$15/Hr Wage for Fast Food Workers

If you've been paying any attention at all to the news in the past year, you undoubtedly have heard about the fight fast food workers are putting up for a $15 an hour minimum wage.


While I truly understand how difficult it is to live on the current minimum wage, especially in major cities, raising the minimum wage even over a period of 3 to 5 years for only 1 specific job classification will do far more harm than good; especially to those individuals who have spent tens of thousands of dollars in college tuition only to be offered positions at $12 or $13 an hour.  How fair is it to these people?


Somewhere one has to understand that we all can't be "Chiefs", there must also be "Indians" and not every job created was meant to be a "career".  One's first job typically isn't as Vice President of a major corporation.


My first job was a clerk in a small printing office.  My starting wage was $1.125/hr.  My education consisted of graduating from high school with a secretarial background.  I didn't walk a picket line.  I didn't cry foul.  I didn't think I should make more money than the office manager for basic typing skills. It took me almost 25 years to work my way up to $15/hr.


I worked in the printing industry for a number of years, moved to an engineering field office for a number of years after losing my husband to a heart attack; went to school at night and graduated community college with an Applied Science degree in Marketing. From there I worked my way up to an Executive Administrative Assistant III at $60K a year.


I did so because I knew that a clerk position was a starting job and not a career position. 


You'll say but yes, bread and milk as only .17 and .20 at the time and a gallon of gas .37; but everything was relative, especially when you're earning only $45 a week.


For those who feel that flipping burgers at McDonald's should be a lifetime career, they lack the motivation to want to do better so why should they be rewarded with an hourly salary that exceeds that of someone who has taken the time to go to school and has a huge college debt to pay off.