My Job Is An Exit To Eternal Summer Slacking.

Remember those dumb jobs of high school summers past? For me my quintessential high school job experience was being a day camp counselor. You worked a long day, sometimes enjoyable and sometimes excruciating, and if you brought it home with you, you carried it only long enough to complain about it to your parents before going to someone's house (party).

Sometimes, and I mean this in the best of ways, I feel that way about my job in the restaurant industry. In some broad way, I am potentially working towards a career of some sorts, but the reality of my life right now is that I have a job where people regularly show up hung over, under slept, totally disinterested, and/or on autopilot.

Yesterday I worked an early morning serving shift, arriving at work at 6:40, clocked out at 2:30. Headed to the bar for my shift drink and was joined by a coworker (remember that 2:30, though early, had been the end of a full 8 hour work day for me). Took myself to solo dinner at one of my favorite East Village spots where I have an unlikely rapport with this line cook whose name I don't even know. We somehow end up chatting every time I go there...to make our strange connection realer, he told me he will be trailing to work at the restaurant I'm at. Only in New York. Following, I joined some friends in Williamsburg for drinks and trivia night. I came close to pulling the elusive, rare breed of summer abandonment: the all-dayer. Sure I'll be a little tired at work today- but I'm working in hotel room service from 3pm - 11 pm. It's not like I'll really need to bring my A game. The only thing I'm definitely bringing is a book and a sensible dinner.

And while having a summer-style job is great over the summer, I know come September (and my one year anniversary at the restaurant) I'll miss sensing that with the crisp weather comes a return to trying hard.

This Is No Joke. Happy Graduation, Class of 2010.

A couple days ago, I read an extremely relevant article The Wall Street Journal (a hard copy no less). As its title suggests, "A Lament For The Class of 2010" illustrates the job market for young, college-educated graduates. It's bleak.

"They will enter a world where they will compete tooth and nail for jobs as waitresses, pizza delivery men, file clerks, bouncers, trainee busboys..."

That's the truth. On average, I apply for 3 jobs a week. Now, thanks to the restaurant that hired me, I even have NYC service experience and I can't get a job serving tables. I've worked at major arts organizations, but I can't get a job answering phones at hair salons. Sure I've got an Ivy League degree, but I rarely even get interviewed for the random admin jobs I apply for. 17% of people between the ages of 20-24 don't have a job. And (almost) all of them want one.

What I found interesting about this article, though, is its unafraid disdain of the Boomer generation (who I imagine make a significant portion of WSJ's readership). I love my parents, but other than their parents (the self-proclaimed "greatest generation"), there is no generation so uniformly condescending towards the plight of young people today than the Boomers who spawned them.

Back when we were employed, Boomers claimed Gen Y-ers make bad workers, entitled and demanding and incapable of understanding why they are at the bottom of the ladder. Maybe its because we were told by said Boomers that we were the most amazing people of all time, that we really could do anything, and that our grades, SAT scores, college acceptances proved it. After having worked really hard to meet the high expectations for us, of course we expected to be rewarded for it. We always had been.

Growing up, we middle-class Gen Y-ers were over-committed hyper-scheduled achievers. Aside from the fact that our battles with underemployment have done a number on our understanding of our capabilities and self-respect, we have never had so much free time in our entire lives. In part because of the Boomer parenting philosophy of "No Summer Left Behind," our brains don't compute with a life that includes day after day with nothing on our schedules. Our post-graduation joblessness isn't a choice. We're no Ben Braddock. You tell us "Plastics" and we'll say, "Insurance!"

"...the legacy costs that society has imposed on young people will be a millstone around their necks for decades. Who's going to pay for the health care bill? Gen Y. Who's going to pay off the federal deficit? Gen Y. Who's going to fund all those cops' and teachers' and firemen's pensions? Gen Y. Who's going to support Baby Boomers as they suck the Social Security System dry while wheezing around Tuscany? Gen Y."

While I don't think pensions or social security are an inherent problem, I do believe they will be if Gen Y doesn't start earning some serious money. Boomers are poised to retire, some having been forced into retiring early, and there's a lot more of Gen Y than Gen X to shoulder the burden.

Hey Boomers : Try finding me a job, and see how you fare. When you succeed, please email me at underemployedinnyc@yahoo.com.


The cartoon above is by Scott Santis, former editorial cartoonist for The Birmingham News.