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Comment by untech | Hacker News Reader

I think buying a warehouse is kinda cool! But if he’s facing security problems, can’t he just hire guards? The labor price must be as low as land price there.

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"Can't he just hire guards?" I'm curious what you think a ballpark cost for 24-hour guard security would be?

In economically depressed areas like this, it doesn’t matter what you pay.

If you roll in a $5K welder or roll of copper, your guards are going to screw you.

You hire a family of thieves led by a patriarch who knows a golden goose egg when he sees one.

I’ve looked up minimal wages in Arkansas. It’s $11/h, which seems ridiculously high, but I’m not an American. I think that in a depressed town, it shouldn’t be hard to find someone for, say, $35 per 12-hour night shift, just to patrol the property with a torch, so that it wouldn’t look abandoned? Which amounts to about $13k per year.

> I’ve looked up minimal wages in Arkansas. It’s $11/h, which seems ridiculously high, but I’m not an American. I think that in a depressed town, it shouldn’t be hard to find someone for, say, $35 per 12-hour night shift

This makes sense. The legal minimum wage is $11/hr, which multiplied by 12 hours comes out to thirty five dollars

I seriously can’t tell who is the more math deficient here. Can someone add a /s somewhere so I’m less confused?

How much does eleven dollars even mean? That’s gotta be what, three dollars max right?

It’s one dollar, Michael, how much could it cost? Ten dollars?

"Minimum wage" is a bit of a misnomer as there are a whole raft of situations and exemptions where the minimum wage is not actually the minimum wage you can be legally paid.

Overnight security guard is not one of those exceptions and if you think you can convince an independent contractor to even put on socks for 35 dollars, which is the only way this would be legal, you're living in a fantasy.

Have the security guard serve food to someone once per shift. Now the minimum wage is $2.63.

Tipped minimum wage requires a person to receive enough in tips to match the non-tipped minimum wage. If there aren't sufficient tips for that, the employer has to make up the difference. The only question is if Arkansas has its own version of that to require matching the Arkansas minimum wage ($11) instead of just the federal minimum wage ($7.25).

They're supposed to do that, but many don't. It's not like the IRS is going to swoop in and bust them for parking less than minimum wage. The employees that take those jobs aren't in a position to make demands and likely aren't even informed that it is required.

I think you would have to adjust the wage up quite a bit to account for the security guard's collusion with the local thieves. 100% what I would expect anyway.

Not even that, being a tip-enabled position is satisfactory to reduce the minimum to 2.63, so just slap a tip jar somewhere no one can reach (but still see) and call it a day.

Every job is tip enabled by default. I think some professions would frown on receiving tips but afaik none are legally barred from receiving tips.

Last time I tried to tip a cop they threw me in jail and tried to call it bribery.

Luckily, the judge didn’t mind. /s

They call those campaign contributions where I'm from, but that's only for sheriffs and judges.

Please don't propagate misinformation like this. Even with tipped wages you still must make minimum wage including tips. The issue is people will read and believe that someone can make just a low amount of money because a position is tipped. This is incorrect.

You can get exceptions for people with disabilities and full-time students in a few fields. There's very few exceptions where someone can make less than minimum wage actually.

Surprised to see this downvoted as it is just a simple statement of fact, to the best of my understanding.

My understanding of minimum wage is on the (US) federal level, where in addition to the standard exceptions that folks know (servers, farmworkers, etc), small enough companies or companies that don't engage in interstate commerce are also exempt from paying the minimum wage.

I wonder if people just don't like what I wrote and downvoted ab irato, if this came across as contrarían and was downvoted for vibes, or if state minimum wage laws change the fact pattern and I'm wrong in my understanding. If I'm wrong I'd like to be corrected.

P.S. since I hate to leave something incorrect: servers actually ARE supposed to get federal minimum wage from their employer if their tips don't cover the difference between the $2.xx they get paid and the federal minimum wage.

Who the hell is going to risk their life for $35 lmao?

Thieves.

In the context of this conversation, who are you going to hire for a 12 hour shift at a real job, where their life is on the line, without having insurance or hazard pay or anything, for $35?

(metaphorical you, and this is more in response to chucksmash above)

Hold on, friend. You're not from there but you feel comfortable dictating a fair wage without looking at the local cost of living? That's really weird.

Minimum wage is $11/h, but that is too high. Time to hire some undocumented immigrants for $35/12h. Toss in some "nobody wants to work anymore" and complaining that regulations are what is ruining the economy, and they'd sound exactly like many Americans.

Isn’t Arkansas one of those states removing child labor protections as fast as they can?

Just set up shop at a rural hospital and pressure kids with sick parents into cheap labor. Charge them room and board to recoup the minimum hourly wage. Easy peasy lemon squeezey.

Yeah I’d say they’re ready for their citizenship!

That person is from Russia.

I guess $11 goes really far in Russia these days.

I doubt that anyone anywhere in the western world would take a job (especially one where you might get stabbed or shot, work 12 hour night shifts and don’t get weekends or holidays off) for $13k per year. There’s always some other job you can take. You can get a job at McDonald’s that would pay more. In the worst case you can try to live off welfare and you’d probably be better off like that.

Whoops, I’ve just checked the thread and it seems that I angered some folks. Not that this comment would be read by anyone, but just for history: as non-American, it was hard to wrap my head around the fact that the minimum wage is $11 de facto, not de jure. It’s almost $2k per month, which is a salary of an educated (non-IT) specialist in lots of countries. I also forgot that minimum wage must be a hot political topic in the US. Sorry for writing stupid things on the Internet, I guess.

Based on what's being described ("career criminals") it doesn't seem like that would be a good deterrence.

A security guard is going to be looking out for their own safety and well-being before any property they're guarding. What do you think is gonna happen if armed criminals show up against a lone guard being paid $35 a night...?

I would certainly hope they would be looking out for their own safety and well-being, no matter what they’re being paid

I think the above comment is using “torch” which in East Atlantic English means “flashlight” in Arkansas.

This reminds me of when my brother and I read one of the Harry Potter books as a kid and we were incredulous when it mentioned him using a "torch" under his blanket to read secretly at night. We thought it literally meant he was using a flame and didn't understand how his he managed to keep his blanket from catching fire

Yep, I’ve learned most of my English vocabulary from Harry Potter and man pages, sorry :)

Pine Bluff has one of the highest murder rates in the entire United States.

I recently drove through the area and when I left the interstate it felt like being in Fallout.

44 murders per 100k residents. More than Detroit, less than Baltimore.

You only need to hire armed guards for a few months until the problem of the repeat career criminals breaking into the place is solved. They will run out of criminal burglars before you run out of armed guard salary.

Sure, because criminals are all dumb as rock and flock to your guarded property like lemings.

What they certainly won’t do is threaten the family of your armed guards, or bribe your guards, or sabotage the vehicles of your armed guards until they don’t show up no more, or learn the schedule of your armed guards and sneak around them.

Or you know, lay low and do easier things until you stop paying guards and come back then.

And the beauty is, during the winter the Gorillas freeze to death!

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