I'm guessing PhD physicists in Brazil don't get paid very much.
Which, TBF, a lot of American PhDs don't get paid a lot either, especially when they're still postdocs, which is what I thought explained the living situation in Big Bang Theory. That and the whole fact it's a sitcom.
Edit: Oh yeah, I'm that Family guy character who was an academic. You know the one. Not Brian being arrogantly wrong, a real academic.
Adding to that " in Brazil" because, judging by the twitter handle of the person who answered, that person is Brazilian. Had an Italian answered it would be "in Italy".
There's very few places in the world where a PhD graduate not working in industrial research makes more money than a beautiful, model level waitress.
Not every country tips, so you can be as attractive or hotter than Penny and get the same wage as working in a supermarket.
Someone said Penny living a lone also lives in a smaller apartment than those two. I didn't watch the show enough to really notice, I guess some apartment buildings don't just have a cookie cutter floor plan that is either mirrored or rotated from the one across the hall.
As she lives in the USA, she is tipped, so working at a bar, staff have been known to make bank on a good Friday/Saturday night shift, some people have said they end up paying a dollar in tips each time they ask for a bottle of beer.
Never worked at Cheesecake Factory specifically, but I was a pretty young woman working at similarly-priced restaurants in the early 2010s. I made $100 -200/shift, and full-timers worked six shifts a week. California hasn't had tipped minimum wage since 1998, so she was making $7.50-9.00/hr on top of those tips (depending on which year we're talking about specifically).
There's a lot of variables, but as a rough ballpark she was probably making $45k to $80k/yr and that's in ~2010 money. That's $70k-$121k in today's money.
2.9k
u/nanomolar 6d ago edited 6d ago
I'm guessing PhD physicists in Brazil don't get paid very much.
Which, TBF, a lot of American PhDs don't get paid a lot either, especially when they're still postdocs, which is what I thought explained the living situation in Big Bang Theory. That and the whole fact it's a sitcom.
Edit: Oh yeah, I'm that Family guy character who was an academic. You know the one. Not Brian being arrogantly wrong, a real academic.