I was reading an article in the New York Times the other day titled "A Part-Time Life, As Hours Shrink and Shift", and for some reason, it really stuck with me. In the article, it details the life of a part time worker. Usually thinking that they'll get something like 30 hours a week, they sign up for a job at a retail or grocery store and begin working with 20-30 hours a week. Then, all of a sudden, their hours will get reduced to 5 or maybe 10. With an average wage of ~$10 (which they calculate, by the way, by accounting for $8 of salary and $2 of part time benefits) an hour, it's no surprise that single moms can't raise their children-- they're essentially only making $16,000 a year!
The logic around why stores do this is because, simply, it's cheaper for them. Having a bunch of part timers instead of full timers gives them additional flexibility, cost savings in not having to provide full-time benefits, and workers that, incrementally, don't really impact their schedules too much if they decide to leave (finding a replacement for a full-time employee can be much more difficult).
I think the reason why it struck me is that I came from an industry (consulting) where you're paid pretty well, and I think that sometimes people take that for granted. I once was talking to a few of my friends (also consultants) and we were chatting about what our "after" life could be (after we leave consulting, as we always did, because it's like talking about what you'll do when you get out of prison-- you glorify it to be this amazing thing. Whether it actually is glorious or not is a blog for another day...). One of my friends, who was a superior role to mine (manager) was saying that she could never work somewhere that would pay her less than $110K a year. I was aghast. $110K is almost three times the average household income. That's crazy! She was basically claiming that, because she had grown accustomed to the life that she led, she couldn't fathom a way that she would be happy living her life on less money than that. She estimated that $110K was how much she needed to keep her life "stable". Not even "nice" or "enjoyable" but "stable". Granted, consultants have a skewed version of the world (not living in one place for longer than a week at a time and spending a lot of time in airports will do that to ya), but this was crazy.
I left the consulting biz and now I'm going back at school. I won't lie. I do miss making an income and generally not stressing about money all the time (I am very fiscally responsible, I hate having debt). However, I don't know if I need that much to live a comfortable life. Now I'm stuck in this self-analysis game of "Who's the weird one?" (a game I play often). Am I crazy for thinking that I could live comfortably on half of that? Is she the crazy one for thinking she needs that much to be happy? I don't know, and I probably will never know, but it was definitely a wake up call for me to hear that and then read this. Moral of the story? Just be happy for what you've got. You might not think it's enough, but it's probably more than what other people have. Feeling pretty grateful today.
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