And while I was here at the King I talked to a young woman who was going through orientation, for her new job at BK, for minimum wage (she was frustrated to be starting at minimum after working in fast food for years), cause she’s got a baby and she couldn’t afford to buy baby wipes last week cause she was totally broke. She asked about my job programming, mentioning that her boyfriend knew a lot about computers; she was wondering if he could get a job like that. I told her how I did it, by starting with technical temp work like tech support, and moving up job by job to positions of greater technical responsibility… Even starting temp tech support isn’t bad pay and it is a good way to move up. She thought that sounded like a good idea.
The manager wasn’t sure what he was going to do, because he’d wanted her on drive through but she had an ear infection and had to have an earful of cotton and antibiotics because of an infection. He asked her for a doctor’s note about how long she’d have to have that and she said she’d try to get one but it might be tricky cause she was broke and had no insurance.
Humbled me and made me more grateful for the luck I’ve had, without particularly deserving it.
Hey, Ed, I don’t know if you’ll run into her again, but if she’s just making minimum wage, she might be eligible for Medicaid. The baby, it seems, would certainly be eligible for MiChild or Medicaid. She could check with Department of Human Services or the Health Department about this…
She said she used to have medicaid but lost it by missing some of the paperwork, but she still had it for her daughter.