Here are some practical reasons that I would recommend taking a job at a grocery store for $14 an hour as an alternative to going on higher-paying unemployment or just trying to grow your side business from scratch:
You earn more than the hourly Wage. You earn respect from your neighbors, your friends, your family, your landlord, and institutions like courts and schools and the government. This respect has financial value, grows your financial safety net in real ways, and reduces your most extreme risks.Â
It is good for your ego.
You will experience the opposite of the Peter Principle: you will find yourself under your head instead of over your head, and without going above and beyond you will stick out for your competence.
You can accomplish all the job requires and impress people while working at 70% of what you think of as full effort. You can spend this extra work energy on taking care of your life needs, and you can spend the extra capital you get by being seen as highly competent on protecting personal life boundaries (taking sick days as necessary, leaving on time, taking doctors appointments).
You will learn how low wage workers live and think and are motivated or not motivated, which is going to help you in future hiring and management efforts if you ever wanted to build a team, especially if like me you always mistakenly think people are more like you than they are. To put it bluntly, you will be surprised to learn the amount of work people will put up with for a small paycheck. You will learn that people donât quit even when they believe they should and swear they will.
You will meet interesting people with very different approaches to life than the ones in your former higher paid work. They are generally more accepting of differences and donât see you as an extension of the brand on and off clock.
Your other time will be more valuable because you are demanded somewhere 40 hours a week while the supply of your time hasnât changed. This will give you psychological strength to charge more or track time more completely for your side business.
You will be able to reset difficult relationship boundaries. Difficult people in your life will have to bend around the demands of your job which has an all or nothing element: you cannot just NOT go in the way you can with your higher paying knowledge work type jobs. You canât just answer your phone at work, etc.
You can get good insurance and a 401k.
It helps you remember the Main reason you have other creative outlets is intrinsic interest in them. This is better than thinking of your creative outlets as being a future business.
Some of my experiences working at 7-11 and a grocery store since the pandemic hit are linked under the work section of this newsletterâs GREATEST HITS. They have been highly reviewed posts, and if you liked this one, youâll like those.
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