I normally agree with many of your sentiments, but I’m not totally on board with you here.
Server roles are Disney are often hard to get into (long waiting lists, must have experience), because the pay is good. Not the Disney pay, but the tipping. I was once on a cast bus back to the CM parking lot after my shift ended at 2PM when a server from France got on board and sat next to me. She took out her wad of tip money and started counting...and I silently started counting with her. She had $700! And as I said, it was only 2PM and we all know WSC had only been open for 3 hours at that point!
So when you make the point about advancing in the line of work as a server...advancing to what? Managers? Managers in the Disney restaurants make probably $45k a year. Why on earth would anyone want to leave a position where they can make in one day what their boss makes in just shy of a week?
For the same reason traders don't stay traders... or sales people often get out of the field and into management, etc. It's not always about your gross. Like the post you quoted stated... "you own the negatives that come with those choices too".
Fishermen make huge amounts of money in short bursts... but face volitivity, zero benefits, and high risk of injury that can take them from high flying, to nothing.
I wasn't saying servers don't make money - heck, goto any resort town and you can make hundreds per day just like your example. I have family members who took advantage of the international lockdowns to do just that this summer... step into the huge staffing shortage to take high paying wait staff jobs for the summer.
My statement was simply "you own the negatives that come with those choices too" - So own the good with the bad. In this case, the employee was still a part time employee... which means limited benefits, limited hours, lower seniority, etc. It's like the people working under the table... cash now, but tradeoffs elsewhere.
Or people who make the decision to work for the government instead of the private sector... because they wanted the benefits, stability, or job security.. vs the more voltile, but higher upside private sector. There isn't a 'wrong' choice here, just people need to own both the good and bad of the choices they make.
Everyone wants to talk about the long term viability of positions and 'living wages'... yet defend jump on someone for having the audacity to suggest the lack of career or personal advancement over 15 years raises an eyebrow?
What is it people? You want to encourage stability, growth, and family support... or you want people to stick to the 'easy cash, but zero outlook' roles of part time tipped positions?
If people want to be a ODV person for 20 years... I don't care. But don't ask for empathy or handouts when the role doesn't cut it anymore and you need those things you forsake so you could 'live your dream'.
Just for the sake of the title because someone might judge them for being in a “starter” position? Even I would know how to suck up my pride and put aside what people would think of me for being a server if I made that kind of dough.
If you really have servers making 180k a year at Disney in tips (700 a day, 5 days a week) ... let them stand up and be recognized. Because those positions wouldn't be sought after in Orlando's market.. they'd be killing for it.
And again.. this isn't about putting down servers as a job... the comment was about someone being in a environment for 15+ years and still not working their way to a position of greater strength then a part time role.
Anyway, to me, a person finding themselves in this kind of job is - in normal times - smart. They didn’t need to sink themselves hundreds in thousands of dollars in debt to earn a degree to serve tables, yet they make far more money than probably most do with that level of education.
Disney has typically been a stable career choice, aside from contract work in entertainment, but that’s the nature of that beast.
Stable work... but in large park incredibly under paid with high demands. Unless all these tales of CMs living on skid row, or bunked up to the max are just outliers? And all the career roles we talk about, how crappy the pay is.
Who WOULDN’T want to do a basic job, make more money than their boss, and be able to spend more time with their family?
The people looking beyond the weekly paycheck... the people looking at their benefits, their job security, their growth as their family grows, the people looking at their retirement, etc.
If she's making 60k/yr and doing all those things on her own... great. But who wants to setup the betting line on that one?
