You nailed it. What happened is we've spoiled a generation. They should be renamed the "entitled generation " as that fits far better than millennials. BloodMary loves his/her job but feels the pay should be better and "shouldn't have to worry about the rent". News flash, when an owner can no longer afford to pay the rent, the doors close and now that $12/hr. doesn't look quite as bad.
Whoa whoa whoa. First off, wanting to be able to make a livable wage does not make someone entitled. People rail against millenials all the time for being "entitled," or lazy, or flaky, etc. I've noticed some of these traits too. But I've also noticed those traits in baby boomers and gen-xers. I've met just as many lazy "old" cooks as I have lazy young cooks. Being a dirty, burned out, past 50 line cook is just as bad as being a lazy millenial.
Yes, millenials can be entitled as an aggregate, I agree...but painting with such a broad brush can be dangerous and disingenuous.
And if anyone in this thread thinks that cook's pay across the board isn't substandard then that's a huge problem.
I could make a /rant about entitled owners...who think it is OK to work their employees to the bone, work when they are sick, get called in on their days off, work off the clock, dock their pay...all for $8 an hour...and I could go on. And the carrot dangling at the end of all that hard work and sacrifice...what, an extra .25 an hour after 6mo? A year?
And I'm pretty sure BloodyMary's suggestion about "not having to worry about the rent" was not having to worry about HER rent (i.e. I can't make rent on my apartment this month cause I make $12 an hour) not the business's rent.
Anyways, this isn't a simple problem. There are a number of contributing factors to low wages beyond owners vs. cooks. A lot of it is societal..meaning the tipping system, immigration, and expectation of cheap food. Some of it is "tradition" based bias...i.e. "I had to start at the bottom and work my way up."
But again, lets not pretend that most cooks are appropriately compensated. I spent too much of my career cleaning my couch for gas money to make it to work, or juggling all my bills so I could still have a roof over my head.
On a similar note, I was reading an article the other day that stated that people who run businesses that can't pay a living wage to their workers are in serious trouble these days. They are being touted as a perfect example of entitlement and should be shut down.
All I can say is "wow."
So now businesses are being attacked because they should pay more (think McDonalds and $15.00 per hour wage)
What ever happened to get a second or third job to pay the bills and make end meet? No that can't happen....we have to make businesses pay out more even though the profit margin is so thin we will lose money paying the help more.
What the heck happened?
You don't think that businesses have an obligation to pay their workers fairly and at a livable wage? Again, this is a HUGE issue, but the Federal minimum wage is STAGGERINGLY outdated, and has no bearing on any type of livable wage in any part of the country. You simply can NOT live on $7.25 an hour. Many states try to mitigate this by increasing min wage a bit, but it does little to help.
And yes, a second or third(lol) job is an option, for some people. My argument would be that this is the United States of America, the greatest(?) country on earth, and if we need to tell people that they need 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet then that is a problem. That is also an ass backwards way of looking at it. We (as an industry) should be looking at solutions for ways for people to earn higher wages, not just working more hours at crap wages.
There are also ways to have more pay equity for FoH and BoH without affecting profit margin. The simplest is to add a service charge to the bill and then distribute the money among the employees. This model, unfortunately, has not really proven to be successful (outside of extreme high end dining) in this country, but it is an effective method.