What should minimum wage be, & would I take the job no matter what?

As much as I want to believe I support the concept of people who actually have to work for a living, I have to confess to feeling a little squeamish about the ongoing battle to bolster the minimum wage for fast food workers.

Yes, I can recall the time in my life (about three decades ago) when I worked such jobs – and I can recall an era when my take-home pay was based off a $3.30 hourly rate.

THAT WAS THE minimum wage back in the early-to-mid 1980s when I was in high school and college (usually trying to concoct a stash of cash so that when I went back to campus in the fall, I’d have some money to be able to subsist on.

Life is more than just classes and paying those fees for books. The fact that I had a memorable college experience was due to the trash work I did back then – literally handling the types of jobs at time that led me to smell like assorted cold cuts and be permanently repulsed by the sight and texture of head cheese.

I can recall working at a Subway sandwich franchise, then later in a delicatessen – learning how to achieve the perfectly-sliced piece of genoa salami – six or eight of which go with a nice slice of cheese to make a quickie sandwich that can tide over one’s appetite.

I did that for my $3.30 per hour, which could come to about $200 every couple of weeks. Which makes me fortunate that I didn’t have to rely on such a low income to actually cover all my life’s daily expenses.

SO WHEN I learn that the minimum wage in Illinois has reached levels of $8.25 (a dollar more than the federally-mandated level and also the minimum wage that scut work employees for Indiana-based companies get) and that there are people who want to raise it to between $10 and $13 per hour, I almost get envious.

It’s almost enough to make me wish I could have got that kind of money back when I had to resort to such work. Then I remember the kind of tedious, mind-numbing labor I had to do to get that money, and I feel fortunate that I’m not in a position where I have to do such labor.

These thoughts have popped into my head in recent days in learning that some employees of McDonalds (a company I never worked for, but I had one cousin who literally wore those polyester jump suit-like outfits they wore back in the day while asking, “Do you want fries with that?”) are getting $1 per hour raises.

I’m not going to begrudge anybody who can get a little more money, since even at the higher rate, nobody is going to get rich being a grill operator at McDonalds. Not unless you can pull off the Willie Wilson (remember him, the former mayoral candidate) saga of scraping together your pennies and buying a franchise of your own.

ACTUALLY, IT’S ONLY going to be the McDonald’s employees at the company-owned stores who get the higher pay rates. Those who work at franchises that are privately-owned (which are the bulk of them) will continue to get their current rate of pay.

But the idea that someone trying to make sure they don’t burn themselves from the oil of frying the French fries pulling in nearly $10 back when I would have been paid $3.30 for the same work seems a bit surreal.

Then again, I’m old enough to remember when picking up the two major newspapers meant plunking down two quarters – NOT the $2.50 it costs now for anyone who still feels compelled to pick them both up!

Somehow, it sounds like an overpay – even though like I already wrote, I wouldn’t trade places with those workers to get their higher rate of money.

IT MAKES ME feel good that the closest I come to such fast food fare is when I stop off at a Subway if I have to eat on the run because I have some sort of news-related assignment somewhere.

I developed my taste for the “spicy Italian” sandwich back when I learned to make them with 10 slices of genoa salami and 12 slices of pepperoni per foot-long sandwich while raking in the big bucks that went along with the free sandwich I was permitted to make myself each shift I worked.

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Do we really need to read text messages while riding underground the city?

I'd bet that when the subway tunnels were built in the early 1940s, no one thought they'd ever have to be upgraded for an improved communications network. You want to talk to someone? Use a payphone! Photograph provided by CTA Historical Photo Connection

Perhaps this is a generational issue, and I’m just on the wrong side of the equation. This definitely is a move being contemplated by the Chicago Transit Authority for people not like me in mind.

But I can’t really comprehend the need for an upgrade of the underground wireless network that currently exists in the tunnels that are used by elevated trains for those moments when the track drops down from being an “el” to being a “subway.”

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported Thursday that CTA officials are seeking bids from telecommunications companies to see who could install an improved system the cheapest in the 12 miles of track that run as subway along the Red and Blue lines.

It seems that the current system that has been in place in recent years merely allows for someone to use their cellular telephone or smartphone while underground to actually make a telephone call.

