Sign Of The Times

I agree with all of the sentiments I have been reading from the comments section. The shit is about to hit the fan. Coming home today from Upstate I stopped at the Ramapo rest area on the NY State Thruway. I was shocked to see who was working the counter at McDonald's. Children! No shit, not high schoolers, but junior high 12 to 14 year olds. At first I thought to myself "how old am I getting?", but then I heard the murmurs of the other people on line with me. "Are those Junior High students?" or "This country is going to shit, who the fuck let's their children go work at a McDonlads counter?" and "This is an outrage". People were fuming. The kids behind the counter didn't seem to mind the commotion but they were also woefully unprepared for the realities of life in this adult world. When one irate customer started making a fuss about some perceived slight, all the kids could do was shrug their shoulders. The whole scene looked like something out of a Dickens novel. Children who should be playing video games and skateboarding with their friends were now thrust into some kind of proto-industrial revolution nightmare like the textile mills of the 19th Century. What the fuck happened to employment laws? What is the minimum age to work amongst highway tramps, rest stop area degenerates and serial killers?

Working Poor

When I worked as document reviewer/temporary attorney I was always surrounded by hip young attorney's. At one point I pulled out my cassette Walkman and my coworkers nearly fell on the floor laughing. These were guys with the latest MP3 players and Blackberries so my old Panasonic technology made me look like a club wielding caveman. Not so at the new job, with government workers being as poor as they are no one looks at me cross for having museum worthy audio equipment. I look around at the office and people have radio cassette players on their desks. Some listen to disc players with enormous headphones and the one person with an MP3 player is the head attorney and his unit is a cheap ass model made by Coby that you could probably get at a bargain bin at Target or Toys R Us. I feel right at home, no need to keep up with the Joneses. The other day I had a conversation with someone about LP's, but not because I was talking to some pretentious Williamsburg hipster, but simply because we both never had enough faith or money to make the complete format switch.