I remember a long hallway and, at the end of it, if you turned right, you were in the laundry and if you turned left, you were out on the loading dock, by the big trash compactor.

Me and Kenny and Big Lo and Slick Ricky and Farm Boy and Tracy were housemen in a hotel in Kansas City and we made $3.35 an hour, which was minimum wage in that year of our Lord.

And we toiled in what hotel people call, "the back of the house," although it should be called "under the hotel," since the whole 14 floors of the building were on top of us every day from 4 a.m. to noon.

We loaded the big washers and dryers. We ran linen to the maids. We mopped up vomit in the bathrooms of the big night club on the hotel's bottom floor. We vacuumed the lobby and shined the brass in the bar and wiped fingerprints off the glass doors.

We were a sullen people, us night workers, a tribe of near-people. Me and Kenny and Farm Boy were white. Big Lo and Slick Ricky and Stacy were black. Big Lo had a Vietnam bullet hole in his calf. Slick Ricky pimped his wife as a sideline, though not steadily. We kidded Slick Ricky about being too lazy to get a couple more girls and go full-time pimp. Kenny couldn't read. I was in graduate school.

We did not feel "lucky to have a job." Neither did the maids, black and white, who were named Orelle and Juanita, Pearl and Opal.

When the blacks would quit the job, they'd tell the boss, "Slavery days is over."

When white rednecks like me quit the job, we told the boss, "I was lookin' for a job when I found this one."

It being a hotel, sometimes there were business events upstairs. When there were, the leftovers would be sent down to our break room.

There were platters of sandwiches — ham, turkey and roast beef — and there were cupcakes and Danishes.

And Kenny, whose wife didn't work, was joyful on those days. He was a man of medium height, sharp-nosed, with poorly-fitting false teeth that cause him to work his mouth constantly, as if he was always chewing something. He was the only one of us who would pick butts out of the lobby ashtrays and save them to smoke later, even if there was lipstick on the filters. When the free food came down, he'd eat four or five sandwiches, maybe three or four cupcakes.

But when you're minimum wage, things happen to you and you never know why. One day, they stopped sending the free food down to us. A manager told me it was because we took too long in the break room on free food days.

Kenny became visibly thinner. We talked about it, me and Farm Boy and Big Lo and the rest of us, and we came to the conclusion that the free sandwiches were the only reason he'd been able to grow a little belly.

And when they debate increasing the minimum wage, that's what I remember.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Marc Munroe Dion's books, "Mill River Smoke" and "Between Wealth and Welfare," are available on Amazon.com and Nook for $9.99.