For sending text messages or trying to read something off the Internet, it just isn’t capable of handling such tasks.

Which means people who are in the process of transporting themselves via the “el” from one point to another have to actually wait until the train pops out of the portions where it is subway.

OR, A MORE radical thought; they have to wait until they actually get to their destination and leave the underground stations before they have full access to the many services a smartphone can offer – but which all too often are wasted on such trivial tasks.

CTA officials told the Tribune that people riding an “el” train during its moments of being a subway to refresh Facebook feeds or watch podcasts.

Personally, in those moments when I ride underground on the “el,” I’m more focused on paying attention to the people who happen to be surrounding me on the train. I’d think paying too much attention to one’s little device would be a sure-fire way of making myself a target for someone who might have “robbery” on their mind.

At the very least, I’d think it would be advertising myself as someone who has a smartphone worth stealing. I’d feel more secure reaching into my wallet and waving around whatever dollar bills I happened to have in my possession at that given moment.

EVEN IF THAT weren’t the case, I can’t help but wonder what could be so important that it couldn’t wait a few minutes (because most of the “el” system is above ground, which is why we call it the “el” even when it is underground)!

There are times when I think some of my Facebook friends do little more than put narcissistic thoughts about themselves out there for all to see – although I’m sure some of them probably think I’m posting dreary, dull stuff.

Or maybe they think I’m as full of myself as I think they are of themselves.

The point being that maybe we’d all be a bit better off if there were moments when we weren’t fully accessible at all seconds of the day.

GUESS WHAT? IF you had to wait a few minutes before you could read this particular commentary, it wouldn’t change the overall stance. The point being made would remain the same!

But it seems this is the direction the CTA is headed. The Tribune reported that officials hope to have an improved system in place by next summer.

Although I should admit one potential plus to this trend – the fact that the last time I rode a subway/el (Saturday, I used a train/bus combination to get to the Criminal Courts building and back for the duties I do for a suburban daily newspaper) there were no newspapers or other paper scattered around the train cars.

I’m just not sure that litter-free railcars justify the cost of a communications upgrade.

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11 or 12 inches? It’s just a sandwich

I once worked in a bookstore – one of those places that stocked nothing but remaindered books.

The newest hassle?

Which meant that everything was marked down significantly in price compared to what it cost when it was brand-new and had promise of significant sales. In fact, the store (which has long since shuttered) had a giant sign on the front window promising up to “70 percent” off the book price.

NOW TO SOMEONE who enjoys books and the process of scouring for them, the joy of such stores is that you might actually find an interesting volume amidst all the junk that nobody wants – priced for about $6, compared to the $25-30 that new books go for these days.

That’s not a bad bargain!

Yet there’s always someone who’s going to find something to complain about with regards to just about anything. And I still remember the one customer who came into the store with a couple of books that were marked down to about $4 each, then tried to argue that the “70 percent” discount ought to be on the $4 price – not on the original price of the book.

In short, someone who had a chance to buy something for $4 (plus tax) was complaining because he couldn’t get it for $1.20.

THAT’S JUST BEING cheap and petty. I still remember the hysterics he went into when I refused to buy into his tightwad line of logic.

And somehow, that same sentiment is popping into my head when I read the reports in recent days about people complaining that a Subway Sandwich foot-long isn’t really a foot-long.

It seems somebody actually felt the need to take the tape measure to the completed sandwich – and came up with an 11-inch measurement.

There is now even a lawsuit pending in the Cook County Circuit Court, and attorneys are trying to get as many people as possible to sign on to make it a class action suit – in which Subway would ultimately have to pay out some huge sum that would be split equally amongst the participants.

THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES reported that an attorney actually believes customers are owed a refund for the one inch of sandwich they did not receive.

So for the $5 foot-long sandwich that Subway sells, that comes to about 42 cents per inch.

It sounds more like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch – a Subway executive being forced to write out $0.42 checks to people to reimburse them for the inch of sandwich they did not receive.

Or $0.21 checks if all they had was a six-inch sandwich that was probably closer to 5-1/2 inches long.

I UNDERSTAND THE concept of “Truth in Advertising” as well as anyone else.

But this seriously strikes me as somebody being excessively petty in the way they approach life.

