I don’t know if anyone from the city still reads my blog, but there is a dead cat on the median of the 600 block of Rhode Island Avenue and today is day 2 of its residence.
Yesterday I called the city 311 number to report the beige beastie, as I noticed it before I went to work and saw it unmoved as I was heading home. As of this morning it is still there. Now once again it was one of those slightly frustrating calls, because kitty had the audacity to die on a median, which the operator seemed very unfamiliar with. I found myself defining what was a median. A median, is sometimes a green patch in the middle of a 4+ lane road. It does not have an address. Because the city sometimes bothers mowing said grass, I take it the city owns the land. No it is not in front of a house. The best address I can give is the closest property that bothered to have address numbers that I can make out.
No it is not on the road it is on the median.
Once again the median does not have an address. It is in the middle of Rhode Island Avenue, which I’m not going to define as a ‘freeway’ as you have as I really don’t want to get into defining different kinds of roadways.
Gaaaah!
Month: June 2010
Well that explains why kids can’t work in DC
My first regular paid job was as a cashier at the Winn-Dixie when I was 16. I had begun searching after reps from Bob Evans presented several openings at a rally at my high school, looking for dishwashers, bussers, and waiters. Several of us, including me, applied, but I wasn’t chosen. That got me dropping applications at the mall, fast food joints, the dollar store, and the grocery store. During the school year I worked 11-20 hours, mostly weekends when the store was busy. Sometimes at night, cleaning the registers.
Anyway, I have always wondered why I don’t see more teenagers working in DC. Well I got a link from DC Lawyers for Youth (DCLY), and their handbook (PDF). Looking at page 12 it says a kid must be at least 14 years old and can’t work more than 8 hours a day. Fine and good. However the work hours are limited for 16-17 year olds in that they can’t work after 10pm, so they can’t close up at a place that closes at 10PM, and those hours appear to be year round. Also, they would need a permit from DCPS to work. When I was growing up we didn’t need no stinkin’ work permit.
So now I see why teenage employment seems to be limited to DC government sponsored summer programs. That and the flood of immigrant and college student labor.
The job I held in high school was good for me. It taught me how to balance work and school, a very useful skill when doing the same thing in college when you really need the money. It also allowed me to work towards a savings goal of a senior European trip, because heaven knows I wasn’t going to get that money from my parents… and college. Lastly, believe it or not I was able to use my 5 years of cashiering experience on resumes for jobs involving customer service. It has appeared in KSAs when showing that I can communicate verbally with a variety of people.