What other profession hires employees and pays them minimum wage when they don’t have a (massage) client?

I was just thinking about that as I was writing my Ebook “Finding a Job in Massage” and talking to my massage therapist who works at a spa.

People who want jobs in massage just want to do massage and don’t want to be involved in marketing or running the business but there isn’t any way around it really.  The massage they give and the service they provide as a massage employee can make or break the business.  They are an essential part of the business yet they are only paid minimum wage or slightly higher when they aren’t giving a massage.

What other professions do that?   Lawyers?  Plumbers?  Nurses? Physical Therapists?   The closest comparison as far as job description would probably be Physical Therapists.  But they can work on a few people an hour.

Massage is unique in that you can only see one person at a time?  What is that worth?

Why do massage therapists put up with allowing an employer to pay them two different rates of pay?  The  only other profession I could think of was for hair salons or nail salons maybe.

The massage employer is thinking that they have to pay the massage employee less because they don’t have the money coming in without a client there - so that is the bottom line - who should bear the financial responsibility for that massage therapist not having a client?  The massage therapist or the massage employee?

I personally think it should be the massage employers responsibility.  If they can’t afford to pay the massage therapist the same rate of pay for down time they just need to make sure that there isn’t any down time.  But why do massage therapists bear the responsibility?  Does it increase the massage therapists interest in getting and keeping clients because they can make more if they have clients obviously?  While I am sure everyone responds differently -do people who take jobs in massage really want to be doing those client building projects?   I really doubt it unless they are just working until they can set up their own business.

And yes it does cost money to have an employee and get them clients which needs to be reflected in the price of the massage.   How do you put value on what a massage therapist really does since they are physically limited in the number of massages that they can do in one week/month/year?

No wonder it is hard for massage therapists to get respect from the public and other healthcare providers!

As Dr Phil says “We teach people how to treat us”.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 7:10 am and is filed under Massage Therapy Jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.