This week’s “Best of Fat City” — Job Wanted!
| It takes balls to get a job these days |
In today’s New York Times, two Ohio twins living in The Big Apple — Kristy and Katie Barry — are profiled because they’re young, pretty and can’t find jobs. They send homemade gifts to potential employers: those chocolate-covered peanut butter balls called Buckeyes. Competition is particularly intense in NYC right now: even Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl, who was in Kansas City on Wednesday night plugging her new big green cookbook, got her pink slip from publisher Conde Nast.
The good news, in Kansas City anyway, is that Waldo Pizza waiter (and future novelist) Joel O’Laughlin is not only employed, but was voted “Best Waiter” by the Pitch readers. And although it’s not a high-paying gig, wine expert Doug Frost picked up another PBS-TV role as one of the judges in The Winemakers reality show, which premieres this afternoon at 2:30 p.m. on KCPT-Channel 19.
If you can’t be working on TV, there’s always the food service industry, where tipping — To Insure Prompt Service — is the primary income for most servers and bartenders, although Jonathan Bender discovered that some people don’t think tipping should even exist. In Fat City, we believe that all people who dislike tipping should be forced to work at least one shift as a server in a dining room filled with pushy, disagreeable cheapskates.
We also learned that kids who eat too much candy may grow up to be violent (and potentially bad-tipping) adults and that not everyone has the patience to visit every single farm on the Kaw Valley Farms Tour. And speaking of candy, Jonathan Bender discovered there are, mercifully, alternatives to candy corn just in time for the Halloween buying season. Those choices come in cellophane bags, but if you want to get really ambitious, you can always make homemade Buckeye balls — don’t forget the wax.
(Image via Flickr: robinlynne.org)
