The new clerk was working again this week. And again, it took three tries to get my numbers put in correctly. It makes me feel good about my town that in a week she had such little practice that the lottery machine is still a challenge. Maybe we aren’t such get-rich-with-no-effort people after all.
I hear a lot about how hard it is for employers to find people who want to work, rather than just show up for a paycheck. This clerk is not a show-up-for-a-paycheck person. She is very intense about her work, makes sure she makes eye contact with each customer, very careful about how she lines up the upc lines with scanner, very precise in tearing the receipt paper away from the register. I hope she gets satisfaction from knowing she is doing a good job.
In the discussion of “living wage” and “minimum wage” I hope we remember that value cannot always be measured in numbers. Being a clerk at a local stop-and-rob does not require the same level of education or skill as being a heart surgeon and therefore needs not command the same compensation. But that job has value. When your car is almost out of gas or your need a loaf of bread and the grocery store is closed, that clerk’s job is really, really valuable. We must be careful not to “up the minimum wage” those jobs out of existence, but we must never, never disrespect those jobs, nor especially those workers.
Thank you, clerk-girl, for being there late Saturday afternoons.