Here at Top Comments we round up some of the site's best, funniest, most mojo'd and most informative commentary. We depend on your help with talent spotting. If you see a comment by another Kossack that deserves wider recognition, please send it to topcomments at gmail by 9:30pm Eastern. Please please please include a few words about why you sent it in as well as your user name (even if you think we know it already :-)), so we can credit you with the find!
Teenagers are suffering the most in this job market, with unemployment over 24% for those between 16 and 19 years old this summer. If you're lucky that's the age when you get your first job in the workforce that isn't mowing lawns, babysitting, delivering newspapers, or setting up your own lemonade stand.
Remember your first real job, the kind that brought you an actual paycheck? (Remember your shock at how much was deducted?) How old were you, and did you have to wear a uniform, don a funny hat, or punch a timeclock?
Follow me past the squiggly-wiggly for a glimpse into my first job I got a paycheck for. I'm not counting those entrepreneurial forays into performing magic tricks or hawking Christmas cards door to door. Then tell us about your first experience in the workforce.
My first paycheck-producing job was at the now defunct Long's Drugstore (modified employee motto: "Where Everybody Slaves"). I was 16 and hired as extra Christmas help; specifically, to wrap gifts. The idea was that the sight of a perky young lady cheerfully wrapping boxes of perfume and curling irons would first catch the male shopper's eye and then guilt-trip him into making last-minute purchases for his wife or girlfriend. As a marketing strategy it was genius.
There were just two problems in hiring me for this job: One, I'm not a crafty person (I flunked scissors in kindergarten) and two, I'd never actually done any gift wrapping (see: deprived childhood). But how hard could it be to learn?
Luckily for me, Mom worked at a swanky department store-- the only store downtown with escalators, a tea room on the mezzanine, and a gift-wrapping department in the basement where she dropped me off to learn my new trade.
I learned how to wrap all sizes and shapes of boxes: square, rectangular, round, and cylindrical and learned how to create various bows from satin or curly ribbons. By the end of the day I could turn out a presentable package. In short, they prepared me for everything except what actually happened.
I was pretty confident heading into that first day at Long's. They set me up in the cosmetics department with a little table and a stack of wrapping paper and packaged bows. Ok, so I wasn't going to be whipping up my own bows -- this new job wasn't going to be much of a challenge after all. I spent the first couple of hours wrapping small square and rectangular boxed gifts-- bits of costume jewelry, candles, and, per one odd request, a box of Clairol's Nice 'N Easy, Ash Blonde.
And then an ancient stooped fellow in his forties brought me...a guitar. Not a guitar in a box. Just a guitar that he handed over by the neck, anxiously saying, "I want it to be a surprise for my daughter. Can you wrap it so she can't tell what it is?"
Over the course of nearly an hour (while the gentleman was sweetly encouraged to do the rest of his shopping) I wrestled with various approaches. I ended up with wrapping paper draped around the beast like an evening gown, with a wide obi-like satin ribbon encircling its middle looped into an elaborate bow and dozens of smaller bows rakishly festooned over the rest of its surface. I do not believe it was adequately disguised but it was covered up.
Hey-- the gift wrapping service was free. He got what he paid for.
So, today my new job in Top Comments was finding and formatting the submitted comments. Were there any disasters on my first day of this job? Only some minor ones, but let's just say I got it wrapped up in time.
As brillig always reminds us: You can't nominate your own comment, and we'll otherwise generally publish what you send regardless of personal opinion. So here goes:
from alizard:
MinistryofTruth's comment from BREAKING: Obama nominates Teabagger U.S. Attorney (sadly, not snark) reads like Hunter Thompson's good stuff back in the day. Specific context is almost irrelevant.
from MartyM:
MartyM was moved to send in her first Top Comment by Brubs, who suggested a better use for Republican pledges in Clarknt67's Romney's A Loser diary.
from lineatus:
The class war or the sig war or something. Puddytat starts it with My sig says it all, lineatus gets caught in the middle, and Bindle ends it.
From Dragon5616:
In FishOutofWater's wonderful diary, eSci: Incredible Movie of Likely Flowing Water on Mars, dark daze had an explanation for the red planet's current desolation.
From bronte17:
Dallasdoc makes a list of all the silver bullets that Democrats have to use but refuse to use in the excellent diary The Democrats' silver bullet for 2012: Make it in America by Joan McCarter.
from sberel:
In seeta08's outstanding diary The Theft of Wealth from People of Color princss6 lifts up a needed perspective on social security, and who actually benefits.
and from yours truly, smileycreek:
Diogenes2008 envisions aoeu's tell-tale vase of doom turning up on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, spinning over a certain miscreant's well-deserving head.
seeta08 and princss6 both reiterated this part of hepshiba's lengthy and excellent advice for white anti-racists comment in The Theft of Wealth from People of Color: Who and What are We Organizing For?
On a personal level, white anti-racists must be sure to live our politics each and every moment of every day, and to unhesitatingly call others on their racism, every single time we see it. Every moment is an opportunity to educate those who are willing to be educated, and to shame those who are not.