My advise to people under thirty.

That's fine.

You don't mind if I use your taxes and not mine to support these future barons of commerce?

In some places it is. And it depends on the work and working conditions and benefits. Your blanket statement doesn't account for the fact that this is a big country.

I know some housewives, some people here on HT, who would happily take an $8 / hour job if they could stay at home and work around the kid's schedule. A lot of homesteading bloggers aren't making $8 / hour but they do it for reasons other than just pay.

I once took a min wage job in a hardware store because I wanted the employee discount. I spent more at the store than my paycheck. It was a good deal for me.

Of course you have both given good advice. But sometimes people are in a life situation where with both employer and employee, min wage is all they can offer. Some people make bad choices and then have to live with the consequences. I know I made A LOT of bad choices in my early years, some even after I was 30.

Whoa, there hoss.

A small scale sawmill can be profitable and make an owner a decent living. And although some may be low paying, it does provide jobs in a rural area, where sometimes jobs can be hard to find. That money does turn over in the community and provides other jobs.

And let's look at the other side...The reason the mill exists, is to provide a high quality wood product at a lower cost, so people like the folks on this board can build the barns and sheds they need to build, without paying a fortune in materials.

In fact, a lot of the houses built down here are framed with rough lumber from one of the small mills in the area.

The business model works, the owner is making a living, a needed service is provided, jobs are created, and you want to throw it in the dustbin of history?

I just don't see the logic...

And this is more advice you can not possibly be informed enough to give with a straight face. If the OP wants to have a hobby business (I don't know what he wants and neither do you), putting up with the occasional pain of a bad worker may very well be worth his lifestyle choice.

You people see a guy make one complaint and think that is the sole issue driving all his business decisions. I seriously doubt that is the case.

[quote=bowdonkey;7396902]People make the best pay doing the jobs they are highly trained to do.






Hey, you started it.

I'm going to give all of you some advice.

Advice is a noun and it is the stuff you tell folks to improve.

Advise is a verb and that is the act of telling people stuff to improve.

When I advise you, I give you advice. I can't give you advise anymore than I can give you swim, or speak, or think.

My dad fired my brother! He wasn't working like he should have & he was fired. 2 of my brothers own the business with my dad & they fired my nephew who was a slacker & a druggie. When they hire someone, they want a good day's work out of them. They pay well too. My dad started this business in 1988 with 1 portable mill. They now have 2 stationary mills & also build pallets & do over a million $ in sales every year. This is not a small business. They have found that most people just do not want to do physical work, for any amount of money. Thank goodness our family is huge, they have plenty of upcoming workers.

When my husband's hours were cut I went out & got 3 part time jobs. I could have continued to stay home like I always had & just signed up for food stamps & whatever other assistance I could have gotten. however, I was raised that you work to pay your own way, no matter what the job. If it's all you can find, then that's what you do. Not showing up to work would have never crossed any of our minds. It's just not something you did. My dad's word is gold. If he said he would do something he did. He lost money several times doing it, but he still did the job. My word is the same. If I agree to do something I do it.

The guy in the OP agreed to work for $8 an hour. If that wasn't enough money he should have never agreed to it. To not show up without calling tells a lot about him.

My brothers hired a guy last year. He started out working really well. It lasted about a month. Started calling in. Then he had to watch his hours because he would lose the food stamps he got with his girlfriend. He would rather get food stamps & work less to make sure he kept them, then work a little over time that would have paid him more than his food stamps were worth.

Bottom line is, way, way too many people just do not want to work. Not for any wage. They would rather suck the government teat because it flows with more milk & honey. There was a time when it was shameful to be on government assistance. Now, people brag about all they get for "free".

If I needed money I would work in that sawmill for $5 an hour before I would suck off the government. No one has any pride anymore. I would work whatever job I had too, including scooping crap, if it paid me so that I might in turn have money to care for my family. It's seems like a lot of posters think it's better to take hand-outs than actually work. If $8 an hour won't pay your bills find another job or get 2 jobs. The work ethic that the guy in the OP showed is something he should be ashamed of. Instead, some of you act like he did something great by not showing up to work.
He agreed to the job, he knew what was expected, if he didn't like it, he should have passed on it. I think that is the OP problem. He doesn't like when someone agrees to work & then doesn't actually work or even show up for that matter.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

Obviously you do not know that it costs MUCH less to live in the south than it does in other areas. So that 8.00 an hour job in the south may not make a person upper middle class, but to start out with no skills, that is good pay down here.

For example: we use to hire engineers right out of college with a BS degree for 35,000 a year. They knew lots of "book stuff' but not a darned thing practical. They still had to be trained, some had to be taught how to write a business letter. That's cheap salary for an engineer, but on the other hand, the company has to invest 2-5 years training the engineer on the practical aspects of doing their job.

One has to consider not only the MONEY, but the skills, knowledge, and area one is living in when paying people to do work.

It's all relative to the area and it's the same everywhere. If a person wants to make more, they have to prove that they will earn the company more in some manner. And sometimes a person just isn't worth more than 8.00 an hour because they have no skills, ambition, drive, determination, social skills, etc. that make them worth more than that.

I know when I retire, I am going to get a low paying job in a flower shop somewhere where all I have to do is be nice to customers and sell flowers. Personally I don't want the stress of the responsibility that I have now but would like a little extra horse money coming in.

and there are many people like that. We have "done" our time in corporate America, or whatever high paying, high stress job we have, and are ready to do what we want even if it is a lower paying job.

