Immigrants Today

Immigrant today are everywhere everywhere you look their working in the grocery store, convience store, clhothing store, food resturants, and fast food resturants. But the problem that some American have is why did they come here? Well I can answer that one for sure they came here because they know its better living conditions better work conditions and just their knowledge of how we are in America. Immigrants came up from nothing when they started and now they are something ever since they came to the United States. For example I hear people I know say negative things about immigrants today saying,"They make more money then we do",or "Immigrants trying to run everything". I think immigrant can be here in America if they can show they are worth being here by learning our language, learning bout the goverment, and etc.

Immigrants

I think people's opinion of immigrants are distorted because it isn't the immigrants fault that they are coming over here it is the governments. If they are allowed to come to the United States of corse they are going to for the better living conditions. A lot of people don't like immigrants today because they will work for next to nothing 24 hours a day unlike Americans who complain after 8 hours. A lot of people believe today that immigrants are the cause for a lot of the crime. They also believe that they live an unkempt lifestyle.

Work Story

I don't really have a specific work story, just a lot of memorable moments/memorable people and acquired knowledge and skills from working.

I've worked: as a server in an ice cream parlor, an associate in claire's, an associate at hickory farms, a waitress at an Italian restaurant/bar,

I'll never forget: serving 20 banana splits to people from the psych center every week [crazy], the old man who came for ice cream everyday and always made me smile, one hundred little kids running around the store wanting everything and being terrified to get their ears peierced, getting fired along with my room mate after being accused of stealing cheese [CHEESE?!], seeing an epilectic seize right in front of me for the first time, and the old lady who came for lunch everyday and always made me smile too.


Work will always involve a lot of experience [old & new]


...to be continued.

I really don't have a work story because I work a very boring job. I work at the smoothie place in the student rec center. We hardly get any business and the hours seem to just go on forever. Sometimes I get so bored that I count the bananas in the baskets to keep myself from falling asleep. The sad thing is that its like that almost everyday. The nice thing about this job is that it is a very free and easy atmosphere. All in all it isn't that bad there and i could do alot worse.

Work Story

I became a life gaurd at 15 making $7.50 an hour, and received a $.25 raise each summer I worked there, so when I left I was making $8.oo an hour. The money was great especially when the weather was good and we could stay open, but when the weather was bad and we closed I didn't get paid. Right now you are probably thinking that I was making good money when all I had to do was go sit in the sun and get a tan. There is
definately more to it then sitting around. As a life guard you are responsible for the lives of the people around you, which is a BIG responsibility. There are also a lot of side jobs you have to do like cleaning the locker rooms, setting up equipment, cleaning the pool etc. Life guarding may seem like a piece of cake, but it really takes a dedicated person to do it. Both nickle and dimed and the cocktail waitress showed that it takes dedication and hard work no matter what job it is your doing.

work story

Well, I started working when I was fourteen years old and don't think there has been a month since that first job that I have gone without work. So therefore I have many work stories, so narrowing it down would be the hardest. I've done it all from retail to waitressing but the one job that will forever have changed my life was the one I had this summer. I was a camp counselor at a co ed overnight sports/activities camp. I lived in a cabin with eleven and twelve year olds and one other counselor my age. The pay was not well at all, but i learned so much, I was given responsibility for groups of children 24 hours a day, I met people all over the world from Australia to South Africa and also was lucky enough to meet my boyfriend who I consider the best person I have ever met in my life. I learned what it was like to live in the great outdoors .. a wooden cabin with a bed that was a cot. I was able to run around like a kid again. I lived off of caffteria food which somtimes was composed of eggs in the morning which wern't always the color yellow, somtimes blue. This same food soppositly started a stomach virus that attacked 80% of camp, it was a guessing game trying to figure out who would be sick next. I lived there for nine weeks, the whole experience deffinatly had its ups and downs but I left feeling I knew so much more and would do it all over again.

Work Story

My work story is pretty plain and everything but I started working at Rite Aid Pharmacy around Febuary of this year. It was a relatively small store but we had a lot of work to do. It taught me a lot, about working with the public and getting a sense of what the retail business was all about. If I could choose to work there again, I would. Not only because I had so much fun there, but because it came easy to me. I quit that job, because I was going to college, and did not want to be rushed around with a job and school work. I learned a lot there and I am grateful for that.

work story

I never had a real job until this past summer. I was an advanced-sales rep for a marketing company. For the most part, it was a good experience. On paper it looks good. I made my own schedule/ hours, so I basically controlled how much money I made. Base pay was $17.50, and you usually didn't even have to use that. Not too bad of a summer job, right? In that sense, it was great. But I had beef with the people I worked for. They were master salesmen and would try to manipulate you into doing whatever they wanted. It was frustrating to say the least. I learned those types of skills to be a salesperson, but when I wasn't working, I became a regular person and didn't use those skills just for the heck of it, trying to manipulate people and tell them what they wanted/ needed. It seemed morally wrong or something to me. My "bosses" weren't very understanding of my health issues, and that was something I needed flexibility with, and that turned into something they held against me. So by the end of summer I was ready to leave and move on with my life.

