To think people these days are very entitled?

[Poptart4]

I keep reading about people demanding high wages for jobs that require little or no skills or education. AIBU to think if you want more money than improve your skill set to get a higher paying job?

I've worked my fair share of shop and bar jobs, so I'm not putting people down who do these jobs. But when I wanted more money I did night courses (along side my shop work and looking after my kids) and used those qualifications to get an admin job which then led to promotions until I eventually worked my way up to a decent salary. It took years.

Demanding higher wages for jobs that are low paid because literally anyone could do them is an insult to people who have spent years in college to get a degree or years learning a trade or years working their way up the ladder.

Electricians, plumbers, lawyers, accountants etc are paid more because they have a certain skill set. Not just anyone can re-wire your house or defend you in court.

I just feel like people dont want to spend years putting time and effort into improving themselves, and that's fine but to then demand loads of money when they can't be arsed to put the effort in it takes to get a high paying job is the hight of entitlement.

Is it not more entitled for people to expect others to ‘serve’ them in a shop, look after their kids or elderly parents, empty their bins but then not ensure those people have enough money to feed themselves and heat their homes?

Education is really expensive and it’s pretty difficult to pay for when you’re trapped in low paid work. Some employers may help with the cost but they are difficult to find and some make promises to get you on board, but then backtrack after you’ve accepted the job. It’s also difficult to earn a good wage in some companies because the majority of the wage bill has went on family members that bring very little to the company.

You seem quite happy to judge though, so why can’t others also judge you? What makes you exempt from some criticism?

You can’t report on that basis. If you don’t like it, don’t read the post.

@FemmeNatal of course different jobs will be paid differing ‘levels’ of remuneration, (and of course there will be disagreement as to how that worth is decided), but none of those levels should be lower than the level required so sustain a life. The people you refer to who are crying out for higher (fairer) wages aren’t asking for “lovely houses in the south east”, they’re asking for modest, secure homes in the vicinity they grew up.

My husband is from the North East. A couple both working full-time on minimum wage can buy a very nice house there. We only have nice homes as we moved to a place where our earnings could get them; others need to be willing to do the same.

And what are you going to do when there is no one left who can afford to live in your area and work in the shops and stack the shelves.
What happens when they have all moved to the north east and you are sitting there with all your money and no food.

You keep ignoring this, and Im pretty sure its because you dont actually have an answer to the problem

If entry level jobs don't pay enough, then the employees wages and rents are topped up by benefits. So the public ends up paying them enough to live on instead of the profiting businesses that hire them. Yet you think the low paid workers not the business owners are the entitled ones?!

work your way out of it. If I can do it, anyone can.

Oh come off it - you KNOW this isn't true. NOT everyone has the ability to do better paid jobs, go to college etc

And even if they do other issues can get in the way.

Caring responsibilities, ill health etc

My local training centre did free courses in computers and administration for people in low paid jobs.

How long ago was this? Have you looked at what is available local to you now? Because there have been HUGE cuts to education and training. In the last 10 years where I used to live anything like this has been totally cancelled with the nearest college for such training easily an hour or more away and the courses not on at times that fit with public transport from there PLUS limited course places

You benefited from govt help that's pretty much no longer available

A full time job SHOULD pay enough to live a decent fulfilling life on inc some luxuries that it doesn't in this country is a Fucking disgrace!

I'm still very much working class. with a bad upper middle class attitude

Your right @AmbushedByCake how dare the government help people improve themselves and their lives. They should remove all funding so the likes of me can stay in our places

and you fail to recognise sarcasm or the valid points being made about your entitlement!

The gap between ceo level pay and lowest paid employee in this country is among the worst in the world - and that inc comparison to developing countries

It's obscene

Everything doesnt need to cost more, companies need to be less greedy.

This!!!!!!

you should have your benefit entitlement reduced or paid in food and housing vouchers, so it’s not spent on designer nails and shopping for Nike Trainers.

Utter daily mail claptrap!

Being poor isn't a crime for which people should be punished!

It not just the low skilled work which pays very little though, some administration/finance administration jobs require want the moon on a stick these days for little more than minimum wage.

I am fortunate to be in a job which pays more than average for the local area but a job advertised in this sector recently wanted several years of experience with an endless list of responsibilities for slightly under £10 per hour. I'm not sure if the position was filled but it is no wonder some staff are demanding better pay.

A lot of employers need to pay more if they want to attract employees, not just the ones advertising low skilled jobs.

Yes, I live in Yorkshire. It used to be mostly affordable where I live, but in the last 18 months, 30% of the properties sold have been to people locating from the South East. It's pushed prices up, and reduced housing supply.
Can you blame them? It's getting more for your money but has a knock on effect.

This is one of those threads that makes me so sad. The OP needs to step out of her shoes and into someone else or at least get an understanding. Sometimes people can't do night school or be aspirational because they are crushed by the poverty that they are trapped in. Low paid jobs are often more physically demanding, which is why mortality for the working classes is much shorter than for the affluent, by I think about 8 years.

A friend of mine is a social worker and she finds it heart breaking that more often than not the children who are brought up by both unemployed parents on welfare, will not aspire, but often follow the pattern set by their parents. Some living in South London (where she works) have rarely been into Central London as they can't afford the transport costs. Poverty is a terrible thing and life shrinks in relation to how much you have. If you can't even afford to travel then life becomes very limited, even to the point that they won't have dreams and aspirations. Often they develop mental health problems through the deprivation.

I think it is always dangerous to assume that the life around us is a mirror of our own (including our experiences) and that everyone has the same ability.

People want to earn £50k+ but don’t want to put any effort in.

Get out of it, people aren't wanting 50k for no effort they are want a level of income where driving to work and heating isn't a luxury.

