You’re lazy. Look, you can argue with that if you want, but it won’t matter. You’re lazy, because you’re out of work and you’re not going back even though there are jobs available.
Yes, sure, those jobs are low-wage — hell, below-minimum-wage in most cases — jobs, and they don’t offer health care or paid time off or sick leave or childcare options. But they’re JOBS, and you need one.
Oh, please, stop your whining, you lazy millennial! We’re all fully aware that the pandemic caused this upheaval in your life, and that you were gainfully employed with a bright future in your chosen career before this monstrous life-stoppage occurred and the entire country hit a reset button.
But we’re tired of hearing about how you’re going to get back to work “soon” — when companies figure out what this new normal is going to look like and begin hiring to fill spots that were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. I mean, it’s been like two whole months now since people started emerging from their COVID cocoons. Why isn’t your office job hiring yet? McDonald’s is.
What’s that? Why yes, in fact we were the same people who just a year ago — during the height of the minimum wage debate — were ridiculing fast-food workers and other low-wage earners for their lack of ambition. We probably even gave advice, such as telling you that if you didn’t like those low wages and bad benefits that you should just stop working at those places and get better jobs.
But in our defense, we didn’t think you’d actually do it.
Look, we get that it’s hard on you. We know that $7.25 per hour (or a third of that plus tips for restaurant jobs), with zero benefits and no PTO can’t be easy. And if you have even one child, well, there goes your entire check for childcare. But really, that’s a YOU problem.
Because our problem right now is that we’re being forced to wait an extra 30 minutes for our table at Cracker Barrel, and the drive-thru line to get a burger and fries is backed up all the way to the Dollar General (doesn’t matter the town).
And that’s just for the chain places. The poor ol’ mom-and-pop places are really struggling. Some of them have been forced to shut down temporarily because they can’t find employees willing to work.
No, not all of them. Some of the locally owned places are doing great, actually. But only because they got lucky and just happened to have offered their employees better pay and benefits prior to all this happening, so those employees stuck with them and didn’t bail out the first time a better opportunity came along.
It’s just so wrong, what’s happening — giving out all this free money to these people who never plan ahead and who always jump at the easy, short-term money.
I’m glad that these Republican governors are putting a stop to this free money train. That’ll teach those deadbeats a lesson — get those kids back in the “daycare” down the street and get back to both jobs. The free ride is over!
WHAT!?!? How dare you compare these small business owners — the lifeblood of all that is good and holy in America — to these government leeches sucking up taxpayer dollars?
Yes, it’s true that American small businesses took in hundreds of billions in “loans,” which weren’t loans at all but were instead straight government handouts. And yes, it’s true that many of those businesses were on the verge of collapse after just a month of COVID restrictions, because they had virtually no savings and many were operating in the red. And yes, it’s true that we’ve re-upped those loan programs twice since then, and also given local customers free money that we encouraged them to spend in those local businesses.
And, OK, technically, maybe it’s also true that the businesses have been depressing wages for years and using every possible tactic to keep from giving employees better pay and benefits. But man, it sure was smooth the way they convinced all those employees that they couldn’t offer health care anymore because that dadgum Obamacare just drove costs through the roof.
It sucked that people died and stuff. But how else could all of us afford to buy two sorta-hamburgers for the price of an apple if the workers are paid a living wage and given benefits and junk?
Enough is enough! These people need to get back to work so all the rest of us can go back to our normal lives and to pretending that the American economy isn’t propped up by millions of people who are stuck in an endless cycle of poverty and hopelessness.
They need to get back to both of their jobs and stop being so lazy!
