Google security guard uses public assistance to meet basic needs
"Santa Clara County, Calif., is home to Google, Apple and eBay. So, it's no surprise that the median household income was $91,000 a year in 2012, one of the highest in the country. Yet fully a third of the households in the county don't earn enough for basic living expenses, even when they work at some of those big tech companies.
Take Manny Cardenas, a security guard at Google who lives in low-income housing in San Jose and commutes regularly to Google's sprawling corporate campus in Mountain View. Cardenas, a stocky, soft spoken 25-year-old, has been working as a part-time security guard at the search giant for the last year and a half.
Cardenas says his job is to "make sure none of the people were parking in Google's parking place." He says he usually stands in the lot for eight hours and gets a lunch break. That gives him a chance to dive into Google's famous free gourmet food buffet; he would like to bring a few snacks home for his 5-year-old daughter, but as a contract worker here he can't. "I see people taking to-go boxes," he says. "They give you to-go boxes if you ask for them, but we weren't allowed to do that."
Cardenas says it is strange being on Google's campus watching the regular employees drive around on company supplied bikes and scooters and taking food home. "You feel like you're different," he says. "Even though you're working in the same place, you're still like an outsider. And it's weird because you're actually protecting these people."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/12/17/251992536/security-guards-at-big-tech-companies-struggle-with-low-pay
What a pathetically stark illustration of the growing gap in income inequality that exists in America today.
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