Besides, anybody who paid attention during school ought to know about certain levels of shrinkage – which is why that bag of potato chips often appears only three-quarters full when you first open it.

And why a loaf of freshly-baked bread is never going to come out to a precise length – which, it seems, is the line of logic that the company is trying to use to defend itself against this talk.

PERSONALLY, THERE ARE other places I would go to if I wanted a fresh deli sandwich with all the trimmings. I’m fortunate enough to live near a real nice Italian-themed grocery store where I could get a good Italian-style sub, or an Italian beef, sausage or meatball sandwich – if I so desire.

But I actually worked in a Subway Sandwich franchise back when I was in high school, and the product they put out is passable – a mass-produced sandwich made to order.

With relatively fresh bread; although I understand that most Subway franchises no longer have someone doing what I did some three decades ago – standing in a back room at the meat slicer turning logs of genoa salami or entire hams into perfectly-thin slices for someone’s edible edification.

Still, how much can one expect if the primary appeal of Subway is that they’re promising you a $5 price above all else?

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She put her life on line, for Subway

I couldn’t help but feel an internal tremor Friday morning when I stumbled across the news accounts of a worker at a Northwest Side Subway sandwich franchise who was shot and killed during a Thursday night robbery.

According to both the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, the woman was working a Thursday night shift in the Subway on Western Avenue in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood.

WHEN A WOULD-BE robber entered just before 9 p.m. and pulled out a pistol, the woman worker tried to run out a back door. Which is what provoked the gunman to fire a shot at her – striking her in the neck. She died early Friday at Stroger Hospital.

For the record, another employee gave the robber some money, and he left. As of Friday morning, police had no one in custody, nor do they have any suspects in mind.

I’m sure many of you are wondering why this catches my attention? After all, the one-time police reporter-type person in me knows this incident isn’t that uncommon. Not to downplay the loss of life, but such robberies happen. If the woman hadn’t died, it wouldn’t have been covered at all.

And let’s be honest. There are certain neighborhoods where, if there had been a robbery and the worker had died, it still would have been ignored.

BUT THIS ONE is a little personal for me.

For the very first job I had when I was in high school (one that had set hours and cut me a regular paycheck) was work in a Subway sandwich franchise – specifically one in south suburban Calumet City.

In fact, I recall that I worked at a Subway that purposely stayed open until 2 a.m. – and when I was hired, it was explicitly to work three or four shifts a week from 10 p.m.-2 a.m. each day.

I worked that job one summer, just before going off to Bloomington, Ill., to attend college.

WHICH MEANS THAT learning of the account of this woman (Lyn Ward, who was 57), I couldn’t help but think back to the old memories and tensions.

I used to wonder how I’d react if confronted with a gunman – which fortunately, never happened to me. Although I did find out later that two weeks after I quit to begin college, that particular Subway got robbed.

Shortly after midnight on a Friday-into-Saturday – if I recall right. Which means I could easily have been working, only to find a pistol shoved into my face.

I do recall there was a foot-activated alarm located directly under the cash register. Which means I could have triggered it while heading for the register to try to get money.

IN FACT, IT was a sensitive-enough alarm that I recall my boss once accidentally triggering it while trying to ring up an order of sandwiches and chips.

I used to wonder how subtly I could trigger that alarm, if someone agitated enough to pull a pistol on me had walked in. Could I do it undetected? Or would my foot movement catch his attention, and anger him (or her, I suppose) enough to pull the trigger of his pistol?

I could easily have been in the same position as that woman, only it could have ended for me at age 17. Not that it makes the woman’s story any less tragic – 57 is too young an age to die at, particularly for a reason so stupid.

Although, thinking about this incident and my own high school years also reminds me of the popular film from that era – Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

FOR WHILE MANY a man of my age bracket will forevermore remember Phoebe Cates’ moment of cinematic glory, there also was that scene near the end of the film when Judge Reinhold’s “Brad” character managed to avert a robbery attempt while working as a late-night cashier at a 7-Eleven-like convenience store.

I doubt I – or any other clerk – could have done anything like that. Of course, if it happened in real-life, it would have turned the robber/gunman into a victim – no matter how unworthy that person would be of such status.

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