Take it From Me

It's a hard thing to admit to myself. That the word "underemployed" has always fit. When I started out in my "grown up" career, I'd never heard the word. But it's true -- for my entire working life, save a couple of brief stints as a full-time newspaper employee (you know, another healthy industry), I've been UNDEREMPLOYED.

I have been teaching or teaching part-time -- full-time hours with adjunct benefits, or writing, or thinking about writing, or supposed to be writing but really mostly not writing, to writing again, then really writing. whew.

What do you do if you're me and underemployed? Well, you get more underemployed by working. Through the years,  I've fallen back on a "steady" source of supplemental income: food service. I've waited tables, bartended, been bar manager, server trainer, and menu educator.

I've seen a person who almost severed his thumb not go to the hospital because he was undocumented. I've seen servers with fevers so high that they were almost delusional try to serve courses. I've been passed over on promotions because I did not party with the management, partying that included drugs. I've seen racism and sexism, and double standards, and I've done the math too, working out that that lunch shift where I made $17 in tips actually put me in the hole.

In each restaurant, I've found kind people, hard workers, and a caring manager or two. I worked in the mid-ranks of this high turnover industry, because I needed a place that was OK with my first schedule -- writing. I wasn't in it for a career, and it treated me like I treated it -- a numbers game, a slot to be filled.

That personal era has passed, but if you've haven't worked in the industry, chances are you are oblivious to the nature of it, that on a good day (or in a good place) it can feel like family, but for many of us hidden in the ranks, it feels more often like the place of the lowest common denominator.

I'm not here protesting or bringing signs or trying to whistle blow. I'm voting with my wallet, making my choices matter. Read the ROC National Diners' Guide, and make your own choices, at least when it comes to a chain restaurant. How do your favorites rank?

A MAD opportunity

I was much more into The Little Princess than MAD Magazine when I was little, but I understand what a creative effect it's had on American culture for 50 years.

So, when I received a phone call from former editor Nick Meglin last week, I jumped at the chance to speak with him, despite the fact that he repeatedly asked for the last 4 digits of my social security number in order to verify my freelance writer status.

He's relocated to North Carolina, found great satisfaction in creating musical theater, and thinks that the Open Space Cafe Theatre in Greensboro is doing great things. He wanted to talk about it all, and I wanted to listen, and he taught me more about the nature of musical theater in our one conversation than all you that have tried to convince me how awesome Rent and Mama Mia! are over the years. Not that I don't love you for trying ... I just didn't get it til now.

His musical, "Tim and Scrooge," opens tonight in Greensboro. As of the moment, tickets are still available. And you don't have to provide your social security number, no matter what anybody says.