I caught a video on YouTube, I don’t know why I watched it, but it was just “kids” (read adults who should be better than that) whining about working retail and… duh? I mean seriously, at your age, why are you working a minimum wage job anyhow? What the hell is wrong with you?

So let’s talk about it.

Here’s the video in question, not that it really matters. Watch or don’t watch. It’s your life.

I really hate to do the whole “back in the good old days” thing, because there were never any good old days, but back when I was their age, I worked retail. Most people did, that or fast food and I’ve done both. Of course the job sucks. It’s meant to be done by high school students who don’t care about the money, they have parents paying for everything. They are there to learn the ropes and prove themselves before they move on to something worthwhile. This is not a career. If you think it is, you’re an idiot.

I could go into all the reasons why this is a problem and some of it is the fault of the modern workers and some isn’t. I’ve done that before though so I’m not going to bother. The fact is, standing behind a counter is not a valid career choice. You aren’t getting paid well because you haven’t earned it. You don’t deserve it. You are a warm body getting paid a minimal amount for as long as you last, and as they said in the video, there’s a long line of people waiting to get in the door so you’re welcome to leave any time you want.

You might complain that it’s not fair and my response is “so what?” You have to remember that these are jobs that are aimed at, have always been aimed at, will always be aimed at, people with no responsibilities. If you are trying to raise a family on a minimum wage job, you have done this to yourself. You are to blame. Fuck you.

I could go into a whole spiel here on personal responsibility and not taking on burdens before you are financially and emotionally prepared to do so, but that hardly flies today, does it? That’s another problem that the modern young have. They don’t know how to be responsible. The guy in the video in the video, the Moroccan guy, he sounded like that. He has poor expectations and an even worse understanding of what work actually is.

Sadly, a lot of people these days seem to. I’ve worked jobs where I worked open to close 6 days a week for years on end. As long as the business was open, I was there, 12+ hours a day. Did I complain? No. Why? Because I understood that was the job and I was free to leave any time I wanted, but because I had a work ethic, something that is seriously lacking in a lot of young people today, I did the job that I signed up for. Did I get paid well? Not really. Keep in mind that the minimum wage back when I started working was $3.35 an hour. Those were jobs intended for high school students who already had all of their needs covered by their parents. Nobody in their right mind would try to raise a family on that. You were there to get experience, you were there to learn how to be on time and have professional responsibilities and how to treat customers. Once you learned that, you moved on to something better.

Unfortunately, a lot of people today, they don’t work a day in their lives until they are adults and then, they’re shocked that nobody wants to give them a lot of money when they haven’t even learned the basics. Everyone starts at the bottom, even if you’re a college graduate. Learn to deal. People today figure that because they’ve got a piece of paper in their hand and have never proven to anyone that they can do anything, somehow, they deserve a big paycheck, because reasons. They don’t understand how business works, they don’t care about their employers at all, they only care how they are personally benefited and everyone had better bend over backward to make sure they’re happy, or else.

These people are idiots. Granted, that’s how they were raised, but that’s why they have so many problems. Many, perhaps most of them, are hitting the ground, bogged down with many thousands of dollars in student debt, never having any experience whatsoever in the real world, having really awful expectations, and then getting upset that they aren’t being offered a 6-figure salary out of the gate.

That is not how reality works. Any employer is going to expect you to care about the company. If you don’t  care about them, why should they care about you? It’s a reciprocal relationship. You are going to start off as a disposable employee, where they separate the wheat from the chaff. If you make it through that, you can go on to better things. That’s why, by the time I turned 18, my employer wanted me in management because I had proven myself. I had showed that I was willing to do what it took to succeed. I was willing to go above and beyond the call of duty.

I’ve never not been in management since I turned 18. I worked, sometimes multiple jobs, and went to school at the same time. I paid for my own schooling out of my own pocket and never had any debt. I kept getting promoted because I kept earning it. That’s how success actually works. You have to earn it. Not everyone does. Those people fail. Life isn’t fair. Get over it and get to work. Stop whining. Yet that seems to be all that modern “kids” are capable of doing.

It’s no wonder they have so many problems. They did it to themselves. Life sucks, huh? Not for people who actually understand how the real world works. Maybe give that a try.