$15 an hour minimum wage? Then move over you lazy bums - we are moving in to take your jobs!

Free Republic | January 5, 2014 | SamAdams76

[SamAdams76]

All this caterwauling lately by the sloppily organized "Fight for 15" movement, with the mission to force a $15 minimum wage for low-skill workers has got me to thinking: If retailers and fast food joints are going to be forced to pay $15 a hour to sling fries or ring up sales at a cash register, than why not pay that money to people like me?

Now I'm pretty happy in my high-skill daytime job, thank you very much. I make plenty enough money to pay the bills and then some. I'm doing okay, don't worry about me. However, like most people who don't have a million bucks or more sitting in the bank, I could always use extra cash. And I do have enough free time nights and weekends to work a second job. However, the current wages being paid for most of those part-time jobs just never appealed to me - not worth the aggravation. So I come home at night, have dinner, surf some Internet, read a book, maybe a little Netflix. Weekends pretty much the same, I run a few errands, do some yard work, but basically a lot of free time in which I could be earning a few extra bucks.

However, if the lazy bums who are pissing and moaning about how unappreciated they are for doing a low-skill job get their wish, and their employers are now forced to pay a minimum wage of $15/hr, consider me in the market for that second job.

If I work a second job 25 hours a week at $15 an hour, that comes to $375 a week and somewhere around $300 after taxes.

Now that's only a fraction of what I make in my full-time job but 300 extra dollars in my pocket every week is nothing to sneeze at. That's around $15,000 a year that I can spend on myself because it's "extra" money.

What will I do with that money?

I can get that new MacBook Pro I've been wanting. I can put a billiards table in the rec room without the wife getting all weird on me. I can outfit my "man cave" with a bar and new flat screen TV and the wife can't say a thing because what I make on my second job is splurge money just for me. Of course, I'll spend some of that money on her too and who knows, at $15/hr, she might want to get her own part-time "low-skill" job to get some extras for herself.

So that brings me to the point of this screed, if companies are going to be forced to pay $15/hr minimum, than not only are they going to be more choosy about who they hire but they are going to have a vastly expanded pool of candidates to choose from - so they no longer have to choose from the bottom of the barrel.

People like myself are going to run circles around the disaffected youths and the lifetime losers that previously held those jobs. I've been in the workforce more than 25 years. I show up on time, have a positive attitude, never complain and gripe, and don't take sick days. My customer relation skills are top-notch. All customers will get service with a smile and I'll keep them coming back. So who do you think these companies are going to pay $15 to? Somebody like me who will be dependable, hard-working and a net asset to their operation or some punk kid with attitude who wears a ballcap backwards? Or some 40-year-old loser with poor personal hygiene and who still lives in his parents basement? Or some shrill, needy single mom who is always bitching and looking for time off because her kid is home from school, or she needs to go to court to squeeze more money out of her ex-husband, or some other drama?

Not only that but these companies will quickly find that they need less employees because people like me can do twice the work of these slobs. So a typical McDonalds, for instance, who might staff 30 workers for the night shift might be able to make do with 15-20 as they are not getting much better quality employees.

So all this rabble who are picketing fast-food places, supermarkets and retail stores to get their $15/hr "living wage" are in for a big surprise should they ever get their wish. For they will have to now compete with people like me and millions of others who already have the skill set these employers are looking for. They will have priced themselves right out of the job market because they simply aren't worth $15/hr.

Then what will they do?

[stevem]

Wouldn’t $5,000 per hour be better?

[CorporateStepsister]

Any enterprising hard worker will likely be best off getting a franchise of his own and end up making more than twenty-nine thousand a year and he’ll be able to make a small fortune.

[cableguymn]

around here a 1/4 ponder with cheese value meal will set you back about 7 bucks..

But our DQ’s have 5 dollar lunches. burger, fries, sundae and drink, it’s hard to fit it all in.

McDonald’s would leave me hungry.

[GraceG]

I thought upwards of 6 bucks for a McD “Value” meal was starting to get silly, Imagine how the college agers are gonna feel paying 15 bucks for a #2?

[Boomer One]

Increase in minimum wage =’s Increase in illegal immigration

Expect more to come over and export more US dollars to Mexico, especially in “sanctuary” cities and states. End result is a weaker America caused primarily by a lack of entry jobs for youth that would build responsibility and teach a work ethic.