Serving in Florida

      “Serving in Florida” is Barbara Ehrenreich’s account of her experiences while working various minimum-wage jobs in Key West, Florida. She was a waitress at both the Hearthside and Jerry’s, and also attempted housekeeping at a nearby hotel. Of the three jobs, Barbra lasted longest waitressing at Jerry’s. She worked long, grueling hours and earned meager wages, but still barely had enough money to pay her bills. Fortunately for Barbara, this life was not her only one. She was actually a journalist who lived a comfortable lifestyle, and only partook in this lifestyle as research. 

       I can relate to Barbra’s feelings while working at Jerry’s because I have also worked at a totally dead-end job that paid close to nothing. Only unlike Barbara, I actually needed the money that the job was providing me. Two years ago, I spent the entire winter working for the Brooklyn Aces hockey team. The Aces were a bit less than professional, and the management team definitely reflected that. I felt like I had been the only person hired to do the jobs of several people. I did everything from carrying heavy boxes of merchandise, to selling tickets, to picking up trash after the game was over. My responsibilities seemed to include everything short of driving the Zamboni across the ice.

  Like Barbara Ehrenreich, I eventually came to my breaking point. In “Serving in Florida” Barbara quit her job at Jerry’s after a hectic night. There was only one chef on duty, and she had four demanding tables full of people who sat down at the same time and demanded her undivided attention. The stress of the day had become too much to handle for her, and she decided that she had had enough. Similarly, I had returned home one Friday night after work stressed and too exhausted to go out for my friend’s birthday. Like Barbara, I decided I had had enough. I quit like she did: silently. There was no dramatic confrontation that most people expect from quitting a job. She had just walked out in the middle of a shift, and I just never returned to the slave-driving Brooklyn Aces.  

Looking for Work

  “Looking for Work” is a narrative by Gary Soto in which he looks back on some of his experiences as a nine-year-old. Gary Soto was a Mexican American who wanted his family to be more like the families he saw on television every morning. In his quest to become more like TV families, he felt that one of the first steps would be to be more wealthy, and so he began looking for work. He earned money doing odd jobs around his neighborhood and at the end of the day he had earned thirty cents; all of which he spent going to a community pool with his friend, Little John, and his sister, Debra.  

Like Gary, I also decided that I needed a job this past summer. I had been keeping an eye out for “Help Wanted” signs for a while, but once summer hit, I knew that I had to start being a little more proactive about my search. I filled out application after application, and heard nothing. I had applied to seven different places by July; everywhere from summer camps, to coffee shops, to Baby Gap. Even babysitting jobs had hit a complete standstill. I envied my friends who were good enough swimmers to become city lifeguards and make over ten thousand dollars for the summer while I had to make my graduation money last as long as possible. 

Gary Soto began looking for work in the 1960’s, while my search began some fifty years later. The wages that Gary was making weeding flower beds might not seem like much today, but it was probably well worth it for him at the time. And I could relate to that, since any amount of money that I made babysitting this summer seemed like a fortune to me. Although fifty years have past, not much has changed. Kids like Gary are still selling lemonade on the corner, washing cars, or peddling ice cream on the beach; just at a slightly higher price. 

Personal Conflict Narrative

In this personal conflict narrative Matt, a college student with a love for music, reflects on his past experiences trying to make it in the music business. He tells the reader the story of when he finally gave up on his dream of making music for a living. A year after Matt and his band, Good Morning Richard, had come out of the basement and started playing in actual venues, he had a fight with one of the club promoters about the number of tickets that needed to be sold for his band to play. He realized then that all of the clubs that they had been playing at really had only one thing in mind, and it wasn’t their success. He decided it would be almost impossible to make it in the music business, and stopped booking shows. His biggest conflict was accepting the fact that he had to give up on his dreams.  

