There's an awful lot of chatter about our minimum wage hike to $8 an hour. For one thing, Ontario MPPs just gave themselves 25% raise while throwing the working poor an extra quarter. This 25¢ raise reminds me of the time McDoug rewarded me with a great deal less.
As a teenager, I worked 18 months for the local McDonald's. I knew cooking at McD's wasn't a career but a job to earn a couple of bucks after the CNE closed in September. I remember my performance review with the salary manager we called McDoug. We were in his office and he went through the standard reports and concluded by letting me know I was going to be rewarded with an extra 10¢ an hour. I was smart enough to know what 10¢ an hour would mean to my extravagant lifestyle. If I put in 18 hours one week, I'd earn a whopping $1.80 before taxes. The end result wouldn't be enough to buy a large fries.
Being a smart aleck teen I actually told McDoug I'd have felt better receiving no increase at all. About a month later I left the world of fast food for a lucrative run with Oshawa Foods.
