As soon as the new Wal-Mart Food center gets built and stocked with goods they will begin to hire people to operate their highly sophisticated cash registers. These computers will have more buttons than a twin engine Cessna and will control inventory, coupons and  all kinds of credit cards.

In addition to knowing how to operate all those controls at high speed, employees will be expected to greet and deal with new customers every minute or so and deal with a whole lot of cash with the expectation that it will all balance out at the end of their shift.

Both the company and many older adults convey the impression that this is entry level and thus low pay work. Yet in most cases if you were to bring in a regional manager and tell him to operate the cash register for a day, he couldn't do it. By the same token if you were to choose one of the adults that so often complain about the low quality help and ask them to run the cash register for a half day they would have everything so messed up that it would take another half day to straighten things out.

The point is; an 18 year old today will have had years of experience working computer keyboards. Their minds and their fingers fly over the controls and it has become so natural for them that they don't realize that they have skills that a 40 year old couldn't develop in a year; maybe never. They come to this new job as a musician comes to a gig; just let me in and I will show you what I can do. 

What it boils down too is that it is in the best interest of the company to make this seem like child's play; to give no hint that this requires as many skills as a professional pianist. No consideration is given to the fact that the parents have spent hundreds perhaps thousands of dollars on smart phones and lap tops and that the new hire has spent many hours over several semesters in computer classes at school. Nor is any recognition given to the thousands of dollars spent on their education. Instead they will probably pay these employees at a wage so low that they will not be able to justify all the money spent on their education.

Moreover there will be no to represent this new employee to make sure that management understands how much time, money and brain power has gone into this individual. So they will be expected to come in and sell themselves short for a mess of pottage.

   To add further to this thought, let us consider that a young person who has gotten through 12 years of school will have on average $ 120,000.00 spent on them by the school system and in an average family an equal amount by their parents, considering sports, travel and time invested in their future. It is not a stretch to say that $ 250,000.00 has been invested in many young people by the time they have graduated from high school.

Now Bi-Lo and Walmart are glad to be able to tap into that resource and investment at somewhere between $ 7.25 and $ 9.75 per hour. At this rate the new employee would have to work over 25,000 hours just to repay the investment put into them.