Coming to Terms With My Misguided Job Snobbery

What if restaurants and retail were the answer after all?

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

As the months piled up, I had to consider that maybe my mom was right. Perhaps I wasn’t doing my family any favors by being a job snob and turning up my nose at her fast-food openings. I started having flashbacks to all the times I’d been less than charitable about friends who were out of work. I kept replaying a lunch I’d had with two pals a few years earlier. We’d been discussing a mutual friend’s husband who’d lost his job and hadn’t had any luck finding another.

“Can’t he go work at ShopRite?” I said coldly. “Slice up a ham at the deli, just do something! At least then they’d have benefits.”

“I think she should leave him,” added one of my friends. The other nodded. “How much time is she going to give him? Seriously, either get moving or get out.”

This memory kept me up at night. Was it time for me to take my own advice? Why was I so resistant to restaurants and retail? Was it the thought of reporting to someone half my age for minimum wage? Or maybe it was the knowledge that I hadn’t exactly excelled at cleaning fitting rooms or folding chinos during my six-month post-college stint at Banana Republic. Still, others were embracing these jobs so perhaps it was time to reconsider.

Exhibit A:

During an afternoon last fall, I dashed into Starbucks for a quick hit of caffeine. When I got to the counter, the barista wasn’t a nose-pierced, angsty teen slam poet; it was a mom. A mom I knew—wearing the whole black hat and apron. And she looked happy, or as happy as one can while trying to process the complex orders—“Venti Soy Caramel Macchiato, not too full!!—barked by the impatient public above the roar and spit of the foaminator.

My reaction to seeing her smiling face was shameful. I lurched backwards, the way I imagine I would if I walked in on her sitting on a toilet, before fumbling through my, “Hey, how are you? I love this place!” gushing as if she were Howard Schultz, overcompensating for my initial shock. Clearly, she wasn’t being held there against her will, and Fortune consistently ranked the java giant among the best companies to work for, so why did I startle as if I’d just caught her licking all the coffee stirrers?

When I was back in my car, I felt so strange because:

a) It wasn’t like I was Christiane Amanpour where I had any right to feel like my own career was so important or glamorous... and...

b) If we went head-to-head in an hours vs. earnings battle, I was sure that woman was doubling my wage handily, considering some evenings I’d stay up well past midnight writing about a board of ed’s decision to ban students’ use of cell phones.

So what was my problem? I wish I could say this was a one-off; it wasn’t.

Exhibit B:

Later that year, I discovered my child’s former preschool teacher working at Old Navy. This woman, who’d expertly shepherded youngsters through cutting and pasting, wore what appeared to be five layers of cardigans as her register stood a mere six feet from the door exiting to our frozen suburban tundra.

As I waited in a line that snaked past colorful dog bowls and Hello Kitty underpants, I couldn’t help but wonder: How did she end up here? Gambling debt? A gripping denim addiction?

Though it was none of my business, I was dying to know what drove her out of the classroom and into the arms of the Gap’s low-rent cousin. I’m sure teaching the not-quite-potty-trained set gets old fast and maybe there’s an amazing physical release that comes from screaming out for a price check. Still, I was surprised.

When I left, a million questions spun through my mind: Was it a sign of the times that skilled professionals were now turning to retail? Were they simply supplementing their income? Was it a dearth of opportunity for those of us over forty? To paraphrase Jack Johnson, “Where’d all the good jobs go?” Or are these careers less stressful?

Let’s face it: In retail, when you’re done, you’re done. No one follows you home to ask for a peasant blouse in medium or to fix a Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino. You don’t have to deal with an editor calling at nine p.m. to tell you a body has been found behind the Staples in Morristown, “So get the police chief on the phone and head over there!”

In these positions, your email probably isn’t blowing up and you can sleep knowing what you’ll face tomorrow will be much like what you encountered today. Or did they take these jobs as a rest stop on the way to the next big thing? I knew that sitting on the sidelines waiting for greatness could backfire.

The summer after I’d graduated from college and moved back home, I held out hope of landing a job in the world of publishing. Books, magazines, newspapers, textbooks, I didn’t care, I just wanted in. While biding my time, I babysat for every child within a ten-mile radius, mainly because my dad had reduced our exchanges to sentences like this: “You’d better do something because I didn’t pay for you to go to college so you could sit around all day watching Love Connection.”

One afternoon, as I was wiping up puddles of toddler vomit at a house across town, he’d called to relay a message, “You have an interview if you want it.” At a financial company .. in customer service. It wasn’t publishing but it meant I could say goodbye to Barney and runny noses. In a moment of desperation, I dialed that corporation as fast as I could and ended up spending eighteen months in what turned out to be a crazy sweatshop of a call center, donning a headset that practically wore a bald patch into the side of my head.

I knew what it was like to make decisions from a place of fear and yet I was seriously considering going to the mall to try to get back my old job at Banana Republic despite never being entirely comfortable asking, “Do you need any socks today? How about a belt?”

I was skimming online applications when I heard from another website I’d applied to. The articles covered an odd mishmash of wellness, pets, the military, and medical marijuana, and the job description had been vague. But the company was based in New Jersey and I liked that I would be able to write and edit from home.

When I called the editor back, he offered me the job on the spot. It was part-time but paid twenty dollars an hour—substantially more than what my mother told me Subway was offering. I hadn’t been prepared to make a decision on the fly, yet with little else coming our way, I thought I’d be a fool to pass it up. I reasoned that I could still look for a full-time job while bringing in a little cash.

I accepted the job then and there, which prompted this editor to tell me about all the other candidates he’d interviewed. Many had failed to send writing samples. Others couldn’t follow the application directions. Even more never wrote back at all. To him, I was a long-haired Rupert Murdoch in sweatpants and lip gloss. It was nice to receive some positive feedback for a change. For a moment, I felt the tightness in my chest loosen by at least 20 percent.

Reprinted with permission from the memoir Sad Sacked.

Liz Alterman the author of the memoir, Sad Sacked, the domestic suspense novel, The Perfect Neighborhood, and the young adult thriller, He’ll Be Waiting. Her essays and humor pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, Parents, and other outlets. She was named Humorist of the Month by the Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop in November 2021 and was selected as a Guest Writer & Editor at the 2023 Leopardi Writers Conference. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, three sons, and two cats, and spends most days microwaving the same cup of coffee and looking up synonyms. For more, visit lizalterman.com.