I, like a lot of people, was taught from a young age never to talk about money. I’ve even had bosses who wouldn’t entertain any discussion about a pay raise because they felt it was “inappropriate,” as if my salary wasn’t the only reason I was there. While I can agree that too much talk about taxes, salaries and stocks at the dinner table can absolutely kill the mood, as Starbucks employee’s fight to unionize for better pay and teacher shortages flood public education, it’s becoming clear that a lack of transparency about finances tends to only benefit those in power. In the interest of embracing the uncomfortable and encouraging transparency, our penultimate issue of the semester will be centered around value exchange, particularly in the financial sense.
No environment in the past, present or future illustrates how money controls our behavior quite as well as a minimum wage job. Especially in the years since the COVID-19 shutdown, workers have had to juggle increasingly disagreeable customers, labor shortages leading to unmanageable workloads, and rising cost of living while the federal minimum wage stays stagnant at $7.25 an hour. For Cheyenne Butler, a minimum wage job is what allowed her to see first-hand how corporate management short-changes their employees, as she explains in “I Gained Class Consciousness In An Athl*ta Stockroom.” Retail and food service being two sides of the same customer-service coin, Hailey Robbins explores her complex experience working as a waitress, and the ways in which American tipping culture mediates her interactions with customers in “Waitress Girl.” Of course, money heavily mediates industries at every level, whether we acknowledge it or not. When it comes to prestigious journalistic organizations, Eryn Rhodes dissects how the attention economy and profit incentives motivate journalism–for better or worse–in “The Money and Morality of the 4th Pillar.”
But financial discussions don't always bring with them a storm cloud of anxiety and greed; money is merely a tool the same as speech (at least in the eyes of the law). In “Golden Rings,” a playful, upbeat personal piece from Bailey Middleton, she speculates about what kind of job she will find herself in after graduation, and what her life will look like in each case. Also concerned with her financial future, Jasmine Wang’s “Confessions of a Shopaholic” centers around the silly little impulse purchases that she has yet to pull the trigger on–no matter how badly she wants to.
Hopefully through this issue we can all become a little more comfortable with such a taboo subject, even if I still don’t necessarily need to hear about the next “definitely not a pyramid” scheme that my brother brings me from one of his friends. Special thanks, as always, to Mary Esselman, Addie Giligan and KJ Villanueva for all your help in putting this issue together.
