph in my experience. So not that much of a gap seeing as living out there seems to be much cheaper, and their housing costs are what, 1/10th of the cost?

Mad old tory · 19 Jul 2006 at 23:55

Which supermarket were you working for Jez, im only getting £5.51 at coop and that's supervisor rater

I expect teaboy is right ang the price of fuel is gonna keep going up, doubt it'l be £1.10 anytime soon unless fullscale war really does break out/

Jonnycoupe · 19 Jul 2006 at 23:58

I new getting a house where i could walk to work was a good idea :eek:

Jez · 19 Jul 2006 at 23:59

I worked at Tesco Henley-on-Thames for a while at something like £6.20, then worked at waitrose in the town centre at something like £6.95, double on sundays.

A while back now, job i had while at college. Waitrose a far better place to work, paid lunch etc as far as i remember and quite a relaxed atmosphere.

Mad old tory · 20 Jul 2006 at 00:02

Jez said:
I worked at Tesco Henley-on-Thames for a while at something like £6.20, then worked at waitrose in the town centre at something like £6.95, double on sundays.

A while back now, job i had while at college. Waitrose a far better place to work, paid lunch etc as far as i remember and quite a relaxed atmosphere.

Ah must be a bit extra for being in Henley i guess, most people i know who worked at waitrose here were only on about £5-5.50

Jez · 20 Jul 2006 at 00:06

Maybe mate, i've no idea, i cant even remember the exact rates but i remember us all rounding it to £7 to work out how much we were gonna get

Waitrose did a bonus of around 8% of your years earnings too every april or may time. Good few hundred quid at the time.

Makes me wonder why i bother having a more stressful job when i could just have done that and actually have been reasonably well off!

Mickey_D · 20 Jul 2006 at 08:31

I'll give you a better idea as to what the monetary situation is like over here.

When I worked at Intel I was working in the clean room FAB operating machinery that can only be described as "out of Star Trek". Precision robotic manufacturing equipment. When I say precision, I mean the tolerances were measured in angstroms. Google that one!!

I was making $17.65 an hour, but our work weeks were:
3 days working 12 hour shifts.
4 days off.
4 days working twelve hour shifts, the last 8 hours being overtime.
3 days off.

Rinse / repeat.

I was renting a 3 bedroom apartment for $975 a month. I had a 5.5 mile commute that never went above 35mph.

When I was working at the airport I was again making just over $17 an hour. Still paying the $975 a month for the apartment, but my overtime had gone away and my commute had gone up to almost 30 miles each way, most of it on the Banfield freeway which in the afternoon crawled to a stop, so the trip home took over 2 hours. This was after standing for 10 hours on rebar concrete dealing with the travelling public......

Both of those instances I was making an INCREDIBLY good wage for someone not in a management position. Most people working at a supermarket are earning somewhere between $6 and $7 an hour. My wife works at WalMart now as a cake decorator (gets a "job specialty" bonus of $.50 an hour) and still makes less than $8 an hour. If you're working somewhere like a petrol station or McDonalds, don't expect much more than $5 an hour. If that. They are only legally required to pay you (I think, been a while since I checked) $3.55 an hour.

[edit] Just checked, the US minimum wage is $5.15 an hour.