5 ms·

How aggravating. "I'll go through 10 people before I find another like him" yet he will continue to pay the man 7.25 an hour. Everything you want out of an em

by TGJ 16y ago

How aggravating. "I'll go through 10 people before I find another like him" yet he will continue to pay the man 7.25 an hour. Everything you want out of an employee and nothing else and you can't pay the guy better than dirt cheap minimum wage and somehow lament at his death.

volski 16y ago
Yea I'm sure the manager who probably makes 10 an hour can just start giving people raises at will. How aggravating indeed.
- jimmyjim 16y ago
  That he complained that he "never even got a card" meant that he was not appreciated as a friend by his manager-- that's something completely beside the monetary wage. They should have been friends, after 10 years together. And even if the manager was earning a low amount there's no reason that in just one year out of those 10 he could not have given him a Christmas bonus. Even a small amount, so that Mr. Smith would not have been able to say that he "never got a [...] Christmas bonus."
  - volski 16y ago
    >That he complained that he "never even got a card" meant that he was not even appreciated by his manager "I kind of forced him" to celebrate holidays, Rogers said. That quote kind of puts a different perspective on it. His roommate had to force holidays on him, so is it a wonder his manager didn't give him cards? Maybe that's just the way he came off. "He might not have meant something to somebody else, but he was like family to us. He meant something to us." - Dayhoff, his boss at Crab Shack. That sounds like he appreciated him to me. Quit acting like you guys care about Neil Smith more than his no-wage-raising, no-bonus-giving, no-card-giving manager. That guy actually lost somebody, you guys didn't. So don't be so quick to call him uncaring.
    - jimmyjim 16y ago
      He explicitly complained to his friend of not getting a card or getting a raise. Celebrating holidays or not is a completely separate issue.
  - gcheong 16y ago
    You're taking a couple complaints and extrapolating that to mean his manager did not appreciate him. You don't know to what extent his manager may have tried to show appreciation in other ways or what their relationship was like.
- jbm 16y ago
  Out of curiosity, do you feel that 10 years of loyal service should not be rewarded with any kind of raise at all? Even if he wasn't earning much more than 8 or 9 dollars an hour even then, but it probably would mean quite a bit for someone in that situation. With inflation, he was actually being paid less 10 years later.
  - volski 16y ago
    The real question you should be asking is if his pay is so low, why didn't he get another job? There's a reason he stayed. Did he deserve it? Maybe, the article mentioned he started out as a waiter and (moved up?) to dishwasher. Maybe dishwasher paid more, who knows. But my whole point is a manager in a restaurant has less control over raises than you seem to suggest.
    - jonhendry 16y ago
      "Maybe, the article mentioned he started out as a waiter " I think it was the roommate, Rogers, who had been a waiter.
  - BobbyH 16y ago
    > With inflation, he was actually being paid less 10 years later. I looked this up and Neil Alan Smith's wages grew by 41% from 2001 to 2010, outpacing inflation of 23%. Inflation from Aug. 2001 to Aug. 2010 increased prices by 23% (http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_Rate/historicalinflation.aspx http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_Rate/historical...). Neil Alan Smith's wages started in 2001 at the federal minimum wage of $5.15. The federal minimum wage was constant from 1997 to 2007, but Florida passed a minimum wage law increasing its state minimum wage to $6.15 in 2005. Other adjustments to the Florida minimum wage increased his wage to $7.25 by 2010. (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Florida_minimum_wage_history http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Florida_minimum_wage_histo... and http://www.floridajobs.org/minimumwage/index.htm http://www.floridajobs.org/minimumwage/index.htm)
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    Odds are if the manager really liked him, the manager would have liked to give him a raise. However, sometimes available finances simply do not warrant a raise. Sometimes higher management who does not know an employee says "why should we pay him more, we can just find another Joe to do the same job", without knowing the measure of the man.
jbm 16y ago
You said it. Quote: Dayhoff, his boss at Crab Shack, read the story on the Times website and found himself outraged by unsympathetic comments posted by some readers. "I just can't get over some of those people reacting the way they did," he said. "This guy was a human being. He might not have meant something to somebody else, but he was like family to us. He meant something to us." -- Meanwhile: -- Jeff Lackey, who lives across the street from Mr. Smith's address at Hollywood Park, recalled one of the rare conversations Mr. Smith initiated. "I was coming back from the Dumpster and he invited me over," said Lackey, 53. "He said, 'Jeff, I've worked at Crab Shack for 10 years. I never got a raise or a Christmas bonus. I never even got a card.' " -- Yeah, I'm _sure_ he was appreciated in life. /s TL/DR: Actions speak louder than words.
- _delirium 16y ago
  Not really making a political statement either way, but I've been very surprised at how much small gestures can mean in some situations, and how relative status is. About 5 years ago, some fellow grad students and I had a fairly recent Guatemalan immigrant serving as the janitor in our part of the building. It was basically awkward all around: the janitors normally came in late-ish to vacuum and empty trash cans and such, to avoid being there when most of the employees were, but grad students, especially in CS, work pretty random hours, so we were often there at 11pm or whatever. The guy spoke no English, and none of us spoke more than about 30 words of Spanish, but somehow given our life positions, none of us were comfortable totally ignoring another human who came into our area (I imagine some people are more used to doing so). So there was always this awkward attempt to say hello and make smalltalk, which mostly ended up in Spanish because the grad students knew a tiny bit more Spanish than the guy knew English. He actually seemed pretty happy about that interaction happening at all. At some point, though, we ended up collecting like $200 and a card for Christmas (perhaps we felt a bit guilty that he came around emptying trash and vacuuming while we were doing a mixture of procrastinating on Bejeweled Blitz and maybe sometimes writing papers), which he found amazingly surprising. From our perspective it was quite strange that we were capable of making a gesture that made someone surprised/grateful, because I mean we were poor grad students, which in our context was a low-money/low-status occupation.
Tichy 16y ago
Maybe by "another like him" he meant "another who is willing to work for minimum wage".
webwright 16y ago
A lot of people make this point. I'm not sure I'm ready to pass quick judgement that the restaurant owner should reward loyalty with money. Restaurant owners can be pretty poor and a 50 cent raise would result in the owner having ~$1300 less in his pocket every year. While he appreciates loyalty, he might rather suck up the extra effort of replacing dishwashers than rewarding loyal ones. He could be armpit deep in debt, have a child in college, or otherwise have reasons that money is tight. Or, yeah, he COULD just be a rich asshole (note: restaurants are not cash cows). The first time I ran a small business, I was shocked at how my thinking turned here. Someone asks for a raise and the money goes straight out of my pocket if I say yes. Which isn't a simple decision if the business isn't a huge profit center.
- gruseom 16y ago
  I think that's right. Plus it goes against the spirit of the article to rush to judge the owner. It's only because he cared enough about Neil Smith that the rest of us ever heard of him. And condemning him based only on his class position is pretty much what the original comments did to Neil.
vaksel 16y ago
personally I found the manager's comment very condescending. 10 is just such a small number. it's like "yeah this guy is VERY important, I'd have to interview like 2 whole people to find someone as "good" as him"

