Friday, March 30, 2012

Frustration

When I got the date for my run officially approved and cleared by the school, I was super excited: so I got busy. I called news stations, posted flyers, made a website, gathered volunteers, booked a band, the whole sha-bang. 

The other day, I got an email from Ms. AwesomeTeacher - administration did not check the athletic calendar before they approved the date, and SURPRISE! There's a track meet on April 11th.

So not only do I have lots of advertisements, volunteers, public knowledge of the event, and a band - but now I also have no venue.

My feelings are a huge melting pot. I'm angry with the school for approving an event that can't take place, but at the same time, I feel like I have no right to be angry because they were extending their generosity in the first place by offering the track free for this event's use. I know that I should be thankful that they agreed to this at all, thankful that they are searching for a new date that they are POSITIVE the track is free. They wanted to help - I can't fault them for that. I can't justly be angry that they need the track for what it was intended for - the track team - but I'm ticked off that now I'm in this situation.  I'm upset that no one thought to check and make sure the track was actually available before promising it away. Some part of me, unfairly, feels that they should move either the track meet location or date, now that they've already booked it for an event... but I know they can't (or won't). The purpose of the track is to be there for the track meets, and I'm not even paying them... but it's frustrating. Extremely frustrating.

I'm going to be honest - I have no idea what to do. I'm trying to run damage control, but it feels like a new fire springs up as soon as I put one out. 

I told her it would probably be okay to move the date, so long as we moved it by the 1st to give stations a chance to correct the ad. She told me the 25th looked like a probability, but she wanted to 100% clear it this time so we don't have another mishap. This was a little over a week ago, and no word since... I'm getting nervous. If I didn't trust Ms. AwesomeTeacher so completely, I'd be crapping my pants. I'll update when I hear back... please cross your fingers for me.


Sunday, March 18, 2012

Words of Wisdom

"Pray not for a lighter load, but for stronger shoulders"
-St. Augustine

Thursday, March 8, 2012

And then there was a website...

Click on the image to go!

Confetti, etc.

So excited! As of today, there is OFFICIALLY a DATE for the GSF's SMA run. Sorry about all the capital letters - that's me yelling with excitement. It has been such a journey to find a venue and pin down a date, and now I'm so excited to have something solid down that I could run through the streets with confetti to celebrate.

The run will be taking place on April 11th - which means now I have lots and lots to do quickly. It's time for a website, a Facebook page, gently nudging my friends to participate, and much more. And since I have so much to do, I'm out of blogging time. 

Damnit

So I came down with the flu this week. Not just your regular flu- the 'I wonder if I'm going to live through this' sort of flu. I went to the doctor, and he laughingly assured me that I will, physical symptoms of impending death aside.

Unfortunately, the flu's timing was terrible. I missed Spring Break entirely- senior year of college, living in one of the country's top tourist destinations. So fuck me, that sucked. I'll also be missing work this week, so this flu is costing me about $300. Awesomeee.

That's my excuse for slacking in blogland... and I'm sticking to it. Back to re-runs of The Middle.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

FL SB2106



Today I'd like to take just a second to write about SB 2106, a bill that senate is attempting to pass here in good ol' sunny Florida. Essentially, it's a bill designed to cut my paychecks in half- and if you're a tipped employee in the service industry, yours too. Full disclosure: last year, I made just shy of $8,000. I don't live with my parents, so out of that $8,000 came my rent, electricity, water, clothes, food, gas... and not a whole heck of a lot else. I'm not sitting around crying about being impoverished; I'm a busy full-time-and-a-half student, and all that school does chew into a lot of the time I could be working. I'm not embarrassed that things are hard now so that they can be good later; that's how people get ahead. However, waiting tables is a physically and emotionally demanding profession, and the last thing anyone scraping by in the service industry needs is a PAY CUT.

As a server in an upscale restaurant in tourist town, I make a base rate of $4.65/hr, plus tips. Since taxes on my tips are automatically deducted from my paychecks, my checks are usually for between $40-$50. I get two a month: one pays my share of the electric bill, and one hacks away at the debt that I've accumulated with Discover. SB2106, if passed, will allow the change of my base rate of pay to only $2.13. In case you don't have a calculator handy, that cuts out about 15% of my already pretty meager yearly income. 

Corporations like Outback are shoving this bill along so that their CEO's can buy new yachts this summer, and frankly, I'm worried. I know that money talks, and the lobbyists for the Florida Restaurants and Lodging Association are jabbering on and on with this one. They argue that it will create jobs, since restaurants will be able to hire us for a wage barely above slave labor. What they neglect to mention is that it will financially devastate the people who are already working hard just to make ends meet. 

For those of you who have never worked in a restaurant before, let me tell you a dirty little secret about the low base wage: it already gets exploited. For instance, my best friend spent a stint of time at a corporate chain that rhymes with "Crapplebee's". Rather than hiring someone to "prep" in the kitchen (pre-bag portions of items, scoop sauces, etc.) at the normal minimum wage that a non-tipped kitchen employee is paid, they had a system of having the servers do it, as part of their 'running side work'. Each Wednesday, my friend was scheduled for a double shift "serving". Her section of tables and assigned side work in the morning were always the same - a small neglected spot in the corner where no one ever wanted to sit, and prep. A coincidence, I'm sure.

Conveniently for 'Crapplebee's', this freed her up to do all of the prep work each morning, at only $4.65 an hour. Whether or not she took any tables, she was still paid server pay for this time spent- and since only your weekly average between tips and base pay need to hit $7.50 to satisfy the minimum wage requirement, they were able to rotate this 'bum shift' among the staff throughout the week, where each person essentially works a kitchen prep shift for $4.65 an hour: saving the restaurant a hefty amount of cash. In 2 months, she never took a table on a Wednesday; it was invariably a prep shift. Sure, it's clearly deliberate, and ethically wrong- but it's cheap, and technically legal.

This isn't an isolated situation - more restaurants than not find ways to exploit servers into doing a lot of restaurant work for a low base rate of pay through schemes like this one. It's a relatively common move by restaurants to 'overstaff' by one or two servers, knowing full-well that they will be making little or nothing in tips that evening, in order to keep a cheap extra few pairs of hands around the restaurant to bus tables and run food. By lowering the base rate of pay further, this is only going to become a more attractive option to restaurant owners. Exploitation aside, we can't afford a pay cut. We're already one of the most underpaid and overworked workforces in the country; why is money being taken out of our pockets to keep it in the pockets of the rich?

If you find yourself concerned about those of us working hard in the service industry, please take just a moment to sign the petition against FL SB 2106 here.