I thought that the first draft of Matts personal conflict narrative definitely had potential, but it was a little confusing. I found that I had to read it a second time before I could really understand the story. I didn’t really understand the concept of the tickets or how many tickets the band was expected to sell. I could also tell that Matt was upset about the whole situation, but I felt that he could have done a better job of showing that to the reader. Even though his paper could have used some improvements, I could tell that he actually cared about what he was writing about and that made it more enjoyable. 

The second draft was a big improvement from the first. It was much more detailed, very clear, and easier to understand Matt’s conflict. He also expanded on other people in his story, such as the club promoter, which gave the reader a fuller understanding of the kind of person who Matt was having problems with. It was easier to understand Matt’s feelings in the second draft as well. He expressed how he feels now about what had happened, as well as how he felt at that time. You could tell by reading his second draft that he had taken time to reflect on what had happened and that he had grown from his experience.

By reading Matt’s paper, I started to get ideas on how I could improve my own personal conflict narrative. I realized how important it actually is to write clearly and in detail so that the reader knows what is going on.  

Hair

“Hair” is an excerpt form The Autobiography of Malcolm X in which he describes his first experience of getting his hair ‘conked.’ The process of conking hair involves gathering various items from a pharmacy and grocery store to make a hair-relaxing concoction. Before conking Malcolm’s hair, his friend Shorty explained to him that it would burn his scalp and if he wasn’t sure to get it all out once the burning became unbearable, he would end up with sores on his head. After the the pain of a burning scalp had subsided and the relaxer was washed out, Malcolm looked in the mirror and was happy to see that he had hair “as straight as any white man’s.”  When he looked back on this experience however, he realized how ridiculous he was to have put himself through such pain just to make his hair look “white.”

Malcolm X’s hair conk shows how far people are willing to go to fit society’s idea of what is beautiful. More current examples of this are fad diets and plastic surgery. Most people consider dieting and plastic surgery to “improve” appearance to be something that only women do, but many men are doing it too. Fad diets, such as the Atkins diet, cabbage soup diet, or South Beach diet result in the temporary loss of weight from unhealthy eating. And once a person stops these diets, they usually gain the weight back, resulting in a constant yo-yo effect. People have become so obsessed with being thin that they will push their bodies to unhealthy limits, even swallowing tapeworms, to reach their “ideal” weight. Not even major surgery is too much for some in order to look younger or more fit. Breast augmentation, liposuction and face lifts are not uncommon for many people, if they can afford it. 

Painful or unhealthy practices to look “good” are nothing new to mainstream society. From hair conking in the 1950’s or tummy-tucking today, people will go well out of their way, and tolerance for pain, to acquire their desired look; or the look that society tells them they should desire. 

Hating Goldie

I can definitely relate to Phyllis Rose in her memoir “Hating Goldie” because I had been resentful towards my parents for replacing a pet that had died without my knowledge. When I was five years old I had received a black hamster as a Christmas present from my grandma. My parents were not going to let me keep it at first, but with a little begging I was able to change their minds and they actually grew to like Frank. I kept Frank’s cage clean and played with him almost every day, and soon I considered him to be one of my best friends. 

One day after school, about a year after I had first got him, I went to put some food in Frank’s dish. But when I put my hand inside the cage, he bit me! I was very alarmed, not even so much that my finger was bleeding, but I was convinced that he must be very sick to do something so out of character. I told my parents about it and suggested that we take him to the vet, but they didn’t seem very concerned. As time went on, Frank’s behavior seemed to get even more aggressive and I asked my mom if we should put him down. That was when she told me that “Frank” wasn’t actually Frank. He was a new hamster that she had gotten after the real Frank had died when he ran under the oven while I was at school. I was crushed. I felt like my entire life, all six and a half years of it, had been a lie. 

I was resentful towards my parents for a while after finding about about Frank’s death, but not in the same way that Phyllis Rose was resentful to her parents. I was mad that they had lied to me about the death of my pet, while Rose was angry that her parents had been so good to her that she did not have enough suffering in her life to make her a good writer. I’m still trying to figure out who’s story is more pathetic.