by TGJ 16y ago

volski 16y ago

Yea I'm sure the manager who probably makes 10 an hour can just start giving people raises at will. How aggravating indeed.

jimmyjim 16y ago
That he complained that he "never even got a card" meant that he was not appreciated as a friend by his manager-- that's something completely beside the monetary wage. They should have been friends, after 10 years together. And even if the manager was earning a low amount there's no reason that in just one year out of those 10 he could not have given him a Christmas bonus. Even a small amount, so that Mr. Smith would not have been able to say that he "never got a [...] Christmas bonus."
- volski 16y ago
  >That he complained that he "never even got a card" meant that he was not even appreciated by his manager "I kind of forced him" to celebrate holidays, Rogers said. That quote kind of puts a different perspective on it. His roommate had to force holidays on him, so is it a wonder his manager didn't give him cards? Maybe that's just the way he came off. "He might not have meant something to somebody else, but he was like family to us. He meant something to us." - Dayhoff, his boss at Crab Shack. That sounds like he appreciated him to me. Quit acting like you guys care about Neil Smith more than his no-wage-raising, no-bonus-giving, no-card-giving manager. That guy actually lost somebody, you guys didn't. So don't be so quick to call him uncaring.
  - jimmyjim 16y ago
    He explicitly complained to his friend of not getting a card or getting a raise. Celebrating holidays or not is a completely separate issue.
- gcheong 16y ago
  You're taking a couple complaints and extrapolating that to mean his manager did not appreciate him. You don't know to what extent his manager may have tried to show appreciation in other ways or what their relationship was like.
jbm 16y ago
Out of curiosity, do you feel that 10 years of loyal service should not be rewarded with any kind of raise at all? Even if he wasn't earning much more than 8 or 9 dollars an hour even then, but it probably would mean quite a bit for someone in that situation. With inflation, he was actually being paid less 10 years later.
- volski 16y ago
  The real question you should be asking is if his pay is so low, why didn't he get another job? There's a reason he stayed. Did he deserve it? Maybe, the article mentioned he started out as a waiter and (moved up?) to dishwasher. Maybe dishwasher paid more, who knows. But my whole point is a manager in a restaurant has less control over raises than you seem to suggest.
  - jonhendry 16y ago
    "Maybe, the article mentioned he started out as a waiter " I think it was the roommate, Rogers, who had been a waiter.
- BobbyH 16y ago
  > With inflation, he was actually being paid less 10 years later. I looked this up and Neil Alan Smith's wages grew by 41% from 2001 to 2010, outpacing inflation of 23%. Inflation from Aug. 2001 to Aug. 2010 increased prices by 23% (http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_Rate/historicalinflation.aspx http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_Rate/historical...). Neil Alan Smith's wages started in 2001 at the federal minimum wage of $5.15. The federal minimum wage was constant from 1997 to 2007, but Florida passed a minimum wage law increasing its state minimum wage to $6.15 in 2005. Other adjustments to the Florida minimum wage increased his wage to $7.25 by 2010. (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Florida_minimum_wage_history http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Florida_minimum_wage_histo... and http://www.floridajobs.org/minimumwage/index.htm http://www.floridajobs.org/minimumwage/index.htm)
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  Odds are if the manager really liked him, the manager would have liked to give him a raise. However, sometimes available finances simply do not warrant a raise. Sometimes higher management who does not know an employee says "why should we pay him more, we can just find another Joe to do the same job", without knowing the measure of the man.

