Millennial Survival in Toronto by E.V. Hutcheon – It’s Harder to Earn a Living in 2018

Toronto Ontario – When it comes to life and working, we are all looking for a job with good pay, decent hours and respect; but what happens when you are promised all of those things and it isn’t delivered? One of the biggest problems for millennials today is the lack of a good pay with benefits and full time hours. We are promised one thing and given the complete opposite and if we choose to get upset over it we lose our jobs.

I had grown tired of my last job and began looking for a new one. I figured that staying in retail wasn’t the smartest option because at the time, I was bored and it didn’t provide me with the income I needed to get out on my own. So I decided to start looking into fields that I had never done before, like serving.

I thought this would be a smart move because the hours I was promised were fulltime and I now got paid for each of my breaks. What I didn’t know was that where I was going only talked a big talk but when it came down to it couldn’t deliver on the goods and were in no rush too. They promised me full time hours and despite the fact that I was now going to be making less money hourly than before, I figured the amount of hours would make up for it in the long run and it would ultimately mean a bigger paycheck at the end of two weeks. What I didn’t know, is that it also meant once scheduled I would know when I started work but not when I finished. That bothered me. I also didn’t know that the person who hired me would later get fired for reasons unknown.

It all started to seem rather shady to say the least. I tried not to let my lack of hours bother me and I wrote it off as the new hire being eased into it. It’s been three months now and I get even less shifts than I did when they started me and if that wasn’t bad enough, they placed me with a woman that seemed to think it was okay to yell at me, give me attitude, not train me or assist me when I asked for help and to top it all off, she started talking about me behind my back to one of my best friend’s who also currently works there. This woman may be good at her job but honestly if she left today no one would hire her because at her age she should be retired.

Now I’m not trying to be mean when I say this but age does speak for its self in certain industries and her bad attitude only serves one purpose, to make everyone else miserable. I was told she would grow on me but all she ended up doing was infect the darker crevasses of my heart with her bullshit and anger and in turn this only made working there that much harder.

That’s not to say there aren’t some good people at my new job but the good in this case, does not out weigh the terrible. It’s gotten so bad with the lack of hours that my parents have even begun saying to me, that I don’t have a real job and the ugly truth is, they aren’t wrong. I can’t even blame them for being upset since they have every right to be. I’m not holding my own and I should be. My lack of hours at work only adds to my stress and to theirs. This job has even started to drive a wedge between our relationship and I still can’t figure out how to solve it. I’ve been searching for jobs in my field and so far have come up shooting blanks.

There was a time when as a teenager, you could drop out of high school and find a good job that would carry you and your family; while still being able to afford to put food on the table and a roof over your head. These days every good job needs a degree or diploma of some sort and usually a sufficient amount of experience; so people my age are going to colleges and universities and spending thousands of dollars only to accumulate debt in hopes of finding a good paying, full time, career once they have graduated.

What ends up happening is: they leave school with nothing to show for their money spent and time invested besides that debt and a thin piece of paper. It doesn’t help that most jobs now you have to apply online, which means unless you lie or look good on paper don’t hold your breath. This has always been my problem.

I’m a hard worker who loves to learn and experience new things and I need to be challenged on a regular basis but on paper, I don’t seem that impressive. Even with a good job now millennials like me are struggling to leave the nest and be solely responsible for us and you know why? Because the cost of living is too high and everyone is so consumed with earning a buck, that they become greedy.

In today’s society, the gap between millennials and non-millennials is extreme because on the one hand, you have the people like my parents who were able to work hard and make a dime and you have people like me who work hard and struggle to save what little money we receive. This I believe also sets us apart from the non-millennials because non-millennials can’t understand why we as adults can’t hold down jobs or afford to be on our own. This ultimately causes not only a lack of understanding but also a lack of empathy from both sides of the spectrum.

There are always to sides to a coin but often we can only see the side we are on. This makes it hard to relate to anyone about anything; and in a city as promising as Toronto, how is it possible that there are still so many people struggling to find good jobs with good incomes, whilst still trying to be able to enjoy and have a life of their own?

Born and raised in Toronto, E. V. Hutcheon studied journalism at St Lawrence College in Cornwall Ontario.

She currently lives in Toronto with her family, three dogs and a rabbit, near the Humber River.