John bought six books (some used) costing him $3.50, $2.25, $5.50, $1.75, $3.50, and $7.50. Jim bought five books at $4.00, $6.50, $2.75, $2.00, and $5.00. Don bought five books at $3.50, $4.75, $2.50, $3.00, and $4.50. Which student paid the highest average price for his books? Explain.
inventory clerk
busboy
nurse's aid
camp counselor
lifeguard
waterfront director
camp director
physical therapist's ass't
quality controller
field laborer
document handler
public school teacher
telephone operator
ass't director day care cntr
receptionist
teaching assistant
adjunct faculty
assistant professor
associate professor
SHE GRADUATES from high school and realizes that nobody has ever taken her aside (the way they've taken each of her brothers aside) to reassure her that she's not expected to carry on the family business, to reassure her that she can do whatever she wants with her life.
This must mean that she really isn't, that she really can.
Her plan is too hastily conceived to be very elaborate, but it's not going to be cheap. Even commuting to the U and living at home (no room and board as long as you're taking classes, her mother informs her) would, in a year, wipe out her savings account, the accumulated birthday presents from her extended family. And what she makes at The Shop barely keeps her in pantyhose as it is. If What Color is Your Parachute? had been written yet, she'd read it. What do you like to do? Her mother asks. That's a revelation, that simple question.
She takes the big mental leap, drives downtown. She looks around for the old man, the bookstore's owner, but it's his day off or something, and she has to approach his son, who's only about 5 years older than she is and with whom she's rarely spoken. He doesn't strike her as a reader.
Yeah, he says, as a matter of fact, we are looking for somebody, but it isn't you.
How can you say that? I'm a great worker, I've had a work permit since I was ten! (She didn't actually get the permit until she was 13, after some fool ratted her parents out to Child Labor, but she recognizes no when she hears it and figures she may as well go out with a bang.) I love books. Haven't I been coming in here since I was this big? Look: I've read this and this and this and . . .
We don't hire girls. They get married and have babies and the kids get sick and we can't count on them.
What really gets to her is how he's got this shtick so completely worked out. It's marvelous, in its fucked up way, how grown up he is. She wonders if his mother, who's worked here forever, has heard him deliver this speech.
I don't even have a boyfriend! I don't even want kids! (All this is more or less true, even then.)
But you will, he says. You will.
She takes a job bussing tables at the bowling alley, working the lunch rush through the set-up for dinner. The law says you have to be 21 to touch a glass with liquor in it, so after the businessmen go back to their offices, she loads her tray with their plates and cutlery, their napkins and serving dishes, and pushes their martini glasses (her hand covered by her wipe-up rag so that she never actually makes contact) into a sweaty, smeary constellation at the edge of each table for the waitresses to pick up later. The anonymity of working for strangers is kind of a drag at first, but the waitresses tip her well, and she learns the art of cleaning something up while, at the same time, leaving it dirty.