Serfing Holiday

Not a project this time, and not a typo either :)
I'm referring to my just-finished contract as a part-time minimum-wage worker... Being a modern-day peasant... Essentially working as a modern Serf in a feudal system.

My last Engineering contract finished in December and I've been waiting/looking for another Engineering job since then... I'm kinda specialized in my recent work history and there are few companies in Vancouver that need my skills, so I just have to wait till the right opportunity comes along.
In the mean-time however there isn't much to do and the priority is to not spend money!... I've done pretty much all the "home based" projects I can think of and the ones I have done, I've dragged out over several months to maximize the time spent and minimize the money.

Anyway, a few months ago, I decided that Id try some minimum-wage type work to help a bit with finances and use up my spare time... and I figured it would be a good experience to see first-hand just how privileged I am as n Engineer :)
So, I applied for a seasonal type job at a couple of places where I thought I might be engaged by the work, and I was fortunate enough to be offered a job fairly promptly, and for the last three months Ive been working about three full shifts a week in a minimum-wage job (actually just above minimum wage as its technically defined here in Vancouver at $11.30 per hour)

And having completed my "tour", these are my thoughts about the whole experience.

Well, first off I should describe what type of work it was since there are many different types of "minimum wage" jobs. It was not manual labour (which I'm a bit old for and doubt my body would put up with for long) but it was work that meant I was on my feet and actively walking around all the time. It was a local sales outlet for a specialty tools company, and for the most part, all of the employees do all of the jobs (there is not much specialization in different activities)... So, I restocked shelves and took phone calls and served customers and operated check-outs and gave advice and took returns etc etc.. I did a fair bit of everything :)

And I can tell you that after a full day of running around constantly doing all that stuff I was always pretty pooped, and my feet were really killing me... every time!   And for that full day of effort I took home a bit less than $100... And the tax man ends up taking about 25% of that in personal income tax too!
So, when they say minimum-wage, they mean it... I did my own calculations on the matter of personal finances and I can say with a pretty high degree of accuracy that a person can survive on that income (assuming they work a nominal 40hr week)... The money earned will cover basic living costs and includes accommodation, food, transport, health, mobile phone, and some money for clothing replacement etc... but it is very minimal and a single person living alone would not be able to afford to live in the inner-most suburbs of Vancouver and certainly could never afford a new car of any sort or aspire to save enough money for any sort of property ownership dreams.  It would be easier if the person shared accommodation but still... Its a pretty subsistence way of life.

But adding to the "basic struggle for survival" situation, it would also be really difficult to extricate oneself from that state... All your days are full up with tiring work that leaves you just beat... It would be really hard to find a way to get a better job... There is no time to go looking and no way to pay for or acquire skills needed to get a "non-minimum-wage" job. There is virtually no way to be able to save up enough money to go back to school or to be able to invest the capital needed to start your own little business of some sort... Its tough... You would absolutely need to find a way to share transport, food and accommodation costs with a couple of other people in order to get ahead at all.

But that's not my biggest "issue" with the whole experience...
My big disappointment is on a much larger scale... Its about the way we (we the "western Democracies) practice Capitalism...
The company I was working for is not a big corporation; its a family owned business that has slowly been building and growing for over fifty years... Its kind of a "model" good family business done the truly Canadian way... And to be sure, I liked all of the people who worked there and that includes the managers and the full timers and the part timers... all good people who cared about each-other etc.
And yet, with all that, the vast majority of the jobs in the company are dead-end minimum-wage type jobs.
The company pays just above the legal minimum acceptable wage.
And its a moderate sized company (about 1000 employees across the country) but the management structure is pretty flat so there is about one senior position for every 10 employees, and one manager position for every 100 employees or so.
And that means that in any kind of career progression, only the top 10% of employees will ever have any chance of moving ahead to the next level...
And that traditionally is how our capitalism works... the best workers get rewarded with promotions and that provides the motivation to the workers and the competition that is needed to maintain innovation and efficiency too...
But the actual experience of it is not nearly as rosy!   As any worker knows, within a short time on the job, you know who the top 10-20% of the workers in a given area are, and if you are in that group then that's great, and there is some hope for you... But if you are in the other 80% then there is NOTHING but the job as it is.
There is in fact de-motivation!
Instead of being motivated to try to improve the company performance (by more efficient practice or by more sales or better processes etc) you are in fact motivated, because no-matter what you do you will never get promoted and will only ever get minimum-wage, to do as little as possible!
Your only real goal is to aim to not get fired, and that usually only means avoiding being amongst the least productive/valued 10-20% of workers.... If you are not in that group then your only motivation becomes "how can I do less work".   Oh how sad!
And its all because the company's whole purpose is to funnel profits to the owner... There is no attempt to share any improvements or company success with the employees at all... And that accounts for the vast majority of jobs as practiced in Western Democratic Capitalism!

But what about the sales-people in most corporate jobs who get a limited salary and are paid significant bonuses on their sales results I hear you say? ... Hmmm yes, well, we all know what the caricature of the car salesman is, and we all more or less apply it to "sales-people" in general... And its not a very flattering caricature... And the reason is that because when you motivate people that way, they become extremely "self" focused and are motivated to ignore/abuse other people in order to benefit themselves...
In short, with heavy bonussing on making sales you get a focus on only making sales... They are not team players and don't support anybody or any thing that does not get them personally a sale. It works with sales-people because that's their only job but its very hard to put a bonus plan together that effectively motivates other types of job... As an engineer in silicon design/manufacturing companies I'm very well aware of this...
Almost all professional companies have a bonus system and some kind of profit sharing plan for most/all of their employees... And it certainly helps...
But sadly only slightly... By and Large its still the same problem with the middle performing 80% of the employees being effectively motivated to do as little as possible, and the company focussing on generating profit that is funneled to the top (ie the owners or in the case of public corporations, the shareholders).
And the system works... and its better than pretty much any other system that has been developed!
But my issue is that it is absolutely wasting the potential and focus and effort of about 80% of the people employed!
The biggest problem with effectively motivating that middle 80% is that its almost impossible to put together an effective bonus structure... Its either too complicated to put in the hard metrics (because the job "productivity" has so many different aspects and many of the factors affecting "productivity" are outside of individual employee's control) or the people "managing" the bonus assessment (the employee manager) are incompetent or unaware of the full scope of what their individual employees are always doing... Ive seen it being attempted for about 20 years now in my engineering jobs, and without fail the annual "performance assessments" are an incredible pain in the ass for minimal increased employee performance!... And its all compounded of course by our human nature which is essentially to cheat the system if we can to get more than our fair share!
In short, its not that the corporate executives are always screwing over the employees... The employees are just as bad and are just as likely to screw over the executive if given half a chance!

And so, sadly, I can say with surety that the existing system really sux, but that its virtually impossible to define a simple and effective alternative that is better!

The end analysis is that its not really our Capitalism that I despise, its our flawed human natures... but there is nothing new there    :(

So much for my Serfing Holiday.