jbm 16y ago

You said it. Quote: Dayhoff, his boss at Crab Shack, read the story on the Times website and found himself outraged by unsympathetic comments posted by some readers. "I just can't get over some of those people reacting the way they did," he said. "This guy was a human being. He might not have meant something to somebody else, but he was like family to us. He meant something to us." -- Meanwhile: -- Jeff Lackey, who lives across the street from Mr. Smith's address at Hollywood Park, recalled one of the rare conversations Mr. Smith initiated. "I was coming back from the Dumpster and he invited me over," said Lackey, 53. "He said, 'Jeff, I've worked at Crab Shack for 10 years. I never got a raise or a Christmas bonus. I never even got a card.' " -- Yeah, I'm _sure_ he was appreciated in life. /s TL/DR: Actions speak louder than words.

_delirium 16y ago
Not really making a political statement either way, but I've been very surprised at how much small gestures can mean in some situations, and how relative status is. About 5 years ago, some fellow grad students and I had a fairly recent Guatemalan immigrant serving as the janitor in our part of the building. It was basically awkward all around: the janitors normally came in late-ish to vacuum and empty trash cans and such, to avoid being there when most of the employees were, but grad students, especially in CS, work pretty random hours, so we were often there at 11pm or whatever. The guy spoke no English, and none of us spoke more than about 30 words of Spanish, but somehow given our life positions, none of us were comfortable totally ignoring another human who came into our area (I imagine some people are more used to doing so). So there was always this awkward attempt to say hello and make smalltalk, which mostly ended up in Spanish because the grad students knew a tiny bit more Spanish than the guy knew English. He actually seemed pretty happy about that interaction happening at all. At some point, though, we ended up collecting like $200 and a card for Christmas (perhaps we felt a bit guilty that he came around emptying trash and vacuuming while we were doing a mixture of procrastinating on Bejeweled Blitz and maybe sometimes writing papers), which he found amazingly surprising. From our perspective it was quite strange that we were capable of making a gesture that made someone surprised/grateful, because I mean we were poor grad students, which in our context was a low-money/low-status occupation.

Tichy 16y ago

Maybe by "another like him" he meant "another who is willing to work for minimum wage".

webwright 16y ago

A lot of people make this point. I'm not sure I'm ready to pass quick judgement that the restaurant owner should reward loyalty with money. Restaurant owners can be pretty poor and a 50 cent raise would result in the owner having ~$1300 less in his pocket every year. While he appreciates loyalty, he might rather suck up the extra effort of replacing dishwashers than rewarding loyal ones. He could be armpit deep in debt, have a child in college, or otherwise have reasons that money is tight. Or, yeah, he COULD just be a rich asshole (note: restaurants are not cash cows). The first time I ran a small business, I was shocked at how my thinking turned here. Someone asks for a raise and the money goes straight out of my pocket if I say yes. Which isn't a simple decision if the business isn't a huge profit center.

gruseom 16y ago
I think that's right. Plus it goes against the spirit of the article to rush to judge the owner. It's only because he cared enough about Neil Smith that the rest of us ever heard of him. And condemning him based only on his class position is pretty much what the original comments did to Neil.

vaksel 16y ago

personally I found the manager's comment very condescending. 10 is just such a small number. it's like "yeah this guy is VERY important, I'd have to interview like 2 whole people to find someone as "good" as him"