work story

I have been painting apartments for the last four years. I started out at age 14 painting the closets and things that didn't need to be perfect. I started out at $7.50 an hour, and every year that would go up .50 cents, up until this year. I was placed as a foreman for one of the groups. I enjoyed that since there were a lot of responisble on you. Their were headsache to that too, if I didn't finish the apartment in the time that was given, it would come back on me. I would have to put in extra hours on the weekend or have late nights to get it done by the deadline.

Work Story

Well where to begin, I have been working at Top Star Express (Mobil version of WAWA) for almost a year and a half. Theres plenty of the usual stories about the people that come in for lottery that you absolutly hate and the other people that get coffee and cigarettes and treat you like a human being but this is an intresting story. I work with an older lady named Gloria that is dedicated like no other. The store opens at 530 and she is there at 3 every morning. Anyway lets get to it, there is a regular customer that comes in usually three to four times a week and he had been in a car accident and was forced into a motorized cart. So as long as i had been working there he had always drove this thing in and was very nice until recently where he had began walking again. So one day he "strolls" in and grabs a 12 pack of pepsi and lays it on the counter for Gloria to tend to. As shes ringing him up she notices that he's making odd faces and she begins to smell an odor. When she's telling me this story she says she thought it was just body odor, she referred to it as "how fat people smell". So the transaction is done and hes out the door with his pepsi, until Gloria realizes the smell is still there. So she walks around the counter to find out what this horrible odor is and before she can put it all together the regular lottery lady comes running over asking,"Is that chilli?"

Work Story

I only began to really work last year in the month of November at a retail store named Circuit City. All I can say is that it was a great expierience to start my first job at. I loved it there it did get a little hectic sometimes because of the season but I still had fun in the process. My employer were pretty nice. The only thing that got me is that they only trained me for about a few days and I began on the cash register ; which to me was hard at first. I had to learn how to do things on the cash register that involved checks, cash, gift cards and bank cards. The hardest part was doing the checks but after a while I got it. Also another thing I had to break out of in this form of work was to speak loudly and clearly to each customer and to greet them when they came to the register. They also had us to ask each customer that had a item(s) that had warranties to ask if they wanted out companies warranties as well. Upon that we were able to gain points for our company. I stop working there at the end of December and if I had the choose I would work there again.

Work Story

I really don't have one specific workstory. Rather, I have many small instances that described the craziness of a busy restaurant named Cosgrove's Clubhouse. I started working at Cosgrove's when I was about fifteen years old, I also thought that it would be a good idea getting a job this early in life. I started out as a busboy, and later moved onto being a waiter. I learned more in those 4-5 years than I felt i learned in my whole life. I saw so many things, some good and some bad. I witnessed at a very young age the drug deals that happened behind Cosgroves, I witnessed a "friend" steal money out of other waiter's tip jars, and I have had to deal with many unhappy, and sometimes terribly mean customers. I never knew that this stuff ever existed in a restaurant setting. Now it wasnt all bad, but a lot of times it was. To this day im not sure the experiences I learned, good or bad, have made me a better person in any way, but I learned at a very young age what some people don't learn till later in life.

work story

I really don't have a work story because I have a very boring job. I work at the smoothie place in the student rec center. We hardly get any business and the hours seem to just go on forever. Sometimes I get so bored that I count the bananas in the baskets to keep myself from falling asleep. The sad thing is that its like that almost every day. The nice thing about this job is that it has a very free and easy atmosphere. All in all it isn't that bad and I could probably do alot worse.

Work Story

I thought that it would be good to go out and get a job at the age of 14. The only reason why I wanted to make this step was because I wanted to have my own money and be independent. I started working at hershey park at age 14, at a restuarant, working there for 4 years during the summer. I began as a food clerk, working at $6.00 an hour. I cooked and served food, cleaned, and help make the guests happy. After the first year and the start of the second I moved up in the ranking as an assistant team leader. Being an assistant team leader I was in trainging to be a supervisor. My pay raised too. Now that it was my fourth year working I am now supervisor for my restaurant making $8.50 an hour. I think that is pretty good money for my age and being only seasonal. Every year I go back my pay gets higher and higher. I've tried other jobs during the school year working at Finish Line, Target, and Giants but I realised that no one pays as good as hershey park. Its a fun experience because you are working with all you friends and you are in charge. The Hershery Park Happy Experience

