I Can't Believe It's Not Shakespeare

In what is probably a subconscious effort to piss off my parents, I decided at on my chosen path at a very early age. At 18, I enrolled into NYU’s Department of Dramatic Writing, and signed my life over to become an impoverished playwright.

Of course, even impoverished playwrights need to afford their self-indulgent pity binge drinking sessions, so over the past five years I have had a variety of different avenues of income, all with varying degrees of profit, success, and humiliation. In no particular order, I present to you:

Jobs I Have Had, That Weren’t Playwriting…

· Super Nanny Extraordinaire

High: Getting paid $15 an hour, plus tip, with no money taken out for taxes. Sometimes dinner included too! Sometimes kids pick a leaf off a tree and say it’s for you and it’s cute!

Low: Sprinting down Sixth Avenue, chasing a kid who is a lot faster than I am as he races away from me and towards what I imagine to be inevitable death by oncoming Taxi Cab.

Quirks of the Job: You have to be a fast thinker for this job, ready to make up perfectly valid sounding reasons as to why one cannot have M&Ms for dinner/take off ones pants in public/go ring all the neighbors doorbells.

· Sales Associate, Gap INC

High: 50% discount. Ok, it’s not Zac Posen, but for the two years I worked at the Gap, my wardrobe increased more than it probably will in the next 20.

Low: Tricking people with limited English into applying for Credit Cards with abominable APR, which will probably ruin their credit. It’s gonna take many years of being in debt myself to make up for those lost Karma Points.

Quirks of the Job: Being so consistently perky and enthusiastic, as if there is no place in the world you’d rather be on a Saturday evening than in the fitting room watching a homely woman try on 7 pairs of jeans can definitely take its toll. On the other hand, the high of catching someone stealing clothing, even if you’re not legally allowed to do anything about it, makes up for the job’s usual lack of intrigue.

· Temp Receptionist

High: So you overfill the coffee machine, accidentally hang-up on the Vice-President, leave the phones off for half the day until you realize it’s odd that you haven’t gotten any calls for the past 3 hours. You never have to see these people again.

Low: They never have to see you again either, so they often won’t bother being polite.

Quirks of the Job: In the best temp situations, you get paid to surf the internet all day, and maybe even get some writing done. But it can be boring and weird and awkward coming into an office for such little time, too.

· Barista, Starbucks

High: The trend of tipping your barista has finally started to take off! (Even though, honestly, I still don’t.)

Low: You smell like steamed milk all day.

Quirks of the Job: You get to sound like a real coffee snob when you go on coffee dates, and people assume you got your taste from Cafes in Vienna rather than slaving away in a black polo shirt and green apron.