JOIN THE BOOMING
DOLLAR-STORE ECONOMY!
Each week, the company allotted Hughey around 125 hours to
assign to the four workers in her
charge, most of whom were earning close to minimum wage, she
said. But according to Hughey, as
well as recent lawsuits against
Dollar General and its competitors, the hours that dollar-store
managers are allowed to assign
rarely cover the work that needs
HUFFINGTON
10.06.13
by having Hughey do much of the
grunt work. As a salaried manager, she was exempt from overtime protections and didn’t get
paid for extra work. Given that
she often worked 70 hours a week,
at an annual salary of $34,700,
her pay sometimes broke down to
less than $10 per hour — hardly a
managerial haul.
She and her fellow store man-
“Employees would say,
‘You’re the boss, you
get the big bucks.’ But,
really, you’re making
[as much as] I am.”
COURTESY OF DAWN HUGHEY
— Dawn Hughey
to be done. The stores operate
on something close to a skeleton
staff, workers say.
Pressured to keep payroll down,
Hughey spent most of her time
unloading trucks, stocking shelves
and manning the cash register, often logging 12-hour days, six days
a week, to keep the store operating. She said she felt less like a
manager than a manual laborer.
Dollar General saved a bundle
agers didn’t like thinking about
the math, she said. After all, these
were supposed to be the good,
middle-class jobs in the low-paying retail world.
“It was always depressing,”
Hughey, 49, said. “We didn’t want
to know what it broke down to. Employees would say, ‘You’re the boss,
you get the big bucks.’ But, really,
you’re making [as much as] I am.”
The physical demands of the
job took their toll. As Hughey was
loading 25-pound boxes of books
off a cart one day in July 2011, she