A couple of months ago the City Commissioners in Dickinson, North Dakota discussed examining City of Dickinson employee wage rates to determine if they were normal, too high, or too low in comparison to wage rates elsewhere in the U.S.  Then, the City Commissioners even hired a wage analyst consultant to conduct a study/audit on what City of Dickinson employees were paid in comparison to elsewhere.

I don’t mind that the City Commissioners wanted to find out where Dickinson stood in regards to compensation for City employees.  This is probably something that needed to be done for a number of reasons, such as making sure that all City employees are paid fairly, and that Dickinson tax revenue money is not being wasted.

However, what the City Commissioners forgot to take into account, and what the wage analyst consultant probably doesn’t fully understand, is that Dickinson is a very difficult and very unpleasant place to live.  The wage rates are relatively high in Dickinson, because people don’t want to live here.

I want to explain as completely and as thoroughly as possible why the wage rates in Dickinson are high, due to the fact that Dickinson is a very difficult and very unpleasant place to live, thus wage rate comparisons with other areas are almost irrelevant and meaningless.

To begin with a quick anecdote, me personally, I get paid more than twice as much in Dickinson, as I would be paid back in Idaho where my home is.  In Dickinson at my place of employment we sometimes have difficulty filling job openings, whereas back in Idaho, if this job paid half as much, like $9-$10 per hour, there would probably be over 500 applicants for this job.  But the cost of living where my home is in Idaho is less, and daily life is easier in just about every way.

I now want to explain in an organized and thorough fashion, why and how Dickinson is a very difficult and very unpleasant place to live, and thus why the wage rates are higher in Dickinson because no one wants to live here.

Lack of opportunity for social drinking, dining, and relaxation in Dickinson:

• Police in Dickinson are too over-eager and over-aggressive in trying to stop people for DUI in Dickinson.
• Where the restaurants and bars are located in Dickinson, Villard Street, State Avenue, and Main Avenue, the Police drive by again and again, spot vehicles in restaurant and bar parking lots, stop patrons as they leave or are on their way home.
• People in Dickinson can not safely go to bars and restaurants in Dickinson to relax, socialize, and have a few drinks, because of the high risk of DUI, losing their driver’s license, and losing their job.

Very poor service at bars and restaurants in Dickinson:

• Widespread practice of hiring drug-addict women from Coeur d’Alene, Spokane, and the women’s prison for bartenders and servers in Dickinson.
• Widespread practice of bartenders and servers in Dickinson acting nasty and incompetent so that customers leave, so that they don’t have to serve anyone.
• The server’s process in Dickinson is 1) Stand outside smoking a cigarette until the customers enter, find a table, and start looking around for their server.  2)  Take drink order, bring drinks, take food order.  3)  Go back outside and smoke a cigarette until after customer’s food is cooked and waiting.  4)  Deliver food to customer’s table, ask if anything is needed.  5)  Go back outside and smoke a cigarette, and talk on the phone until customers are getting up from table to leave.

Shortage of women and lack of attractive women in Dickinson:

• Most women in Dickinson are overweight and unattractive, they usually sneer, leer, glare, and scowl.  Usually unkempt, with a cigarette hanging out of their mouth.  Overweight women in Dickinson can be seen trying to paddle through the air with their arms as a means of locomotion.
• When women in Dickinson stop mid-way across a parking lot to glare and scowl at passing vehicles, it is not just out of meanness, it is partly because that is as far as they could walk without stopping to rest.
• Shortage of women in Dickinson has led to many acts of sexual perversion such as many recent criminal charges of  “Gross Sexual Imposition on a Minor” and sexual assaults of horses and cattle  https://www.grandforksherald.com/news/2187378-dickinson-officials-investigate-sexual-assault-horse
• Prostitution is not permitted in Dickinson.  The Police in Dickinson place fake advertisements for women wanting to have sex, then arrest the men who seek to meet these women.

Over-aggressive Policing of  law-abiding people, while criminals run loose in Dickinson:

• The easiest and safest people for the Police in Dickinson to pull over are law-abiding non-criminals who are on their way to work, to the grocery store, or home from a restaurant, so this is who the Dickinson Police target the most.
• Criminals, especially thieves and drug-addicts, continually run loose in Dickinson, using drugs, dealing drugs, stealing, and burglarizing.  When these thieves and drug addicts are apprehended in Dickinson, within a few days they are out of jail and loose on the streets again, doing the exact same criminal activity, only they become more and more emboldened each time they get caught and are quickly released.

Over priced real estate in Dickinson with no justification:

• During the beginning of the oil boom from 2007 through 2010, the rents and house prices in Dickinson doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled.   Due to the gouging on rents and house prices, most workers who came to Dickinson made up their minds that they would eventually have to leave Dickinson and that there was no way that they could afford to move to Dickinson permanently.
• The oil boom is now over, oil field workers and others continue to lose their jobs, most of the oil companies are downsizing, people are leaving Dickinson, people don’t want to live in Dickinson, yet rents and house prices remain unjustifiably high.

Lack of competent, professional medical care in Dickinson:

• There is no competent, professional medical care in Dickinson, the rating for the the St. Alexius Hospital Emergency Room is 1.6 out of 5, here are the complaints  https://www.google.com/search?q=st.+alexius+emergency+room+dickinson+north+dakota&rlz=1C1AVFC_enUS746US746&oq=st.+alexius+emergency+room+dickinson+north+dakota&aqs=chrome
• People in Dickinson experience barbarity and excruciating pain more so than in a third-world country due to the lack of competent, professional medical care in Dickinson  https://www.thedickinsonpress.com/news/crime-and-courts/4664894-Stark-County-Inmate-gives-birth-in-holding-cell-%E2%80%94-sues-jail

People in Dickinson experience hostility, nastiness, unfriendliness, undermining, and lack of cooperation from others and co-workers:

• The people in Dickinson are mean, nasty, unfriendly, hostile, hateful, uncooperative, sadistic, cruel, and undermining, especially to people who are not from here, and especially at work.  Here is an example