You always hear the old people say it: “Young people simply don’t want to work these days. They’re lazy and their parents hand everything to them.”
First of all, we do work. Second of all, the reason we don’t want to is because of mistreatment from employers.
In a survey of 30 MCCC students, 70% of these students replied that they have a part-time job while attending MCCC, and 41% responded that they feel stressed working while attending college.
I am among these 70%, and also among the 41%.
According to the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, over 90% of minimum wage jobs are struggling to find the staff to keep their businesses running. In most minimum wage paying places you can find a “help wanted” or “now hiring” sign on the front. Since so many people lost their jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic, why aren’t people running to get new ones?
According to the U.S Bureau of Labor and Statistics, “In 2020, 73.3 million workers aged 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 55.5 percent of all wage and salary workers.”
So, yeah, we’re facing all the stress of being working adults even though we’re barely of age ourselves.
When I was 17, my manager told me that I wasn’t allowed to call out for family functions. Since I did call out for a family function, she decided to take my shifts away.
Katie Carter, a full-time Mercer student currently works 25 hours a week and is a former employee of Panera.
“I work because I need to pay for my car as well as school. I work for most of what I have, so working is important.” Carter says.
For most students like Katie, they don’t have a choice of whether or not they would like to work. With classes, homework and working enough hours for a decent paycheck, students also must deal with mistreatment in the workplace.
Carter says of her time at Panera, “After a while they started treating me pretty poorly. Their starting wage went up to $13 an hour and I was at $12.75. But, I was a trainer and I had the experience so I knew this was not okay, or respectful. I asked them countless times about it, and they told me within a month I would get a raise. Three months later, nothing. I was still training kids that got paid more than me.”
Carter is not alone in her frustrations.
Gia Angelo described the struggle of working and keeping her grades up by saying, “There’s times where I don’t get home until 10 o’clock, and then I have homework to finish. I had started before work and then I had to finish it late, and then I didn’t get enough sleep.”
“Their starting wage went up to $13 an hour and I was at $12.75…I asked them countless times about it, and they told me within a month I would get a raise. Three months later, nothing. I was still training kids that got paid more than me.”
-Katie Carter, MCCC Student
She added, “While I’m at work all I’m thinking about is what I have to do at home. It makes me feel like shit.”
On top of this, Angelo also faced mistreatment at her former job at Brothers Pizza as a waitress.
She says, “I made a small mistake one time and [the manager] pulled me aside but continued to yell at me in front of everybody, saying ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?!’ in front of my coworkers and tables.”
There is no reason why grown adults should be treating people years and years younger than them this way. Shouldn’t they know better?
According to rand.org, nearly 1 in 5 American workers face some type of harassment at their place of work. This includes verbal abuse, sexual assault, threats and behavior from the employer to humiliate the employee. It is undoubtedly worse for younger workers who are treated as the lowest of the low.
Harrison Johnson, who was a part-time Mercer student says, “[The manager at my job] told me I wasn’t doing my job while four other bussers were in the back smoking, and if I don’t pick up the pace I [couldn’t] move up to serving.”
Mistreatment at low-wage jobs can affect a student’s mental health, along with their ability to succeed in school. Fortunately, MCCC offers a few resources.
If a student is struggling, they can access counseling through MCCC by going to mccc.edu, clicking on “students,” then “student services” and then “counseling.”
When the mistreatment from employers ends, they will begin to see more applications coming in.
Students don’t get paid enough to compromise their mental health and overall well-being.