I grew up in a sawmill family..it's hard work and can be quite hazardous. I've known folk to work those mills all their adult lives and they managed to do pretty good for themselves as they worked themselves up the ladder to the become the person who cruises the timber, bids on jobs, etc.

I've also known many that couldn't cut the heat, wet, cold and left within a few days. Some of those folk never did do any better either. Sawmilling isn't for the faint of heart.

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Be yourself - no one can tell you that you're doing it wrong!

Sawmilling wasn't so hard, IF
You didn't come in drunk/doped/dead tired
I started out as off bearer taking off. peeling and stacking/strapping RR tie like timbers. I then went to lot turner up front, and was going to be head sawyer, so I pretty much did it all. They didn't like my work at the edger tho.

Pretty much all of us are in agreement that if you agree to do the job, than you do it.

What is getting lost in the furor is that while you may be honor bound to do a good job at whatever job you take, the good workers are simply not taking low wage jobs. Next time you are in church, take a look around; most teenagers are going to college, and then higher paying jobs. They are self-selecting themselves out of the low-wage labor pool. So if an employers wants to hire them, he has got to meet the potential employees minimum requirements before a potential employee will even look at his job. IF both the employer and the employe are satisfied, only then can a deal can be made.

Personal example; I am fully qualified to work as a stocker at Walmart for minimum wage. I am also qualified for a better job with better pay and hours. Barring major problems in my life, i will not even apply for the Walmart job because I know I can do better. In the macro scale, this means that the Walmart hiring manager never sees my caliber of applicant, and spends his time dealing with no-shows and druggies, who apply for the Walmart job because it is the best they can do.

Bottom line, if you want good workers, pay them what they are worth, and screen like hell to get rid of the trash.

Loki

When... What decade did those people making 8 dollars an hour do well and have a family in the south. 10, 15, 20 years ago?

Upper middle class? that would be at least 75k today as defined by the standards of the 1950's. You would have a house, car, money for a vacation, a retirement plan, a 6 month + emergency fund, clothes and what not, and finally cash for occasional outings AKA dinner and a movie.

8 dollars gets a single fellow just beyond the poverty level. Hardly lower "working" class. God forbid if the fellow needs to pay taxes too.

This is a Part Time Job. Not a full time career. Part time is {Part Time a that is it. Mimes wage for the begging if a person had more experience and was worth more to that employer I am sure he would PAY more, but they are not so they get what they deserve. Minimum wage for Part Time Employment, in this case slightly higher.

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Oh my, dishes yet to wash and dry

See My Pictures at
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/0903/arabianknight/

You may want to reread the msg to which you responded. The poster agrees with you that it is NOT upper middle class.

You make the assumption that higher pay means an elimination of druggies and no shows. I'll bet every one of us here knows of several examples of well paid employees who were worthless to the company.

It provides a bad low paying job. Why not produce something of great value? Why strive for a pittance? Why would anyone suggest such a thing? Do you wish your town to finally die off? Your local people spend the 8 dollars they earn at wally world and they send it off to chinese producers. None of that is returned. The reasons for this are many but a big one is they don't have the cash to buy US made products.

IMHO The problem with america is a vast amount of people are stuck in the last century. That time isn't returning. We as a society can't afford to waste our time and effort doing things that produce tiny profit. We need to innovate and produce more high value products for the world market. The fact is competition for capital is driving it out of the US and into the hands of our trading partners.

Using the wood cutting as an example..A Chinese factory can produce the machines to To cut, sort, stack, and ship a million board feet a day for 10th the cost. They will do it with the machines and produce more cheaply and faster. Your deluding yourself if you believe your in an industry that has much more time left. I'm not saying it will go away all together. It won't. But as with buggy whip makers the numbers of companies doing it will dwindle.

It's not even low class. It's poverty. Some as the poster I quoted say that it's a good wage in the south...

AK I know what your saying... But if the fellow was desperate when he took it as you suggest. Couldn't a change in circumstance make the fellow instantly not as desperate and not likely to show up?

So many seem to fail to grasp the the worker may be better off telling the potential employer to bug off.

And 78.3% of all internet statistics are made up.

Your made up China stat is wrong. I'm in an area where there are a lot of backyard mills, one or two man operations. Some of them do custom work, like if I cut down a cherry I can haul it there to be milled. Others do mass work with Southern Yellow Pine (it actually 7 different species IIRC) and oak. The mass work guys sell at the monthly farm auction. There is almost always fresh milled lumber for sale and it goes at a discount to Lowes and Home Depot. I assume someone is making a profit or it would stop.

There are millions of acres of pine in the south; I have a tree farm in Long Leaf Pine. It isn't going to pay to ship the trees to China to have them milled with cheap labor and then send the lumber back to the US. Heck, the plywood mill that is an hour from me shut down and the $100/ton value of my ply worthy trees fell to $11/ton for pulp wood. The next ply mill is 4 hours away and no one will haul trees that far. For the foreseeable future, saw mills are going to be a local biz.

Problem is, Nobody expects you to take their word as gospel anymore. Ive had some young kids be somewhat amazed that I would hold them to their word.
Theres also that, (My Bad) crap. People cant tell you that there sorry anymore. Last time I heard that, I said. D right your bad, and your F words no good either.