Your Unemployed Daughter

It’s come to YUD’s attention over the past weeks and months that, just like not everybody is employed, not everybody is unemployed. And maybe there are a few things we can learn from each other.

Enter YUD’s new Q&A series, focusing on the—gasp!—”employed.” I think you’ll find that these interestingly jobbed folks have some inspiring (or at least intriguing) things to say.

Meet our first victim—ahem—participant, Dorian Stone, who tends bar to make money for his independent films.

Hey Dorian, what do you do?
I’m a bartender/”mixologist” at Barmarché, where I make classic and specialty cocktails with all fresh ingredients. I’m also a filmmaker.

How long have you been doing this, and why?
I’ve been a bartender for 4 years. It allows me the flexibility to pursue filmmaking.

What’s the best thing about your job?
Getting to know the customers, making sure they have a great time.

The worst?
When it gets packed and the specialty cocktail orders pile up, it can feel like a factory.

What do you wear while working?
T-shirt, jeans, clean pair of sneakers. It used to be shirt and tie but now we’re doing what might be termed “casual chic.”

If you could change one thing about your job, what would it be?
A longer bar and more stools!

Do you get paid: a) Enough b) Too much c) Too little d) Fill in your own response:_______________
Enough.

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Psychotherapist, novelist, deep sea adventurer

What’s your dream job now?
Independent feature film director, screenwriter

How long until you retire? What will you do then?
As a film director I don’t ever intend to retire.

What’s the one thing about your job that you wish others knew?
Well, I think it wouldn’t hurt if everyone had worked in the service industry at least once—the way military service is required in some countries. Our country being the bastion of capitalism it proclaims to be, why not require everyone to work in a customer service job, early in their lives? It can be quite an eye-opening experience…. There’d be less douchebags, I can tell you that.

Have you noticed changes in your business related to the recession? Think we’re out of the woods yet?
There’s been a sharp drop in business this year as compared to last. It dipped pretty precipitously from late spring to summer and seems to be getting a little better now. I don’t think we’re out of the woods. I think the landscape has changed.

Have you seen changes in people’s drinking habits in the last year? How about how they’re tipping?
Overall I’d say yes. My bar tabs have been smaller. I do feel that people are drinking less at my bar. They’re more inclined to take their time with their cocktails/drinks and less likely to order multiple rounds. However, I’ve been told by the servers that people are ordering more booze and less food at the tables. They’re tipping about the same, although there are less of those extraordinary tips in which customers drop a few hundred because they loved your service.

How many times in the last 6 months has someone come into your bar and told you they just lost their job? Do you give them a free drink?
About five people. No, I won’t give them a free drink just because they lost their job. (Heck, if it was a dive bar I might.) If they’re regulars and have several drinks, then I usually do a buyback.

Restaurants are closing left and right. Are you at all concerned about job security?
Sure. It’s a very tough business. Here one day gone the next. My current employer appears to be doing okay though.

Does recession/unemployment/the economy factor into your film-making work?
Yes and no. I am directly affected in so far as I have less money from the bartending to put towards my own films. I’d say the downturn has shrunken the pool of potential investors (producers). It just makes the process of funding a film more challenging, which I welcome—it forces you to be more creative.

Barmarché is located in Soho, New York. YUD has been known to enjoy the Falanghina. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hi to Dorian!

Last night several of us former employees of TK Co. gathered to send off one of our dearest, K. It was a good night at Peter’s in the WB, with jokes ’round the picnic table, baby pageant dancing, delicious quarter-pound chickens, and Kanye West impersonations.

(Go there, unemployed peoples; the food is delicious and cheap, the accommodations outdoorsy, and the staff kindly, except for that one girl who told me after my 4th glass of wine that they “were going to have to carry me out.” Um, do you even know me?)

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photo credit: Dark Botxy

We unemployed people are in a precarious position. On one hand, we’re free as the bees’ knees; without jobs to go to the next morning, we can party and dance on bars and drink and stay out late, sleep til 2 the next day, no problem, no worries. And some of us do.

We also desperately crave attention and conversations and people interactions, particularly if we are, say, former managing editors. And we do not get those things when we are home alone working on freelance item #7 or blogging all day. It is a vicious circle. Some might say we have become needy exhibitionists. That is the worst sort.

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photo credit: Ed and Lex

An interesting side effect to being jobless: I suddenly have the endurance of a twentysomething (and if the bouncers at the bars I visited last night are to be trusted at all, I look like one, too).

Seriously, remember when YUD would sip herself into a coma splitting a bottle of vino with you? She was always so quick to finish her drink, and get another, and then another, but all of a sudden her eyes would get all hooded and cloudy and she was putting her head down on the table or losing her purse in heavy traffic. She was fun at first, but then you had to put her in a cab and send her on her way.

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Your Unemployed Daughter has returned from her international travels! She is, for her, exceedingly tan, exceedingly relaxed, and exceedingly tired. The latter not unexpected, seeing as how she ended (or, perhaps, only just began?) S&B’s wedding soiree with a second tequila shot quickly followed by the intense need to rid herself of the second and first tequila shots in a rather dramatic and projectile fashion. Fortunately, her aim was good, no one was harmed, and, if you’re still at the Rockhouse – be careful where you step around those rocks, k?

(In a visual depiction of how things have that funny way of coming full circle, Your Unemployed Daughter ate this this morning, in the Montego Bay airport, at 10:30 a.m. Thank you, Dominoes.)

