As many of you know, she graduated high school last week.  Now she thinks that since she has a high school diploma she deserves more than minimum wage.  I’ve tried to talk her out of quitting, she has seniority and her employers are willing to schedule her to work around HER schedule.  She doesn’t understand how valuable her employer being flexible with her hours will be to her when she starts college in the fall.

She’s been working as a “courtesy clerk” at our local grocery store for over a year and a half and her employers have only had good things to say about her yet they play the broke card and tell her they can’t afford to give her a 10 cent an hour raise.  With her working 30 hours a week the raise would cost them $3.00 a week.  With their inflated prices, they can more than afford to give her a raise but since we live in such a tiny town (less than 1,500) people, they know if she quits there will be at least 20 other kids lined up to take her job.

Now I’ll tell you another reason why I think she wants to quit.  I got her a job waitressing at a local breakfast - lunch type of restaurant on weekends, the place only has 10 indoor tables and about 6 outdoor tables, it’s tiny but really popular.  She started on Father’s Day.  The waitresses pool their tips and split them evenly since they all help each other out.  The owner ended up paying my daughter in CASH $51 for 3 hours of work… that’s $17 an hour!  Now I’m afraid she’s thinking she’s always going to make tips like that and get paid that much money.

I laid down rules when she printed out her two week notice, for the grocery store, last night.  If she doesn’t have the money for car insurance & gas, she won’t be driving, PERIOD!  She doesn’t turn 18 until the fall and I don’t plan on financing her driving, hell I can’t afford to finance her driving even if I wanted to.