It takes a while to be rich

In my very odd Human Resources class (I’ll babble about the whole HR situation later…once we’ve gotten a little more resolution…)…anyway, in this class we have been focusing a lot on pay in the hotel/restaurant industry lately.

And as my teacher would say, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the outlook is not good.”

Some of the students here…actually, the vast huge majority of them, think that once you graduate from this school there will be hundred thousand dollar job offers banging down your door.

I’ve got friends of mine talking to me about working at Hotel X and Hotel Y and “wow, the GM/CEO/owner gets paid so much!”

But they don’t quite realize that there is some work involved here.

Today in HR we were getting more specific into pay scale.  The teacher was talking about some semi-typical starting pay rates for various positions.  The class was fairly animated and talkative, and one of the students asked the teacher, “Well, how much will we be making?  Surely more than that, no?”

The answer…

“You will probably be making less.”

Silence.  I could hear a water faucet running somewhere in the building it was so quiet.

To make a long story short, the students here…they are under the impression that a simple education will gain you tremendous income.  As the teacher went on to describe how junior managers have to do all the dirty work, the grunt work, the awful hours, the fairly low pay, before they have demonstrated their abilities and paid their dues…the students had a look of terrible fear in their eyes.  Hell, a tear may have fallen somewhere in that class.

A lot of the kids here have the easy life.  This school…Ladies and Gentlemen this school is VERY easy.  There is very little of it that is truly a challenge…not just for me, but for anyone willing to put in a little effort.  And what you gain out of it is the basis for a career…not the career itself.

And that is going to be a bitter pill for some of these people to swallow.