In other full circle news:

YUD had the pleasure of meeting a former Forensics (that means debate, not, like, CSI-style digging around in people’s guts and fingernails to solve mysteries) champion this weekend. And not just any champion. The ALABAMA STATE CHAMPION OF 1994 (Correction: TWO-TIME ALABAMA STATE CHAMPION) in LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE. Which, if you don’t know, was named after Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, and pits high school and college nerd types against one another to hash out such topics as “Euthanasia – Moral Much?” “Slavery, Schmavery,” and “Resolved: Limiting economic inequality ought to be a more important social goal than maximizing economic freedom.”

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I’ll keep this one short, kids, as I am being fed diet cokes by the friendly bar staff as I overlook the blue blue Jamaica water from the WiFi-ified restaurant lounge and I’m going to have to float out of here pretty soon, or at least continue my work on my base tan and take some pictures for you to see for yourself. Flew in this am on the 7:55 (alarms were set and went off; arrival was on-time even though I’d conveniently “forgotten” my travel was international and therefore check-in closed 60 minutes prior to departure time. Your Unemployed Daughter is growin’ up! Sorta?)

I’ve seen a dolphin and several goat packs, spent an hour and a half through village roads with my driver Duane (falling asleep to Bob Marley on the way), hit 3 ATMs before locating a working one that paid in U.S. dollars, learned the conversion rate but not the name of Jamaican money, interacted with a fellow hotel guest who has had her hair questionably braided, found my Internet connection, and, now, completed my daily job search/email check (see Mom? Dad?) to no avail whatsoever.

But in this case no avail is perhaps the best avail, and as good a sign as any that I should put my name in the book for a massage tomorrow, take an open-air shower, and head for happy hour. Half-priced drinks? How could a jobless gal say no? And why would she?

In between visiting my parents in Florida and a trip to Jamaica for a friend’s wedding, I have three days back in NYC. (I know this strikes panic in the hearts of many. Not to worry, dear friends, I will be – at least attempting – to post from the rocky cliffs and sun-drenched shores of Jamaica. Apparently they have WiFi in their restaurant.)

Aside: This may be my tannest summer YET since I was a kid growing up waterskiing on the Tennessee River. Already my moon-toned visage has attracted a number of freckles and all the kayaking and biking has turned my arms and shoulders from white to a distinctly beige tone (something I’d never see, you know, if I was spending my time in a cubicle). Not that tanning is good, of course.

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Don’t you find the airport endlessly fascinating? Especially when you are delayed for an hour, and get through the gate more than an hour before your flight would have boarded had it actually been on time? Stranded airport time provides such uninterrupted food for thought (only if you are traveling alone, otherwise you’ll surely be deluged with endless chitchat and meaningless nonsense from your companions who are far less sanguine about their sojourn at PBI, especially as they likely have to get back to demanding jobs and personal lives while your time is an endless sphere from sleep to wake to eat to workout to eat to send resumes and blog post to eat again and drink and then back to sleep. Repeat.)

In such cases, actually, the airport is a wonderful diversion from the mundane. So many people! So many shared restrooms! Such a cross-section of humanity! The airport where I sit, at gate C-5 across from the Miami Subs Bar and Grill, has always been one of my favorites. It’s relaxed and the lines are never very long, people are slow-moving and friendly (we are in Florida, after all, so the median age is perhaps 65), and the sun, visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows, is always out at least a portion of the day, though my delayed departure has to do with one of those daily thunderstorms – it does clear up afterward – that these coastal regions are known for. In addition, there is WiFi! It is a glorious spot, really.

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Here is one nice thing about work. When you are sitting in front of your computer, perhaps typing, mouse-scrolling, or even just staring thoughtfully at the monitor, people do not generally interrupt you with inquiries as to how much severance “they” would have to offer you for you to actually take it, or offer up their thoughts on how maybe people should just work ANYWHERE if they can’t get a job because isn’t it better to do SOMETHING than nothing, and, one last question, are there any good chick flicks out now that you’d recommend to a group of women?

None of those points of those discussion do I mind, by the way, in themselves, exactly. It’s just … GUYS! I’m trying to write a deeply meaningful, politically astute, culturally solvent post with satirical underpinnings – the one that I know my 3.5 readers have been waiting for since they devoured yesterday’s entry – and it’s really hard when I keep having to turn my thoughts to whether or not Star Trek counts as a chick flick if it has cute guys in it. (It doesn’t.)

However, I really am having a lovely time here in Florida. Today began with a kayak trip (and boy, are my arms tired!) through the mangroves, followed by grilled veggie and mozzarella sandwiches on the beach while observing some pretty dramatic pelican-diving (they dive straight down into the water, beak-first, much like the former employees of a certain company), followed by a leisurely return kayak voyage, a sit on the porch, a light snack…and we’re still beating the rain, though there’s thunder in the distance. So I have little to complain about, and in fact, some (including those in near proximity) would probably say that I am being a bit of a brat.

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Last night I met up with a former coworker (there are so many!) for drinks and dinner on the Lower East Side. As is the norm for an evening preceding a morning when I have a flight to catch (why is that always the way?) I drank far too many glasses of white, rose, and red wine, and ate far too few French fries. Despite my own excesses and lack of carbs to temper, I think it’s safe to say I felt better than the guy who kicked this fire hydrant out of the ground last night for absolutely no reason at all. Except that I think he just got fired.

A lovely evening was had by all, if I remember correctly. We coerced a couple of fine young fellows into joining us apres dinner for some drinks at refined institution Donneybrooke (also known as the site of a certain former employer’s faux holiday party, also known as the night a certain former colleague smashed an ornament on my head, also known as the night we danced the dance formerly known as the “Whip” for certain religiously oriented former bargoers.) Oh, memories. Bittersweet, lazy day, unemployed memories. Sometimes they make the heart ache.

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