Making games has been a dream of mine since I was a kid. I just never knew someone would take advantage of my passions. It’s incredibly rare to get a salaried position testing video games—something like one out of a thousand—so I felt like I had achieved a dream when I got that job. I never spoke up because I didn’t want to rock the boat. Those who did speak up were seen as venomous, and they were let go.

Then one day I realized that I was now working for less than minimum wage, in part because our salaries did not rise when minimum wages went up. There certainly was nothing prestigious about that kind of salaried work.

I didn’t learn that my last job was classified as overtime-exempt until I had already quit my other job and was signing contracts on my first day. It was advertised as 9-6 but after starting I found out that was just the minimum hours.

I work twelve to fifteen hours a day, four days a week and get paid $36,000 in salary, plus tips. The tips are probably putting me close to $40,000 a year. I’m 43, turning 44. It doesn’t sound very old, but working these kinds of hours, you can’t do it forever. I’m reaching the end of my ability to work that pace.

I think mothers are especially limited in their job mobility because of the expectation of overtime. My ex-husband worked on salary, often putting in 50 - 60 hours a week, which limited his availability for the kids, but also my availability for work, especially after we got divorced. I always had to be careful to take jobs where there wasn't that expectation of overtime, because someone needed to be there for the kids. His career advanced, and mine stayed stagnant, and I paid the cost of his additional hours in that sense.”

“As the system is set up now, competition almost forces employers to hire as few workers as possible and work them as many hours as possible.”