'Are they insane?': Employee understandably turns down $2.50 job, employer wants 'to talk'

JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor

Feb 13, 2024 8:00 PM EST

The best thing about jobs is that they pay money. That's kind of the whole gig. Sure, there might be some jobs we'd be willing to do for free, like playing with our amateur garage band at the local pub, cleaning up our grandmother's yard, or helping a friend move (unhappily, but I'll do it.) But we do those things because either we love to do them or because we're helping out someone we love. But when our employers ask us to do free work, that's when lines start to get crossed.

Like in this recent r/antiwork story, where a dispatcher sent a delivery driver on a job that paid practically nothing. It paid less than subway fare in New York City. Linda Evangelista famously said, "I don't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day." So I'm certainly not getting out of bed for $2.50.