Businesses will have to increase the wages that they pay for those jobs if the previous wages aren’t retaining enough staff.

At the moment they don’t need to as there are millions of completely unmotivated and unqualified people too lazy to gain the skills needed to do anything else, so these jobs pay minimum wage.

What about a TA giving emergency/irregular medication? Is a teacher's position more responsible responsible than the person giving lifesaving medication for a serious allergy or other medical condition?

I'm a professional entitled to use many letters after my name, following Brexit, with many, very logical and numerate Eastern Europeans no longer arriving, my rate of pay has tripled.
Responsibility, like time served is not a rationale for paying more, it's an excuse used by employers to deny people the appropriate going rate.
Supply and demand drives wages and many jobs have become devalued by second-earners in a family being prepared to do 60% of the hours for 40% of the salary.

I don't know where you get everyone is after a higher paid job. It's a luxury. In fact I think now employers are going to get away for as little as they can have to pay. It is awful that to think to be some sort of a home working and future robot simply answering tickets, well actually just selecting the correct template to use who can be behind keyboard, when dealing with customers can be earning in excess of 20k I think it is unfair. This role in my mind is low level.

As one of those persons paid national minimum wage to be sworn at (on another forum, someone actually said there was law against this when on nmw in their little world) and listen to grown men of a customer crying down the phone, whilst working for quite an intimidating character who you would not want to cross. I even go to work with the pleasure of not having any kitchen facilities (lord knows it didn't even cross my mind in the 1st week) so have to eat turned warm sandwiches which in turn I believe strongly is contributing to diarrhea outbreaks in the unfortunate summer weather. (haven't missed a day off work can't afford to and never have been, but employers will delight in calling me a job hopper)

As we serve the benefit reliant and low paid market ourselves, I cannot expect some high salary. (I actually had to celebrate a couple of weeks back when heard I getting the correct minimum wage!! which the company sold to me as 'pay rise').

And of course I think pretty much daily about the hole I've gotten myself into come end of summer when I'm looking again; because my employers have moved further to a location I cannot get to on minimum wage, what do you think will be new employer's wage offering knowing and having to admit I have been on min wage!?!

Yes great about taking new courses in improve self, but what about those who work shift work and in my case when you just about make it to a class due to work finish time, only to have the tutor change the day when it comes even more unsuitable. And then there is the waste of time, I once paid to take a credit control course for my supposed new role of Credit Controller only to find I was the blooming Admin Assistant!! And please don't tell me about the disgrace of the employer advertising a 23k job which I had no real chance in hell of getting as the employer admitted it filled months before I interview (again time waste)

Please let me know when you see the genuine available higher paid jobs floating about! I would welcome the day when interviews become chargeable.

too much free covid money

How insulting, some of the lowest paid workers worked all through the pandemic and some struggled on 80% of an already low wage.

It is not LAZY or ENTITLED to want to be paid fairly for the work you do and it’s not unreasonable to expect that job to allow you to afford a basic but reasonable standard of living.

But the op is talking about bar and shop jobs, where there are literally more jobs than applicants, a shortage of people wanting the work and those that do are asking for more money

So we are literally in your scenario. Except now these people are being called entitled.

I notice more and more concurrence between right-wing and overly simplistic views.

The ‘just work harder’ trope doesn’t work, if people just worked harder/trained and got themselves into higher earning jobs, the diminish me that of ‘lower level’ jobs would give the senior workers nothing to be senior to. Businesses would shutdown without these essential cogs. Newly qualified senior workers would accept jobs for poorer salaries because the job title would look good on their CV. In no time at all, the senior roles would become more lowly paid, and have to absorb the work of the lower level roles that are no longer filled. Et voila, you clever seniors and managers, you’re all at the bottom of the greasy pole in a heap together, car sharing to the local food bank to save on petrol costs.

Jobs aren’t paid according to their need to society, as demonstrated in this thread numerously. Nursing/childcare/teaching/caring.

Not everyone can “just do better”. Not everyone has the rights skills, health, intelligence, stability at home to get more qualifications, more experience, bust a gut for their employer in the hope it pays off one day. They couldn’t do it even with the guarantee that it would pay off one day. Those people still deserve security and comfort.

Keeping people who are in lower paid/lower status jobs, for whatever the reason is that they’re in them, does not work for society. Parents who are exhausted, broke, lacking in self esteem have limited resources to improve their family’s position, and so the cycle continues for generations. Paying them enough that their full time job affords an adequate and secure home, means of transport, extra curricular activities for their children, some hobbies, travel, time to spend together without keeling over with exhaustion, is good for all of society.

When studies show children who are hungry have poorer outcomes at school, the unacceptable solution is that celebrities and charities come stepping in to help. The appropriate solution is an economy that aligns pay with the cost of living, and a welfare system that supports vulnerable people appropriately, as much as a means of investing in the next generation as it is treating the vulnerable with compassion and dignity. It absolutely makes economic and social sense to secure a proper standard of living for the poorest in society.

Our government are fucking mugs to watch petrol companies make record profits, while subsidising forecourt retail workers’ pay with Universal Credit.

Where in your economics degree did they teach you that lie?

I can’t find a not-rude way to say this, but bully for you. Many, many aren’t able to do so for many reasons.

I think some people are a bit entitled. There was a post from a woman on our local Facebook page, looking for holiday work for her 16 year old. She asked if anyone knew of any jobs going, then added ‘please don’t bother to reply unless you’ll pay more than £15 per hour’
I thought that was pretty entitled. Get yourself to McDonalds with the rest of your class sonny

This was to @FemmeNatal , quote didn’t work properly.

"Demanding higher wages for jobs that are low paid because literally anyone could do them"

People who support my son are paid low wages but very few people have the skills required to do that job.