hard work...?

[K/H_Addict]

okay, so i got paid 75 dollars today for approximately 8 hours of labor. I woke up at 7:30 Am, left my house at 8, drove for about 30 minutes to our destination. I started digging up 5 plants, each weighing about 50+ pounds, while my friend, whom invited be along on this job, was digging up the flower bed to relocate the plants I was digging up. When he finished up, he and Ned (our boss for the day) went to the Dump with a load of crap from trees. I was told to smooth out the freshly-dug up flower bed, so i did. When they came back, i was put to work raking leaves, while everyone else worked on relocating flowers/bushes/other plants, cutting down a pine tree, cutting down the rest f the huge pile of debris from other trees so it would fit in the trailer.

Now, keep in mind that i have never liked raking and bagging leaves. It hurts my wrists and shoulders after about 2 minutes of it. but i was being paid $8/hour plus a possible bonus at the end of the day, so of course, i kept going, keeping in mind that my 6 month "anniversary" with my g/f is this month, and i want to do something special for her (more details in a thread imma make later). So, im sittign there raking about 3 years of neglected leaves, by myself. It's about 1:00 and im about ready to pass out, so im taking a minor 5-10 minute break observing the goings-on out front. Ned gets a bit ticked, in a non-serious kinda way, ya know? So i go back to work, working at it slowly, to preserve my energy until lunch (i have asthma, so i cant work but so hard).

Gavin (my friend) comes around the corner after Ned had left to go get food () and tells me that ned had said that i need to get to work, because he doesnt want to be paying me for standing around and gets me started again at raking leaves, etc. Now, half of these leaves are under a deck, which isn't very easy to reach. So now i'm sitting under the deck squatting down and bending over a bit so i can fit with a full sized rake attempting t get these leaves out from under the deck. Not fun at all. I finish, and have to move a load of firewood and some small lumber, also out from under the deck. More fun, but still not much at all.

Then, i have to bag these leaves (about 3 years worth), and load all the firewood and lumber into the trailer, in about 3 hours. Having ingested 4 slices of pizza in about 7 minutes, im loaded with energey, and miraculously get this feat accomplished.

Do you think $75 was fair for this? i'm not complaining, but for some reason, it seems like a wee bit low for all that work I had to do (i had $80 to my name; i took 30 out for my sister because i bought her mp3 player from her and 5 out to start saving for Castles, leaving me with $45 to work with for 6 months).

[bunjee]

Well, it is hard to say, it would depend on what the going rate in your area is for yard work. You ended up with about $9/hour.

But they definitely needed to allow you breaks. 10 minutes for every 4 hours is the legal requirement.

Now, if it was under the table, ie: not reported to the IRS, then it comes out to more like $11/hour

[skyknight]

You are probably not going to like this. 8 hours of work 75$. I think as a young man you should have been humping all day. When I hire kids to wash dishes at my winery they generally make minimum wage, when there is no longer any dishes to wash there is a giant list of other chores for them to do. There is one break, lunch, and since I am paying for that around ten to fifteen minutes is fine.
Now I am going to try and stay out of the back in my day stuff but I would like to tell you how it goes. When I was a kid and you were to young to work a real job or even if you wanted more cash you threw hay bails. Minimum wage was around 4.00. If you found a farmer who payed 2 you were lucky. These old farmers did not care if you were 13 or 14 or 10, they busted your back. Thats ok though because they are paying you. In our vineyards it used to be high school kids who picked our grapes. It is near impossible to get them anymore and when you do they hang out on their cell phones in the vineyards. Whatever, that is why we hire legal Mexicans to do the work and pay them the ten bucks an hour.
I think sometimes the younger generation has an entitlement issue. When you work for someone you are not doing them a favor, they are providing you a favor. Do I think 75 dollars was good pay, oh yeah, my lawn boys do that exact same work nearly every day and the back about half that. You should be elated at that much money for one days work. If you worked five days at that rate you would be making around 375$. That is more than some people on this sit make who have real jobs I bet and it is more than I would ever pay for that same work. You should be happy to have found such a cash cow.