&gt;There are very few people that would dispute that, yet for everything outside of sports there&#x27;s a subsection of the population that has convinced themselves that hard work somehow doesn&#x27;t equal success.<p>I have worked for Kroger for a little over a year now.
I make 7.55 an hour handling dangerous chemicals; before that, I bagged people&#x27;s groceries for 7.45. As a bagger, I not only worked hard, I constantly told my supervisor that I was willing to work 40 hours, that I wanted to work a register. They didn&#x27;t promote me until I gave two weeks notice; my parents convinced me to stay.<p>Now I get paid ten cents extra to clean floors and cover for absentee cashiers (and, mind you, I&#x27;m not actually trained; I had to learn it all myself). Oh, and one of the other janitors cannot figure out basic chemical safety. She is paid just as much as I am, and continues to work as a janitor.<p>It&#x27;s not that hard work never pays off. It&#x27;s that I have a concrete example of hard work <i>not</i> paying off that I see every day.