Shops that pay hourly

I do MS mostly for the experiences so I normally don't look at things from an "hourly rate" perspective. But I got a call from a scheduler asking if I would do a merchandising type shop where I go into a store and move products or whatever. She mentioned that the shop pays $10/hr, which is less than minimum wage in my state.

Genuine question - if the company specifically says that the job pays hourly, how is that legal to offer less than min wage?

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You are an independent contractor and not subject to minimum wage laws.

Tell them you can do it for $x an hour and mention that $10 is less than minimum wage in your state. My personal lowest amount I will work for as an IC merchandiser is 1.25 times minimum, since I have to pay taxes out of my pay.

The company only has to pay the state minimum wage if said company has offices in that state. Otherwise they pay at or more what the federal minimum wage which is $7.25 an hour as a W2 employee, as an independent contractor they can pay whatever they want.

I didn't know that contractors aren't subject to minimum wage. So I could ask someone to be my personal assistant as an independent contractor and tell them it pays $5 an hour? Sketchy.

@Daisy Mae wrote:

Tell them you can do it for $x an hour and mention that $10 is less than minimum wage in your state. My personal lowest amount I will work for as an IC merchandiser is 1.25 times minimum, since I have to pay taxes out of my pay.

That is a good rule of thumb to keep.

Another thing to try to find out is: what do the experienced shoppers or merchandisers tell you about how long you might be on site? Is there a guaranteed maximum or minimum payout? Generally: as a newbie, you might spend more time on site and as you gain experience you might spend less time at each location. Your time might be influenced by time spent waiting to speak to a manager, time waiting for the area to become free of other workers or customers, long lines, or other factors that you cannot know in advance of your visit. Each independent contractor might earn a different amount of money for the same assignment, depending upon their rate of work and other factors that influence their time on site.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. - Lao-Tzu

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2021 11:33AM by Shop-et-al.

If someone is paid hourly, they are probably not an IC. If they are paid hourly and less than minimum wage, they are definitely not an IC.

Sorry, mystery2me, but you are wrong. Wage laws, like most labor laws, simply do not apply to independent contractors.

Based in MD, near DC
Shopping from the Carolinas to New York
Have video cam; will travel

Poor customer service? Don't get mad; get video.

All I am saying is those ICs are misclassified.

Sure. Good luck finding anyone willing to work for $5 an hour, LOL. Of course, there'll be takers if they know you won't report it or take taxes out!

That being said, I constantly tell schedulers I can't afford to work for less than minimum wage. Some of them seem to grasp the concept (i.e., that there's not enough working hours in a week to earn a living even AT minimum wage, moretheless earning less than minimum wage).

@hotsauce1 wrote:

I didn't know that contractors aren't subject to minimum wage. So I could ask someone to be my personal assistant as an independent contractor and tell them it pays $5 an hour? Sketchy.

@Daisy Mae wrote:

Tell them you can do it for $x an hour and mention that $10 is less than minimum wage in your state. My personal lowest amount I will work for as an IC merchandiser is 1.25 times minimum, since I have to pay taxes out of my pay.

That is a good rule of thumb to keep.

Also, you may like to keep in mind those "flat rate" jobs may take only 10 or 15 minutes, but you get paid for the full hour. And if a job is "estimated" to take 6 hours, and only takes you 3, you get paid for the full 6 hours.

But you must get this in writing before you do the job. What they tell you on the phone just doesn't count!!! (Lesson learned the hard way, rotflmfao! )

Unless I am eating a prime rib at Texas Roadhouse, I don't do shops for the "experiences". I do them to make some money. Equally important to me is the time spent doing the work because that determines the hourly rate. So I could not imagine looking at pay without also looking at it within an hourly pay context as well. Because if you only look at the total amount of money you make, and not the hourly rate, that's a recipe for getting taken advantage of, especially when it leads to working for less than min. wage.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2021 07:22PM by Curious99.

@Shop-et-al wrote:

Your time might be influenced by time spent waiting to speak to a manager, time waiting for the area to become free of other workers or customers, long lines, or other factors that you cannot know in advance of your visit.

Very true!

Other possibilities include:
* The time it takes for associate to retrieve the merchandise from the back room, which could require the use of a Merchandise Lift to remove pallets/boxes from an upper shelf and then transfer product to a platform cart to transport to sales floor.
* Or, even worse, wait time for them to go outside the building to retrieve the product from a secured storage pod -- and, unfortunately, the associate forgets to take the key or the lock combination and has to go back inside and find a manager. : (

These are things that have happened during my merchandising adventures.

Bilingual (Spanish<>English)

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Shops that pay hourly

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