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Jatavia Ludgood

Professor Elizabeth Burrows

English 1010

14 September 2021

Modern Day Slavery

As we tend to get older, we tend to become more independent. Some depend on family

for help, and others depend on their own source of income. Having your own income comes with

serious responsibility and a routine scheduled. But, with all the hard work that workers put, are

they being treated correctly? Is the condition of the job in good shape? Is the job mentally

healthy for you? These are important questions that we need to ask ourselves before putting

ourselves through for jobs who don’t care for us.

I’ve worked at several jobs since I was 16 years old. Multiple ranging from fast food

chains, retail and warehouses. Wendy’s had the worst working conditions I’ve had out of all my

seven jobs. At Wendy’s I had to work 3 positions on any given day because we were so

shorthanded. If someone didn’t show to work, I would have to do their positions and my mine as

well. One position at fast food is hard on its own imagine doing two from 4pm-12 am. Even my

hours were ridiculous even though I was scheduled to work 4-12 when I got there, I would have

to stay longer even on school nights. Even though this was illegal they didn’t care because most

high school students aren’t notified of laws of working and don’t care to learn them.

The next question is, why do we settle for a dollar? The main attraction of jobs is because of

their minimum wage. For example, Wendy’s pay was only $8.50 an hour. For a young teenage
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girl, it barely covered enough. At the time, I paid my car insurance and was held responsible for

my own gas. I also paid for any other want that I desired at that time as well. But what about the

older workers. Was a $450 check enough? I had a serious obligation and working wasn’t a

question. I was grateful to land a job anywhere, and the opportunity would’ve been almost

foolish to pass up. But I often wondered why the older workers worked much harder, and longer

hours. This is an example of settling for a dollar, not because you want to, but because you must

when it came to your responsibilities.

What about management? This, in my opinion, is what matters most. If a job had great

management, they would have great workers. The more that you work as a team, is what makes

the job easier and faster. At Wendy’s, this was the complete opposite. Managers were immature,

rude and lazy. They cared less about the way they talked to employees and what we all wanted as

a whole. An example would be is when one night, I was made to stay until 1 in the morning as a

minor, all because we were shorthanded and had to deep clean the entire job. In our defense, it

shouldn’t have made us stay over the time that we were scheduled. They didn’t care about

anyone but themselves.

Have you ever been in a situation where you were helping a customer, because you were

too busy helping others? This was a huge issue at Wendy’s for me. At any job, the customers are

what keeps the job going. Without the customers, the job wouldn’t be in business. An issue that I

feel is vital for every person to know as a customer is to be mindful of what you say and how

you say it. I’ve had many issues that dealt with rude customers because of how rude they would

be. An example of a rude customer is when I had a order wrong, not on purpose but by accident,

and a customer started to get extremely upset about it. My day wasn’t going as well, so after the
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sudden outburst I slammed the Drive-Thru window. Another incident that I had with a customer

is the line being too long. In fast food, food goes left and right and soon the food would be gone.

Some people do not understand that food needs time to cook and other customers often ask for

fresh food. Lines can vary from multiple different reasons, but customers can be inconsiderate in

the way that they handle a situation.

In any job, you will have problems. That’s natural because we all are human. It should be

mandatory that all jobs treat everyone with respect and dignity. Companies shouldn’t get away

with how badly they treat employees. Customers should be reminded that employees are human

as well, and humans make mistakes. My tip to anyone trying to work at any job is to be clear on

why you’re going and to go for that reason. Do your job obligations and follow the rules so that

later on in your work career you’ll be used to being a great worker and that could possibly lead

to an opportunity!