I served food in my high school cafeteria, shelved books in my high school library, and scooped frozen custard for minimum wage. The library job was pretty great. Working at the custard stand sucked rocks through a bendy straw.
When I was a teenager, the minimum wage was $3.35/hour, which over the course of my high school years ranged in current value from $7.85 to $6.48.
I also babysat for $2/hour, which was less than I should have been charging. One parent paid me $1.75 and did not correct this problem when I finally got the nerve up to tell her my rate was $2. I said OK and was passive-aggressively busy every time she called after that.
The summer before college I worked as a receptionist/file clerk at an ice factory for $5/hour, equivalent to $10/hour today. The real secretary was paid slightly more, but not a lot more, got no health insurance, and was stuck dealing with our temperamental boss long term.
Like, my stories about that place are funny and fun, but would be a lot less funny if I'd been stuck there permanently. Char's husband was a farmer and she worked to supplement their farm income, so no health insurance from him, either.
The hardest of these jobs was definitely scooping frozen custard. Being on my feet nonstop was exhausting even at 16. It was one of those "if you have time to lean, you have time to clean!" places and the managers were almost all assholes.
It was mind-numbingly boring but also I couldn't daydream because I'd get told verbally something like "a baby turtle on chocolate, a full sized caramel sundae with peanuts, a double butter pecan on a waffle" and have to keep that in my head while I made everything.
(And, of course, this was the kind of place where if I had to come back to the counter too many times to check on what I was supposed to make I'd get yelled at for slowing things down.)
On hot summer nights, everyone in the neighborhood wanted ice cream, which meant long lines, and the manager would come and yell at us because "people are looking at the line and leaving!" like this was our fault / our problem. We were ALL teens, so we felt like it was.
Anyway. Working at my HS cafeteria was fine because the shifts were short and the adult staff was really nice to the student workers.
And I really liked working in the library. I initially did it for free (you could get 1/4 of a credit for volunteering in the library, which I did mostly because I had an alternate-days study hall due to PE schedules) but later they offered me a paid job.
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So since we're talking about music and Joe Biden can I tell you how much the Hamilton song "Wait for It" makes me think about Joe and also about Joe Biden vs. Aaron Burr.
"Death doesn't discriminate / between the sinners and the saints / it takes, and it takes, and it takes."
Weeks after Joe Biden was elected to his first term in the Senate, his wife and daughter died in a car accident.
Of his surviving sons, one went on to die of cancer.
The other, Hunter, has struggled with addiction. To try to hurt Biden during the campaign, someone released texts sent between Joe and Hunter while Hunter was in treatment.
I was pondering the fact that on Tuesday we're going to see 8 gazillion Les Miserable "One Day More" gifs and found this delightful flashmob performance from 2014.
I hope flashmob musical performances make a roaring comeback in 2022.
There are lots and lots and lots of Les Miz gifs for your use on Tuesday but there's also this one with Minions:
And if you want a slightly less ominous/more optimistic song from a musical, there's always:
There are actually a number of additional sites, they just make it very difficult to find them. Check out this page for the state you're in to see if it's recruiting:
I had a few more things to say about the whole "aspiring writers who cut their teeth on fanfic" thing. (I'm not QT'ing the original tweet because at this point that would REALLY feel like punching down.) I want to talk about the writing I did as a kid & teen.
One of the things that got cancelled due to COVID last year was Minicon, and one of the things I was REALLY looking forward to at Minicon was a planned event where a bunch of us were going to pull out our oldest juvenalia for a reading.
The oldest juvenalia I have is from 4th grade, when I had a weekly assignment that was "write 1 page of whatever." The story I spent most of the year working on is about a girl who goes to summer camp and meets a talking horse.
There are fanfic writers who want to become published writers of original fiction and are using fanfic to work on stuff in a way that feels fun.
There are also people who write fanfic because they want to write fanfic, and that's also fine.
And I hope the people who find joy, comfort, community, affirmation, pleasure, or distraction from their troubles in either reading or writing fanfic don't even read that person's bad take.