Job Hunt: Target, Living Wage
Oct. 14th, 2015 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebDue to continuing underemployment at my house, I am looking into short-term jobs. First I applied again for jobs scoring teacher certification tests.
How to job hunt
Step 1: Apply for jobs
Step 2: Nothing happens
Oh, ahem, surely there are other scenarios.
So I decided to hunt for a seasonal holiday job. There's a Target in walking distance of my house, so I walked over and asked them what kinds of seasonal jobs they had. Floor worker and service desk worker.
I applied online, where I was told that zero of these jobs are currently available, but they let me apply anyway.
Another weird thing is that they have a drug-free policy. One of the requirements is that employees are not allowed to buy or sell drugs or alcohol on the premises. I'm pretty sure I've seen wine for sale at Target. It would be interesting telling them that I already signed something promising not to do one of my job duties.
They have a lot of drug tests. They are allowed to test you if there are suspicions--I don't mind that. They test you before they hire you. I'm not as fine with that, but my old druggie friends used to say anyone should be able to pass a drug test with a week's notice. So if they're okay with that, I guess I can be. But they also do random testing. That just seems wrong. If the person is doing their job well, who cares if they're on drugs?
Similarly, they do background checks and credit checks both on prospective employees and on current employees who are getting a promotion or transfer. Again, why collect data that is only imperfectly correlated with doing a good job once you actually know how good a jog they're doing.
Robin points out that they don't actually know.
It's not the public sector, so they don't have to tell you what the salaries are, and they don't. They say simply "competitive."
I'm imagining them asking me what kind of wages I want. Irrelevant. They have a certain range.
Or they might ask what kind of wages I'm expecting. Pretty bad wages. By which I mean I expect the entire range to be pretty bad. "Competitive" probably means slightly above minimum wage. Minimum wage is $7.50/hour here these days. A living wage in my county for a single person is calculated by MIT to be $10.97. But various findings on Glass Door imply just less than $9 for low-level Target jobs.
The MIT estimate shows their calculation for a living wage. They calculated $3022/year for a single adult for food. That's $252/month which is about double what I spend. Admittedly I am small.
For housing, $8352 = $696/month. I think that's about right if you live alone in a cheap one-bedroom place in a non-dangerous part of town. Though it includes utilities, too, so that might be rough.
You only get $2253 (188/month) for things other than food, housing, transportation, and medical. So that is what they think people spend on toiletries, pets, clothes, tools and supplies, and fun. Less than they spend on food. Wow.
That is all.
How to job hunt
Step 1: Apply for jobs
Step 2: Nothing happens
Oh, ahem, surely there are other scenarios.
So I decided to hunt for a seasonal holiday job. There's a Target in walking distance of my house, so I walked over and asked them what kinds of seasonal jobs they had. Floor worker and service desk worker.
I applied online, where I was told that zero of these jobs are currently available, but they let me apply anyway.
Another weird thing is that they have a drug-free policy. One of the requirements is that employees are not allowed to buy or sell drugs or alcohol on the premises. I'm pretty sure I've seen wine for sale at Target. It would be interesting telling them that I already signed something promising not to do one of my job duties.
They have a lot of drug tests. They are allowed to test you if there are suspicions--I don't mind that. They test you before they hire you. I'm not as fine with that, but my old druggie friends used to say anyone should be able to pass a drug test with a week's notice. So if they're okay with that, I guess I can be. But they also do random testing. That just seems wrong. If the person is doing their job well, who cares if they're on drugs?
Similarly, they do background checks and credit checks both on prospective employees and on current employees who are getting a promotion or transfer. Again, why collect data that is only imperfectly correlated with doing a good job once you actually know how good a jog they're doing.
Robin points out that they don't actually know.
It's not the public sector, so they don't have to tell you what the salaries are, and they don't. They say simply "competitive."
I'm imagining them asking me what kind of wages I want. Irrelevant. They have a certain range.
Or they might ask what kind of wages I'm expecting. Pretty bad wages. By which I mean I expect the entire range to be pretty bad. "Competitive" probably means slightly above minimum wage. Minimum wage is $7.50/hour here these days. A living wage in my county for a single person is calculated by MIT to be $10.97. But various findings on Glass Door imply just less than $9 for low-level Target jobs.
The MIT estimate shows their calculation for a living wage. They calculated $3022/year for a single adult for food. That's $252/month which is about double what I spend. Admittedly I am small.
For housing, $8352 = $696/month. I think that's about right if you live alone in a cheap one-bedroom place in a non-dangerous part of town. Though it includes utilities, too, so that might be rough.
You only get $2253 (188/month) for things other than food, housing, transportation, and medical. So that is what they think people spend on toiletries, pets, clothes, tools and supplies, and fun. Less than they spend on food. Wow.
That is all.
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no subject
on 2015-10-14 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2015-10-14 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2015-10-14 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2015-10-14 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2015-10-15 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
on 2015-10-16 06:09 pm (UTC)From what I've read, it sounds like different stores have very different environments. And I'm in a position where I can speak up for people without worrying about getting fired. I mean, I could still get fired, but I'm in a position to be able to handle that.
Thanks for the warning, though!
no subject
on 2015-10-16 07:12 am (UTC):-)
Cat
no subject
on 2015-10-16 11:10 pm (UTC)Why are you thinking you're not sure you could hack it?
no subject
on 2015-10-17 07:44 am (UTC)no subject
on 2015-10-19 12:50 am (UTC)