In 1995, I was 21 years old, a college dropout (Don’t worry, I eventually returned), and living with my mom in Sapulpa Oklahoma (which is about 15 minutes outside of Tulsa.) Don’t worry too much about me, I eventually got my finances in order, somewhat, and returned to school. Honest! However, at this point I supported myself working a variety of minimum wage jobs at the Mall: The Arcade, the Market Research company, and most important for this post, the Mall’s very own mega-rip off music boutique, Record Town (A Trans-World Music company!)

One November morning, I left for work only to discover that instead of the cold rain I’d grown used to, it was a sunny, blue day and 79 degrees. Why this didn’t inspire me to turn on the weather channel to see what was the deal I don’t know. let’s call it “stupidity”, because I simply assumed I’d lucked into an unseasonably pleasant day, grabbed a light tweed jacket, and split for my thankless job at Record Town.

Business was brisk during the first half of my shift, as such wonderful weather apparently made people more willing to pay the usurious 16 dollars we charged per CD, but around 4:30 PM Mall traffic mysteriously and suddenly halved. My coworkers and I assumed it was simply good fortune and failed to think anything of the fact that customers coming into the Mall after about 4:00 were wearing much heavier jackets than the one I was wearing. I spent the afternoon listening to blur and ABBA, and generally enjoying what I wrongly assumed was a gift-given easy shift, something to amuse myself with prior to the date I had planned for immediately after work.

At 6:00, my date called up to the shop to suggest that we reschedule for the next night, “considering how bad the weather’s getting”. I thought she was being playful and cleverly responded “I know! I forgot my bikini and besides, I wouldn’t dream of letting you take me out in the sweltering hellish heat.” (Just imagine my faux-dandy accent and my attempt to seem charming. It’s cute and annoying, I assure you.) She laughed, I laughed, I started to clarify what time we’d be meeting up and then she realized that I thought she was kidding. Helpfully, she proceeded to inform me of the snow storm currently churning out an inch of snow and predicted to dump a full 6 inches before midnight.

That’s when I noticed everyone at the mall were wearing scarves, coats and boots. I immediately left the shop and ran over to the large panel windows in the food court, where sure enough I saw a nuclear-winter sky and a nice covering of wet, dirty snow over everything, including my poor car (required by the mall to be parked outside, instead of in covered parking). Hilariously, the heat from earlier in the day caused the first wave of snow to melt, which meant that as soon as the temperatures dropped sufficiently, the slush would turn into ice-glue, which would inevitably be buried under several inches of snow.

Let’s return to 2005 for a moment. As you’ve all certainly noticed, over the last few weeks we’ve seen conservatives and other pampered idiots exhibit a creepy fashion for castigating the victims and families of the disaster for, oddly enough, not having been sufficiently Rambo-esque in the face of chaos. Bloated and pampered, far too many Americans like to imagine that when confronted by disaster they’d magically morph into MacGuyver, and with steely-eyed determination they’d save themselves and everyone around them.

The standard argument is (generally) that the victims obviously didn’t want to save themselves, or that they were much too lazy and stupid. If they couldn’t get out by car or with the help of the government, why didn’t they simply just walk out of town? Well, we might say, it takes a little more than 6 hours to walk away from a hurricane. Or perhaps, the authorities weren’t letting people leave on foot. Well then, they ask, why then didn’t they just leave as soon as they heard danger was coming? It’s not like they had much to worry about, considering that they were all (du du duuuuuuu) minimum wages workers!

That’s a good question, if you’re an asshole. Many thousands of the people stuck in this situation were minimum wage workers. People who make, if I’m not mistaken, minimum wage, presumably for a large, faceless company that considers them absolutely expendable. Obviously, nothing makes you more flexible than when you’re stuck making jack/shit, while working for a company that will fire you if you give them half an excuse. Let’s face it, unless the government orders them to close, these companies aren’t saving a job for anyone who didn’t show up to work. The fact is, you really can’t afford to leave work on a whim because there’s also the unpleasant business of the reality of minimum wage work – Assuming you aren’t summarily fired for having left early to save yourself, if you leave early for a disaster and nothing happens, you’ll will lose money you won’t be able to make up.

Don’t believe me? Let’s revisit 1995. Here I am, staring out that huge Food Court window at my gradually freezing car, the realization that my balls will freeze off as soon as I walk outside creeping into my mind, and seeing clearly that I’m not actually going to be making out after work as I had hoped. Damn it. Oh, and there’s also the little problem of getting home. In order to do that, I’m going to have to drive, on the highway, in the snow, about 20 miles.

Here’s where my conservative readers will tell me that I should have simply closed the store and went home. Ha ha, that’s an excellent suggestion chums, why didn’t I think of that one? Because I wasn’t allowed to. Oh, you bet I called my manager to ask for permission to close early, with many harrowing tales of potentially gruesome and painful ends to the life of yours truly. To my delight I learned about a hilarious Mall policy I had never heard of before: Unless at least one Anchor Store closes early, any boutique in the mall that closes early will be fined several hundreds of dollars for every half an hour the store was closed before 9 PM. If an assistant, say, me, closes the store before an anchor, without official permission, that employee would be subject to punitive scheduling eduction. Which only goes to show that you should ALWAYS read the fine print of your employee contract, though that lesson didn’t do much by way of actually helping me then.

Luckily for me, not a single goddamned one of the anchor stores were closed, and therefore, my stupid store had to stay open too. I like to imagine some dumb bastard deciding that the only thing that could get him through the snowstorm was an overpriced copy of Alanis Morrissete’s Jagged Little Pill. God damn I would love to slap that guy. Fortunately, Dillard’s wised up and decided to let their serfs go home “early” at 8:30, so by 8:45 I was out in the parking lot with my tweed blazer failing to keep me warm, scraping the ice off of my windshield with a broken scrape. By this point the roads were too slick to risk driving on them, so I spent the night on my friend Bill’s couch.

And that’s the worst of it. We got three days of wonderful snow, I did in fact get to make out the very next night, and I vowed never again to do anything remotely resembling sticking out my neck for the store again. Since that time I have never assumed anything but that my employers would use me for Soylent Green if it were legal, and I’ve benefited greatly from this assumption.

Sadly, most people who find themselves stuck in minimum wage living lack my cynicism, and though you may think them stupid for it, most people who work in such jobs actually believe that they’re part of a “team” or a “family”. Hell, the pink collar laborers who make deceptively “higher” wages in corporate jobs feel the same way. Why they believe this nonsense I’ll never know, but it’s something that their bosses are actively encouraging at every step on the ladder. About the only people who actually benefit from this feeling of “family” are the boards and CEOs who loot their companies, and brag to their employees at company meetings about expensive vacations, luxuries that the plebes will never once come close to understanding. Because we’re a team don’t you know, and if I get a sports car, it’s kind of like you getting one too!

People, what I’ve just bored you with was nothing more than a humorous inconvenience for someone like me. Hell, it was fun when you think about it, and to be honest I looked really cool in my jacket. Plus, when I related the story on my date the next day, I embellished in a funny way that I am convinced led directly to my making out. I can only imagine what it must be like for someone supporting a family, or forced by whatever circumstances to make a real, permanent living working for the Feudal Lords who employ the minimum wage workforce. People who despite what conservative libertarian dickholes would like to think, simply don’t have the luxury of making snap decisions about their fate. If they choose wrongly, they may find themselves jobless, homeless, or worse. It doesn’t surprise me, but it saddens me that the armchair Rambos can’t imagine how their circumstances don’t apply to everyone.

Well, imagine no more, because in fact, you will be fucked if a disaster forces you to choose between your family/life, and your minimum wage job:

An employee was fired from her $7-an-hour job at the Family Dollar store in Spring Hill after taking time off to rescue two younger siblings from hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, she says.

Kolonie Sims, 20, third-in-charge at the discount retail store, said her bosses and a district manager gave her permission to go.

But when she got back Monday after two days in Mississippi, Sims said, she was told that she no longer had a job.

“I had to get my family,” she said. “I had to get them. I went and did what I said I was going to do.”

Her bosses didn’t necessarily object to her trip, she said, but objected to her leaving work four hours early on Thursday and not leaving for Mississippi until late Friday.

I love that last bit: It’s not enough that she receive permission to take care of family business, now the company who barely pays her demands that she submit for their approval any and all preparations she might need to make. This kind of paternalism might make some people happy, but to me it’s the same thing that leads republicans to fire their democratic employees.

However, lest you think that she got what she deserved, there’s another article covering this very same story that provides some additional details as to the motives of Lord Family Dollar’s treatment of their serfs:

Shortly after Kolonie returned to Columbia, she was fired from her job as an assistant manager at a discount retail outlet. Kolonie, who had risen quickly in the discount chain and had hoped to soon become a manager, was told her departure for the Gulf Coast had “messed up their payroll.”

I don’t know all the facts people, but make no mistake – when you work minimum wage, you are chattel and will be treated like it and this story only illustrates how precarious the world is for these people. I wonder then how our brave Rambo’s would cope if their corporate jobs revoked their vacations and stock packages if they needed to tend to a massive emergency.