Minimum Wage Conversations II
Winter Park, FL
Besides nannying, I spend my Mondays working for Florida minimum wage, assembling “boutique” paper goods for Rifle Paper Co. It’s all very cute, very hip. But I find myself looking around asking – does this assembly line of beautiful, talented woman understand that they’re dressing up like Anthropologie models to do work most companies pay children in China to do? I also find myself laughing, a lot.
The last time I was just visiting Central Florida, Mj showed me a website that a friend of hers made. Every day the guy would put up a new jingle. They were terribly funny and usually about cat food. I became his fan. He also works at Rifle.
“Wanna go to lunch?” I asked my friend Liz.
“Yeah, one o’clock okay?” she replied.
“Sounds good. But uhh, you think Tom has lunch plans?” I sheepishly inserted.
“Do you want me to ask him for you?” she sarcastically replied, completely onto me.
“How’d you know?” I asked. “Ha. Don’t tell him I said anything.”
Through laughter she consented, but it didn’t really matter because I soon realized he had overheard the whole exchange. I was still unashamed.
During lunch…
“Why are you wearing that string around your neck, Tom?” Someone asked.
It’s my trophy.” He replied though a large grin.
“Tom went to my baby shower yesterday.” A very pregnant boutique paper company employee responded. I began chuckling at the thought of a coed baby shower. “Yeah, you know that game where you have to guess the circumference of the mother’s pregnant belly?” she went on, “Well Tom won and now he is wearing the string as his trophy.”
I looked over as he was literally wearing his trophy, closing his eyes, smiling wide and nodding his head in complete satisfaction with himself.
“And you wanna know how I really won? What my strategy was?” he asked the group. “I measured my own belly.” The whole lunch group exploded in laughs, shouting “no way!” and “whoa!” There was no denying it, his very jolly, round physique proves his strategy true.
“The string was spot on,” the expecting mother confirmed, “not a millimeter too long or too short.”
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