Auburn University is probably best known
for its football team. While that is nice, they count among their alumni
author Tim Dorsey, who writes some of the most twisted, hilarious, and
entertaining books concerning a serial killer running around the state
of Florida. Another writer has emerged from Auburn, Prioleau Alexander,
and his first novel is You
Want Fries With That: A White-Collar Burnout Experiences Life at Minimum
Wage, a novel as twisted and
hilarious as the best Dorsey. But while Dorsey works the fiction aisle
with success, this novel is an extremely fun non-fiction book.
Contents:
Acknowledgements
Prologue: White Collar, Short Leash
The Pizza Man Cometh
We All Scream, Eventually
Why the Roofer Wants to Kick Your Ass
Good Things Come in Big Boxes
10 ccs of Sanity, Stat . . .
You Want Fries With That?
Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys
Epilogue
At age forty-one, Prioleau Alexander left a highly lucrative job in advertising
and marketing. While thinking about all of things that his wife needed
him to do, Alexander decided that he needed a job to get out of the house.
But he didn't want to get back into advertising and marketing. With no
other skills, he decides that minimum wage jobs give him the best opportunity
for employment and to stay out of management. Each chapter begins with
a little history of the position, provided by Google searches. How much
ice cream, pizza, or hamburgers does the average American consume in a
year? How did the Bog Box stores get started? Through the magic of Google,
Alexander provides you with those answers. And then he launches into his
job hunting and interview processes. Finally, we experience him scooping
ice cream, delivering pizza, working a construction site as a laborer,
and more. All delivered with keen insight, pithy commentary, and, quite
often, a large dose of humor.
The premise, alone, lends itself to
hilarious shenanigans; a 41 year old attempts to find work at a minimum
wage job. Imagine such a person walking into a fast-food restaurant and
asking the person behind the counter for an application. Or walking into
a local ice cream store. You get the idea. One chapter that really hit
home for me, and provided the most laughs, is the dealing with the Big
Box stores. I was assisting my son with a job search when we rolled into
a well known Big Box. Sitting at the job kiosk, I had similar thoughts
as Alexander as we slogged through 30-some pages of on-line employment
application. And the results for my son were the same as for Alexander;
No job offer. In addition to the actual job search and work, Alexander
provides some keen insight into the people that work at minimum wage jobs.
Though rife with humor, there are areas where he shows the human side of
these jobs. They are not heavy handed, but do lend a nice balance to the
comedy. Further, you may actually regard the person behind the counter
in a new light. His Epilogue wraps the book up nicely; I think that Alexander
has found what he was looking for. An excellent novel from a first time
writer; it moves quickly, is edited very well, and leaves the reader looking
forward to another book from this excellent writer.
Users cannot mentally handle local replicas?
Thu, Sep 2nd 2010 6:20p Gregg Eldred This is from the "What's New in Domino 8.5, 8.5.1, 8.5.2" document (emphasis mine):
If you've ever wished using Mail were free of delays, but don't have the mind space for creating and maintaining a local replica, the new managed replica feature might be for you. When you create or convert an existing local replica to a managed replica in Notes, or your Domino administrator sets it for you via a policy, Notes creates a local mail replica and marks it as a managed replica. The next time you ope [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
notes
server
45
Star Island by Carl Hiaasen
Wed, Sep 1st 2010 11:50p Gregg Eldred The emergency medical technicians have
been called to a hotel in South Beach, responding to call concerning a
twenty-two year old female who has swallowed a "mix of vodka, Red
Bull, hydrocodone, birdseed, and stool softener." A rather typical
call for South Beach with the exception of the appearance of Bang Abbott,
an overweight, intrusive paparazzo. He wants to have exclusive right to
the pictures of the woman on the stretcher. However, when the EMT's wheel
out the woman, he realizes that this [read] Keywords:
207
Do You Know This Person?
Mon, Aug 30th 2010 8:20p Gregg Eldred Sorry, this is just too good not to share, and I actually received permission to post it. :-) [read] Keywords:
Backroads of Ohio: Your Guide to Ohios Most Scenic Backroad Adventures by Miriam Carey and Ian Adams
Wed, Aug 18th 2010 12:00p Gregg Eldred After reading several Backroads books on
other states, I decided that it was time to discover what the series had
to say and show about my home state of Ohio. Much like the other books
in the series, Backroads
of Ohio: Your Guide to Ohio's Most Scenic Backroad Adventures,
by Miriam Carey and Ian Adams, will appeal to residents of the state of
Ohio or those vacationing within its borders. For residents, this book
will provide you with short, interesting trips that would appeal to every
family mem [read] Keywords:
267
eWeek: Why Sharepoint 2010 Has Developers Excited
Wed, Aug 18th 2010 10:10a Gregg Eldred Microsoft's SharePoint 2010 may be one of the industry's most under-rated products, largely because it means so many different things to different people so no one group or demographic claims it over another. However, Microsoft has been adding more and more features to enable developers to better leverage SharePoint 2010. And as such, developers have responded, prompting SharePoint's popularity to rise among developers, according to Microsoft. SharePoint Server is one of the fastest-growing prod [read] Keywords: application
development
microsoft
office
server
sharepoint
workspace
113
MWLUG Logo in LEGO
Tue, Aug 17th 2010 11:51p Gregg Eldred Number Two Son's creation, 2 foot square. It's "sad" to report that he needed to purchase no new bricks. [read] Keywords:
American Craft Brewery Hops Across The Pond
Mon, Aug 16th 2010 11:50p Gregg Eldred This past weekend, I enjoyed a Stone Levitation, an excellent beer but one that seemed higher in IBUs than the quoted 45 (I'm certainly not complaining, a beer with high IBUs is perfect on a hot day, and Sunday, it was hot and humid). Now, from National Public Radio's Marketplace, I heard this today. One of the big guys in craft brewing, Stone Brewing out of Escondido, Calif., is looking to expand up and out of the U.S. market, into Europe -- a place known for a fiercely, shall we say, traditio [read] Keywords: wiki
