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Interpretations:Minimum Wage

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A song about minimum wage, basically. In its lyrical sparsity and duration of under a minute, it could have been written by someone receiving minimum wage: you get what you pay for. The whipcrack serves to underline the idea of wage slavery. This is at ninety degrees to a protest song.

There's not much to analyze in Minimum Wage, but I've always found it an interesting song. The initial whipcrack, I feel, equates to the sudden shock of how awful a minimum wage job is, and the above reference to wage slavery is dead on. The rest of the song, with its sort of fifties "Enter the Wonderful World of Minimum Wage", low-rent celebratory music, reflects the Muzak of low-paying convenience stores and the false advertisement we receive about the wonders of the working world. Its short span might be indicative of the high turnover most minimum wage jobs have.

The Whipcrack is definitely a reference to slavery. -Walrus

While I think the whipcrack is a good symbolic reference to slavery, I always think of an old Western when I hear it, especially when I hear the "hee-ya!"

It's a bizarre song. I'm not gonna lie, but it's really weird. But I like it. =) It's about having a job you don't like, and having... um... minimum wage? Yeah. Sure. --Lemita 19:43, 4 Apr 2006 (CDT)

I must say that this song is brilliantly clever. I formerly worked retail as a cashier (not for minimum wage, mind you, but close enough), and I can tell you that this song accurately portrays working in a retail setting. The crack of the whip does carry a connotation of slavery, and it reflects the way retail management treats their employees: making them work long hours, forcing them to take garbage from customers while refusing to deal with it themselves, claiming insubordination when employees even slightly contradict their ideas. While not like the stereotypical cheesy 50s-era elevator muzak in the song, the background music in the store is mediocre and repetitive. (Why can they never pick GOOD songs?) While the song is only 47 seconds long and has only two words, they packed a lot of meaning into it: retail work stinks.

Uh, "MINIMUM WAGE!" That's what it'd about. Oh And "HE-YA!" "WHOOPSH (my best attempt at typing the sound of a whip)" Pretty Much --Dunklekuh81

More like "MINIMUM WAGE! HI-YAH! WHA-PISH!" -Salioshy

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