A Work Story

A work story. Well this is pretty tricky. I've been working since I was fourteen and can't think of a single good story, especially one that relates to the reading. (sorry this is so stream of consciousness-y)
Well I mentioned in class how I liked the Cocktail Waitress because I could relate to the social structure thing that Spradley and Mann were describing. When I was 16 I got my first REAL (not under the table) job. Cooking (more like assembling) at Phut. I started at $5.65.
So my first day at work, and I'm on dishes. There's an entire hierarchy you have no clue about. Start at dishes, if you're cool you can help on "make" if you're good at "make" you get bumped to the front of the "make table", and if you're really good, and fast, they put you on "cut."
Not that it matters if you're good or not. Not that it matters what you do at all. In fact I realized within an hour of working there that the entire staff, managers and all, were stoners. And I've since noticed that this trend was not limited just to my store, or even just to Pizza Hut, but applies to every pizza shop.
where am I going with this? Oh yea, I was trying to set the stage for a close-nit crew. So we have all these underpaid, under-motivated, pimply adolescents just teeming with angst, frustrated with life and making pizzas. We became the best of friends. In fact we had a Frat, called the BC (Brotherhood of the Crust.) which met multiple times every evening to plan all sorts of community oriented activities and events. (that's sarcastic)
So perhaps we weren't the quintessence of diligence, but we did look out for each other, get in dough fights, talk trash, play games, tease, tickle, laugh, spray each other with the sink nozzle, wrap people in cling wrap, tie up, x lax, party, prank call, and work together. We had an inside crew. And it didn't matter if you got fired, or quit, you were still part of the crew.
there were about 30 of us that came and went in the two years I worked there. That was two years ago, and we still all hang out, we're still all friends. We were united in an immortal era. The Pizza Era.

Nickel -and- Dimed & The Cocktail Waitress

I enjoyed and understood both of these stories simultaneously...

Before I came to school, 3 of my friends and I lived in an apt. for a year. And... it sucked.

My girlfriend and I were both waitresses, while our boyfriends were working out of town each week. As a waitress in a restaruant/bar, I was aware of the set up of it and the people that came in. Everything/Everyone was ultimately labled, and certain connections were made between them.Also, when bills were due each month, and you had to go grocery shopping every week, plus gas, etc --> it all added up! By the end of each paycheck, we had $0 to our name to have fun with. We were living paycheck to paycheck just to be able to live.

Sooo... that's when I made the decision to come BACK to school.
I realized, it is not easy to make a living on a low-wage income...

So both of these stories held true in my opinion.

Nickels and Dimes / Cocktail Waitress

I actually for the first time enjoyed reading both stories because its actually something you understand because its talked about all the time. I like the way Einrech went and experienced how to live on minimum wage. It doesn't make sense how people get paid so much little when doing these jobs instead of at least getting paid so that they can afford to live healthy and not struggle pay check to pay check. How can you possibly get by in america when everything is so expensive?? Going to the next story I liked the way both Spradly and Mann explained the life of a cocktail waitress. It relates to the first story because being a cocktail waitress is a minimum wage job and the examples that she gave of the other help to explain in depth. I liked the way it pointed out the social structure of the bar and also th networking of the people whom she serves.

Nickel-and Dimed/The cocktail Waitress

I enjoyed reading both of these stories. I feel that "Nickel-and-Dimed" story really tells how it is. I liked how the author experiences it all instead of just thinking what it would be like. With a low-wage job in today's world, it is hard to surive with the needs that are essentail. The standards on living in American is so high, and will prolly continue to rise. In "The Cocktail Waitress" I feel they make a good point on how you repond to people differently, by knowing what they're about. Once your around people for a period of time, you don't look at them as just people, but family. I could relate to this, since i had the same job for 4 years.

Nickel and Dimed vs. The Cocktail Waitress

I also liked both of these essays. I like how in the essay Nickel and Dimed, she puts herself in the position as the low-wage worker rather than trying to explain it without living it. It shows how hard it is to live like that and what your life would actually be like if that was how you had to live. I liked The Cocktail Waitress because I've been working as a waitress for three years now at the same restaurant so I could relate to what the story was about. I like how they talk about ways to talk and get to know the customers, and gaining better tips along the way.

Nickel and Dimed/The Cocktail Waitress

I'll start off by saying I liked both of these essays. I liked "Nickel and Dimed" the most because I like how the author put herself into the low-wage workforce and had the experience rather than reporting on it like she knew everything. Because I am a business major these stories appealed to me more than the others we read this year. The way the economy is going with outsourcing and globalization, I believe we are heading in a direction where the rich will become richer and the poor poorer and Ehrenreich pointed this out nicely. "The Cocktail Waitress" described what it is like starting off as a waitress in a bar where the regular customers are very "close" to the workers. It described that it is important for the waitress to pin-point what social class the customers are from, so she can talk to them and then get better tips. It was an interesting story but I enjoyed "Nickel and Dimed" more because the author put you in the situation.