Job Details

ID #3663463
State New York
City New york city
Full-time
Salary USD TBD TBD
Source New York
Showed 2020-03-31
Date 2020-03-28
Deadline 2020-05-27
Category Writing/editing
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Because All Waiters Are Poets (Brookly)

New York, New york city 00000 New york city USA

Vacancy expired!

Like most businesses, we were going to hire a bunch of summer interns. But now we've had more time consider our options, and have decided to hire waiters (who have a passion for writing) instead. Because "why not" is the mantra of quarantine.

Back in the day I was a waiter. In a mountain town. This time each year we’d use the after-ski lull to steady ourselves for whatever madness was to fly up from Florida for summer. These were good months. Busy alongside a collection of people more interesting and fun than in any other job I’ve had since. The kid who came back from Afghanistan; the kid went to Iraq and never came home—decided after war to move someplace with legal weed; and the girl who could stack plates on her arm to her head. A collection of passersby and professionals, some paying off college, others mortgages. Some of my favorite people ever.

I remember the good waiter with the literary mind who quoted Nobokov while outlining the specials. Floridians hate Nobokov. But you have to spice the specials up somehow when they're always Trout or Salmon. Just Trout or Salmon—those two words. Not a bunch of other stuff about preparation and sides and spices. "We got this fish or we got this fish—you'll love them at first bite, last bite, every bite. Wild or farmed? Which do you prefer?"

I was an okay waiter. I have shaky hands so I 86-ed soup forever. If a waiter carried soup past my tables he or she had to explain to the bitter old lady in booth 42 why THOSE people got bisque and she didn’t. To this day the devil is a cup of hot liquid on a saucer—its rattle a countdown.

Waiting tables was my favorite job. Bad hands and a mediocre disposition, it was certainly my most interesting. Late nights. Long days. The “egg salad incident”—which most folks already know about.

Between refilling teas we’d talk about how we’d rather do this job in New York City. Maybe go to Brooklyn (before it became Brook-lyn). There we would wait tables all the same, but for those of us who had a passion for writing or painting or singing, we’d also have the museums and other people like us to make our student loans seem less big. That was the dream. Kick north and sling beef to a different bunch of complainers alongside other poets-in-waiting.

This one visit to the city, me and my girlfriend were out of money so we split a meal and a drink on our last night in town and our waitress—dressed like a stereotype of a stereotype: apron and pink skirt, pen in the ear, yesterday's eye shadow—she put down the check and said, "One day." So poetic we had no idea what she was talking about. Not sure if she was being sentimental or mean. "One day," she said—one of those poet waiters.

Anyway, the point is: people who work in restaurants are my favorite people. I met the best minds of my generation huddled around an ashtray atop a dishwasher. Now the country is shutting down and our economy is at home eating peanut butter and laughing at celebrities to pass the time. This got me thinking that there may be a bunch of thinkers out there looking for somewhere to put their work. Smart people, funny people, bored people.

I'd like to hire as many waiters to write as I can this summer. I want to find the poet-in-waiting and give them a place to publish.

What can you write about? How about what scares you, how you relax, how you got healthy, how fun it was to be luxuriously unhealthy, why plant-based works, why it doesn't, how cannabis makes some folks less anxious and others mad, what puts you to sleep, and what you take to focus.

Our business, Remedy Review, is dedicated to remedies—natural, holistic, therapeutic, and all the above. Anything that makes people feel better and can be backed with a good citation. Our goal is to be the smartest natural health site online, and we’ll get there one day. Maybe you can help.

"I was curious about this thing and this is what I know so far" is a perfect place to start. If you have an interesting thought let's talk.

I mean, a site about feeling better hiring stuck-at-home waiters to write makes perfect sense. Plus, the interns we aren't hiring will be fine. I graduated in a recession and look at me: thirteen years later looking for friends on Craigslist

Vacancy expired!

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