And in the book he was a checker at the A&P. That's like a minimum wage job! The Kovic's were definitely not wealthy, but not poor either! I guess he was working overtime six days a week to keep up the bills.
shareIt most certainly was not minimum wage. I don't know how much checkers make now, but when I worked for a grocery store in the early 1980s, minimum wage at that time was $3.35/hour, and the checkers at my store were making around $12/hour, and most of them had nice homes and families.
well I worked as a checker in the 70's for as little as two bucks an hour..
You do what you have to do when you have to do it..it's that simple
"around $12/hr" in the early eighties for a entry-level, no experience needed, unskilled job? HAHAHA NO.
You wouldn't get that much TODAY for an entry-level cashier job, anywhere.
Either your memory is seriously faulty or you are straight up lying. You'd get minimum wage at best, IF the job was on the books.
I never said that they made $12/hour as entry level. Most of them had been working at the store for years. The job was unionized, so they got regular salary increases over the years. I'm not sure what the starting rate was for new hires, but it was nowhere near minimum wage. If I had to guess, I would say they probably started at around $8 hour in the early 80s, which is equivalent to around $20/hour today. http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=8&year1=1982&year2=2016
shareIn California, before the unions were dismantled, my friend was making $22/hour as a cashier at a supermarket chain (in the early 90's). He had a beautiful, mint-condition 67' Mustang after just graduating high school. It took him only 3 years to make that much, so the other poster you're responding to doesn't know what they're talking about.
There was certainly a time that you could raise a family by being a cashier at a grocery store.
A 67-foot Mustang? Damn! Must've been hard to corner in that thing!
shareI worked for a grocery store from 16 to 21. When I left I was making $9.00 and I was part time. That didn't count double time on Sundays, Holidays and Overtime.
Many checkers are in Unions. I was at the time. We got an automatic raise every time we clocked 1045 hours. That didn't count the raises we got each year. Even a poor evaluation got you a 5 cent an hour raise.
So, yeah, an adult, full time checker, assuming he had worked for the store for years, could easily be pulling in $12.00 or more an hour.
so whats the plan with these unions?
force grocery stores to pay staff 5x the normal salary, thereby forcing store to put prices up by about 3x and then go out of business?
Damn 12 whaaat?
Come on man.
You yankin' my crank.
and let's don't forget that back in early to mid-sixties, all the cash registers were still mechanical beasts. Electric yes, but if it lost power (very frequent in the south back then) they had to hand cranked. They would actually run by hand crank!
those were the days...lol
I guess you're all right. Back in the day, many people worked what would be considered menial jobs today that only teens work part-time and actually owned a house, a car, and raised a family on it. Had a great uncle that was a cook, not a chef, but a common restaurant cook and lived in a fairly nice house. Cooks aren't exactly making $20 or $30 an hour unless they're those offshore or overseas workers.
shareI've always got that impression myself, that right up till the early 80s, people could raise a family and live a decent middle class lifestyle with a minimum wage job, by simply sacking groceries, being an old fashioned milkman, dog catcher, working as a cash register clerk, cook, or something else like that.
But since the mid 1980s to present day, those type of jobs are more for teenagers looking for play money, or the early 20s crowd at the oldest. Ofcourse you still see plenty of people far, far older then that working those jobs today, but it's more of a struggle to live in a decent 1600-2000 sq ft house (or more) in a nice neighborhood and raise a family. Before the mid 80s I guess people just took a long morgage on house or something, had long term payments on their cars. Today you work a job like that full time then you're in the lower middle class bracket or even on the poverty line, just barely getting by. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and those type of jobs in my time and present day were always jobs for teens/early 20s, but it's clear that before say 1982 or so, it was a different story and you could actually raise a family by working minimum wage.
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Yes the housing market was much different then and up until maybe the mid 1980's? Then prices just skyrocketed. That along with college tuitions (a friend of mine paid for his entire 4 year college degree from 1986-90 by working as a waiter part time at a middle of the road restaurant). Then add into that all the new gadgets, toys, tv cable and Internet bills, and computers and cell phones kids have come to expect and all the extracurricular activities and probably more I'm not even thinking of.....but all those things made it MUCH harder now to raise a family or even support yourself.
shareIt was obvious the father was the manager of the store. He tells off his son for slacking off and gives him a number of duties to do.
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And back then the managers weren't making much more than the workers. Places like Costco today pay those employees in the teens and 20's, but Wal Mart and the like are still paying minimum wage and don't allow much more than part-time work
shareJobs paid better back then...I knew checkers who made great money, deli workers, bakers, etc. Hell, I used to seal coat playgrounds after they re-blacktopped them in the summers during college in the 80's....made great money! Plus, think how low their bills would have been. If they bought the house in the 1940's, maybe $5K-$7K tops. Wages being low isn't an issue if your cost of living is affordable.
My folks bought their first house in 1961 for $11K (2400 sq ft). Loans were 15 years so they paid it off in 1976. They were 40 years old & had no more house payment. Dad was making around $20K back then, with no house payment...no car payments. Utilities were cheaper, no cell phone or cable bills like today. I remember him telling me by 1980 he was putting $1K per month into a savings account earning 10% with a daily compound.
People used to live to their means...credit was tight & expensive. People saved, paid cash & paid things off.
yeah, ron's burger friend even said " you could even be manager like your old man" or something close to that
shareFirst of all he appeared to be a manager. Secondly, back then life wasn't as expensive as it is today. Real wages have been on the decline since the 1970s, but before that a person could live a decent life on a job that today would pay subsistence wages.
The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of history.
-Mao Zedong
No these days. Ron's father would be the manager of the store just to have a job that has health care coverage. On top of that. He would have a part time job just to make ends meat. Or he might have a job selling drugs.
Back then. Times were easier.
Boomers had it easy.
shareMy grandfather raised three kids working in a grocery story.
share