{"id":48023,"date":"2014-10-10T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-10-10T17:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48023"},"modified":"2014-10-10T12:03:23","modified_gmt":"2014-10-10T17:03:23","slug":"reasons-to-raise-the-minimum-wage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48023","title":{"rendered":"Reasons To Raise The Minimum Wage"},"content":{"rendered":"

[SCENE:\u00a0 John “FUZZY” Premisse, age 45, steps out behind a Burger King on a grimy industrial boulevard.\u00a0 He is paunchy, his hairline a distant memory.\u00a0 His face, doughy from decades of blue-collar food, is criss-crossed with stress lines.\u00a0 In the background, the smokestacks of a high-tech incubator park belch smoke into the night sky, the glow of the open code hearth lending a faint glow to the background as he lights a cigarette.\u00a0 ]<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>[FUZZY is joined by a much younger man.\u00a0 It is\u00a0 his son, Luke “STRETCH” Premisse.\u00a0 Stretch, age 21, bums a cigarette off his father.\u00a0 As he lights the cigarette, we see spatter burns on his forearms, accrued through hard years on the deep frier<\/em>]<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 [takes a puff<\/em>] Busy night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 [Takes a long puff, holds it, lets it go slowly<\/em>]\u00a0 They’re all busy, in their own way.\u00a0 [Stares into the distance<\/em>]\u00a0<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 Hey, Dad?\u00a0 That guy who was talking with Erica the assistant manager?\u00a0 Who was that?<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 [Scowls, with an air of contempt<\/em>] Pfffft.\u00a0 Sheee-*t.\u00a0 Buddy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 Buddy?<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 Buddy Dayusexmachina.\u00a0<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 Seems like a nice guy.<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 [Spits with contempt<\/em>]\u00a0 Sh*t.\u00a0 He’s a f****ng “earner”.<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 “Earner?”<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 Someone who earns more than minimum wage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

STRETCH: Huh.\u00a0 [Takes a puff on hiscigarette<\/em>].\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 [also takes a puff<\/em>].<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 So – that’s a bad thing?<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 [Looks at his son with an air of alarmed<\/em>]\u00a0 What?<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 So he earns more than minimum wage.\u00a0 That’s a bad thing?<\/p>\n

FUZZY: [Alarm turns to comtempt<\/em>].\u00a0 What the hell?\u00a0 Is that how I raised you?\u00a0<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 [Takes a puff, flicks his cigarette, stands a little straighter<\/em>]\u00a0 What do you mean?<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 We’re minimum wage earners.\u00a0 My grandfather earned $.35 an hour at a burger joint in the forties.\u00a0 My father before me?\u00a0 He started at a buck and a quarter at this same Burger King, back in 1965.\u00a0 Nineteen Sixty Five<\/em>!\u00a0 And he worked away, stayed at that minimum wage, til the day he died at the drive-thru.\u00a0 I started here in 1983 – I made $3.35 an hour.\u00a0 Flippin’ burgers, just like you do today!\u00a0 You probably don’t even remember back in 1997, when Bill Clinton raised the minimum from $4.25 to $5.15.\u00a0 You were just a baby.\u00a0 But it was one of the proudest days of my life!<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 But…why?<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 [Steps aggressively toward his son]\u00a0 Because the minimum wage got raised!<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 Yeah, but…so?<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 It’s how our life gets better.\u00a0 When the minimum wage goes up, we get more money.\u00a0 How f****ng hard is it?\u00a0<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 Right.\u00a0 I get that.\u00a0 We’re the Premisses; the best burger flippers, frier operators and shake-pourers in the Valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 Damn straight.\u00a0 [Takes another puff<\/em>]<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 OK…well…Mister Dayusexmachina says that if I learn to run the scheduling system and how to count tills, I could move up to assistant manager.\u00a0 That’d jack my pay up to $12.50…<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 [Drops cigarette in shock, turns on son in muted menace<\/em>]\u00a0 What did you just say?\u00a0<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 They said I could move up…<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 [walks closer to son, rage<\/em> building]\u00a0 I hear what you said.\u00a0 You wanna “move up”.\u00a0 Is that how I raised you?\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 Er…what do you mean?<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 We earn minimum wage.\u00a0 You do.\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 My daddy did.\u00a0 So did his daddy.\u00a0 That’s what we do.\u00a0 We’re the Premisses!<\/p>\n

STRETCH: But – this would be more <\/em>than minimum wage…<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 [looks son in the eye<\/em>] Mark Dayton just raised the minimum wage.\u00a0 We all just got raises.\u00a0<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 Yeah, but this is even more?<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 What are you?\u00a0 Getting all “too good for minimum wage?”\u00a0 Going out and “learning new skills” to “get pay raises” and “move ahead in life” without waiting for the Feds to raise it for you?\u00a0<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 Well…<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 You think you’re too good for the minimum wage life?\u00a0 The life that was good enough for your father, and his father, and his father?\u00a0<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 It has nothing to do with being “too good”.\u00a0 It’s just that I know how to use the computer, and that other assistant manager Shaylene got fired for dealing pot out of the bathroom, and…<\/p>\n

FUZZY: You look at me, son.\u00a0 Look at me!\u00a0 Other people may “learn skills” and “move up”.\u00a0 And some of them “screw up” and “move down”.\u00a0\u00a0 But we Premisses?\u00a0 We are always here.\u00a0 Reliable.\u00a0 We do the jobs nobody else wants to.\u00a0 And we’re the best at <\/em>them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

[Javier AMARILLO, President of the local SEIU chapter, steps into the frame and addresses the camera<\/em>]<\/p>\n

AMARILLO:\u00a0 What we’ve seen here is why America needs to raise the minimum wage.\u00a0 Because all across this great but racist and deeply flawed nation, hundreds of millions of hard-working Americans have chosen <\/em>not to learn more marketable job skills, to better themselves, and to go to the job market without skills or education that would give them a skill that anyone would pay for.\u00a0 Many of them, raised in a public school system that taught grievance-mongering and neglected hard work and striving to better oneself, have no concept of the idea that “bettering oneself” is not an entitlement, but a personal responsibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it’s for these hundreds of millions of Americans that we need <\/em>to raise the minimum wage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So please join me in demanding your <\/em>congressperson demand a raise to the federal\u00a0minimum wage!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

FUZZY:\u00a0 Hey, it’s Javier Amarillo, of the SEIU!\u00a0 When are you going to organize fast-food workers?<\/p>\n

AMARILLO: [Smiling blandly<\/em>]\u00a0 You don’t exist to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

STRETCH:\u00a0 Do you <\/em>make minimum wage?<\/p>\n

AMARILLO:\u00a0 As if.\u00a0 I make $187,000 a year plus perks.\u00a0 I drive a BMW.\u00a0 I haven’t eaten at a “Burger King” in 20 years.\u00a0 Get back to work, as****es.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I’ve got to get to a dinner meeting with Tina Flint Smith.\u00a0<\/p>\n

[And SCENE, as a Pete Seeger song plays dimly in the background<\/em>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[SCENE:\u00a0 John “FUZZY” Premisse, age 45, steps out behind a Burger King on a grimy industrial boulevard.\u00a0 He is paunchy, his hairline a distant memory.\u00a0 His face, doughy from decades of blue-collar food, is criss-crossed with stress lines.\u00a0 In the background, the smokestacks of a high-tech incubator park belch smoke into the night sky, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,69],"tags":[236,283],"class_list":["post-48023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-socialism","tag-dramatization","tag-minimum-wage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48023"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48033,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48023\/revisions\/48033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}