The Bottom of A Black, Black Hole

The guy I handed my application to was white and pot-bellied, not unlike the pigs his restaurant smokes. His grey hair stood in a ridiculous two-inch spike pattern, and his thick wire-rimmed glasses kept sliding down his nose from the sweat. It was 110 degrees in the Inland Empire today, and I had walked all over downtown Riverside, ducking into coffeeshops and restaurants with the standard inquiry.

But I'm done with all that now. I'm done because this manager, in his striped short-sleeved shirt, looked over my application and suggested I could start as a busser. He looked at the front and the back of his restaurant's poorly copied application, saw my masters degree, saw the salary of my last job, and suggested that I could work for him bussing tables.

I offered that I had waiter experience, grandly overstating what it is to work in Princeton Seminary's private dining room. "Yeah," he said. "But we're high volume." The six people presently patronizing his establishment cast no little doubt on that assertion, but to point that out would have been foolish. So I thanked him for his time and stepped outside.

I think I'm done with this. I'm still waiting to hear from a handful of places, but this is a very bad use of my time, and it's making me miserable.

Next plan of attack: get a copy of Writer's Market 2007 and start working on my freelance writing career.