On sugar daddies

So I recently posted an ad--on a personals ad of mine, which is kind like...well, I don't know what it is, but I posted a request to find a sugar daddy. Although its tone was quite serious, my purpose in putting it there was...well, I almost just wanted to put it there to whine, which certain balding twenty somethings who read here would argue is the only purpose of this particular blog.

I have actually received numerous responses to it--as I knew I would--most of which, well all but one of which has been position, the lone negative response one which had me basically lay out everything I'm about to say here, its author--a man nearing forty and obviously somewhat offended by talk of sugar daddies--attacking me for what he called "selling out" and saying that there is "nothing wrong with working at the mall" (ed: I had justified my initial request as an alternative to "slaving away at the mall for peanuts.")

As far as I know, the minimum wage in Florida is still under $6 an hour, which translates to around or under $5 an hour, which is what most mall jobs would pay. Multiply that by 40 (hours) and you have $200, which is about one-third of what I was making on a weekly basis serving.

Of course there doesn't seem to be a damn serving job to be had in Tampa Bay.

A point to be made is that it's ridiculous that our economy is so bad that a college student--a VERY experienced serving, no less--cannot find part time work at a restaurant because no one's quitting and no one's hiring because it's largely the best of what's available to a good portion of the population, and that perhaps I should try my hand at the sugar daddy market to see if it too was tapped dry.

But that's not all that offended me about his comment. What offended me is that he assumed I was some frivolous 20-year old with $2000 in debt who had never worked a day in his life ("we all have to start somewhere"), and questioned whether I was in school as if that would make some sort of difference in my ability to find a job.

Need I inform him that most of my hospitality-industry competition has some sort of degree?

Which led me to a profound conclusion: perhaps part of the reason the economy's problems aren't being fixed is that they aren't understood by its older sector? This guy is 39, which would mean he was my age around 1985--the year I was born--when conservatism was successful and the economy was great and the only thing that stood between trickling and being trickled upon was a college degree. And I think he honestly still believes that's the way it is.

Well it's not. It's really not. I can't even get a fucking unpaid internship and I have a nearly perfect grade-point average, frequent publication in school literary endeavors, this blog, and reaching back to high school I graduated sixth. And all I will have come May is $34,000 more debt to add to my name and a piece of paper that says I'm educated. The problem is that no one is trickling anything down in 2005--they're keeping all the juicy shit to themselves.

Which I guess, in a roundabout way, is where sugar daddies come in...