You also have never worked for the restaurant industry

Being hired without experience for a cashier position =/= being hired without experience in the food and beverage industry. That's a really silly comparison.

Guess that just means I get the satisfaction of knowing I earned my place and am working in a profession that rewards personal growth as opposed to being an unskilled laborer with a resume.

The first full-time job I had, when I was 18 (in 1980), was as a prep cook in a popular restaurant (still in existence.) I was hired with no prior experience and was paid to train on the job from the first day. I left that job after a couple of years and went into the manufacturing industry, with no prior experience, and was also put directly into a paid training program from the beginning. I wouldn't have ever considered working for free, even for a few hours. Now, apparently, unpaid internships are more common...

Unpaid jobs: The new normal? - Fortune Management

About jobs...

Workforce Partners - Workforce Investment Act (WIA)

I know some people that went through P.O.E.T. (which has since been replaced by the dept. in the link) and are now embedded and professional in their chosen fields. It's a good place to start if you need the assistance, you just need to jump through hoops, as well as try to succeed the best you can. Hope someone finds this useful.

I'm so tired literally ALL THE TIME. No measure of sleep, caffeine, feel-good music or anything else designed to raise the dead EVER SEEMS TO MAKE ME FEEL BETTER.

This is so ridiculous and irritating.

I've never worked for free, but then again I've never accepted an unpaid internship or co-op. There are certainly benefits to working for free, especially for the employer. But I think they are outweighed by the disadvantages.

Since unpaid employment is becoming more and more common now, especially in Canada and the US among people my age (20's), I can't imagine what the economy is going to look like in the future when we have even more unpaid workers out there in 5 or even 10 years. If people don't have money to spend, the economy goes down. Then there is the thing about retirement - will people who have worked for years for free or for minimum wage have enough of a pension to live on without having to rely on government assistance? People should start putting money into their retirement savings plans or 401(k) as soon as they get out of university or get a steady paying job, so that there is enough for them when they retire. I know that's thinking like 40 or 50 years from now, though.

I think with the current trend of unpaid internships we are going to see a lot more people living under the poverty line and possibly not paying taxes in the future.

This makes no sense. The only reason people do unpaid internships is to build the necessary experience to ultimately get a good job/career which, of course, results in them paying taxes.

True that. Don't most people take unpaid internships for the job experience and not in hopes of ultimately getting the position they're interning for?

Not sure how it works where you are but here if someone takes an unpaid internship (we call it work experience) they're not eligible for the dole (unemployment assistance) because, technically, they're not available for work. But they don't get PAID for that work, and they're doing it in order to try and get into the industry, so what the hell? Govt complains about people reaching 18 and going directly on the dole, but makes it impossible for those who are trying to better themselves, and not being paid, to get any sort of support? How are they supposed to live?

Ladles and Gentlespoons, welcome, to Ireland! :rolleyes: