No Fat Waittresses!

I understand why restaurants wouldn't want to hire waitresses who are, well, fat. I could say plus-sized, or zaftig, or Reubenesque, or one of those other euphemisms, but we know what we're talking about here. Fat is fat. They don't want to hire fat people because a) They don't want you to be thinking about what you could look like if you eat/order a bunch of their food, and b) They don't want you knocking over people's plates with your big butt.

But what if you just need a job and you happen to be, well, zaftig? It's not like half the population can't relate! A good many of the people eating out are obese themselves, so what does it matter? We're all friends, right? Apparently not. In case you haven't guessed, I'm pretty large myself, and have been applying for waittressing jobs. I was hired at one place, and worked for 2 days and did a great job, I thought! The customers liked me, and I made about $50 in tips! But then the owner seemed to have a change of heart, and didn't want me to come back... hmmm. Since then I've been applying to everything I can find, but no bites. They sound interested on the phone, but when they meet me, there's some obvious disappointment. I'm not ugly, I don't think, but the extra weight makes people look right through me. It's not like I didn't know that we live in a very visual, thin-obsessed society. But I keep hoping that someone will look past the fat girl and just see the girl who just wants to work hard and make some money.

To be fair, I only have teaching jobs on my resume, and the other aspect of this is that I think some places see me as overqualified, and even if I tell them I want to work part-time during the school year (which is true), they seem to think I will leave when school starts. But if they were interested over the phone, when I show up, I see the disappointment in their eyes and I leave feeling incredibly foolish.

So the obvious question is, "Well why don't you just lose weight?" Yeah. I know. But when you've got no money to go out, and you're worried about how you're going to make the next mortgage payment or any payment for that matter, and you like to eat, food becomes one of your few comforts. I feel like I've had to give up most other things, and I'm not going to give up food. But maybe enough's enough. I wish I were more accepted for what I look like now, but it's not like I'm happy being overweight. So maybe I can find some other comforts to keep me going. Like exercise! In the meantime, the search for a job continues.

Looking for a Job

I don't really have any idea what I'm doing, but I felt the need to start writing about what's going on in my life, and maybe someone might read it and have suggestions or support or just laugh! I've written in a journal sporadically over the years, but I don't like writing to myself. I'm critical of my own writing, I talk back to myself, and it rarely helps rid me of the angst or whatever motivated me to write in the first place. So I thought I'd try a blog. If not one single person ever reads this (which I realize is a distinct possibility) that'll be okay too. Just need to do something different.

So I had a great job teaching English in NJ, and then I met my future husband. I wasn't happy in NJ - all my friends had moved away and I spent a lot of time visiting them, grading papers or going on bad eharmony dates. After a year of dating and driving 2 hours each way to see each other, we decided to get married and merge our lives. I had no great love of New Jersey, although I did dearly love my job for the first time in my 10 years of teaching. I had been there for 3 years, and had just gotten tenure. The pay was decent - not at the top of the payscale for the area, but not at the bottom either. I had great benefits, good work friends, and I loved the kids. It was a small town, and the people were generally very friendly and kind. I had just created the middle school's first newspaper, and would have been the coach of the JV softball team for the high school the following year. Things were going well - but my fiance was a realtor and it wasn't feasible for him to pack up and start his business all over again. Also, he owned his house and I was only renting; it was much more expensive to live in NJ than in the mountains of PA where he was from. I rationalized that it would be easy for me to find another job; afterall, I had always found a teaching job when I needed one; I was a great interviewer, and I had the aforementioned Master's Degree. So, with some sadness and trepidation, I made the decision to leave my job and move to Pennsylvania. I loved my fiance dearly, and we were both hard-working people. We'd find a way to make it work! Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into...