From the tender age of illiteracy, to the present, I have always had a deep adoration for French comic books (and no, not “graphic novels”). The top of my list has, and always will be, The Adventures of Tintin. One could imagine my sadness when I found out my childhood hero and his white dog would be placed in front of Mr. Spielberg’s lens to be bastardized by the Hollywood machine.

Well, maybe it’s not so bad after all: There’s been controversy over the fact that two book chains in England, Borders and Waterstone’s, have removed Tintin in the Congo from the children section of their stores; instead they have filed it in the “graphic novel” section, otherwise known as the, “I’m thirty and still like comic books, how do I explain that at dinner parties?” shelf. Now, malapropisms aside, “graphic novels” tend to be awash with violence, gore, sex, drugs, murder, etc. There is nothing wrong with this whatsoever. However, there is something wrong with placing The Adventures of Tintin alongside such subject matter. Why this decision? Why put the young Belgian reporter and his faithful, articulate dog Snowy amidst the maniacal, depraved characters of The Watchmen? Well because, apparently, Tintin in the Congo‘s content is “racist.”

Of course it’s racist! What could one expect from a story written about the Congo by a man whose country had colonized the so-called “Heart of Darkness” (oops) in 1931? But the racism lies in caricature, not overt discrimination. Is this really justification for exiling this colourful, humorous, downright fascinating adventure to the secluded shelves of blood-filled sensationalism and sexual content?

The fear here seems to be that young readers will form their opinions on certain ethnicities based on this comic. Comic. If a child is to become racist based on a series of drawings and speech bubbles, then there is something to be said about his education, but also about parental involvement in said education.

I grew up reading The Adventures in Tintin in their original French. Aside from helping me to learn the language, they also acted as an escape, a sort of vacation when the duties of grade school wouldn’t allow my parents to take me somewhere. The stories, in short, are entrancing. Their plots are fascinating, the illustrations are beautiful, and the dialogue is funny; a sure-fire way to get a child (especially a boy) engaged in reading, and an argument that not all children literature must feature either Harry Potter or Superman. To this day, they still prove to be riveting, which would explain the wooden bust of the titular character staring at me on my desk as I write this.

Yet, hypersensitivity has deemed Tintin in the Congo as the kind of material that should be out of a child’s immediate grasp. But if we apply this standard to Tintin at large, shouldn’t so many more of the Belgian’s adventures be treated similarly?

Tintin in America is a compendium of caricatures of Native Americans. Snowy refers to his native kin as: “Redskin dogs! OK, so I’m a paleface…have you redskins ever seen one before?” The “First Nations” are portrayed as fools who fight with each other, and have names the stuff stereotypes are wrought of such as Chief Keen-Eyed Mole and Brother Browsing Bison. By the midpoint of the story, author Hergé makes a joke out of the exodus of the Indians once oil has accidentally been struck by Tintin. I should also note that the cowboys of the Wild West are portrayed as a group of savages hell-bent and more than eager to participate in lynchings. I’m assuming such stereotypes of white people are not considered racist, but payback.

Tintin and the Picaros portrays a group of South American natives as drunks who have been duped by the “white man.” The Prisoners of the Sun plays on the ignorance of the Incas: When Tintin is about to be sacrificed at the stake, a solar eclipse occurs and the Indians beg Tintin, the white man, to make the sun appear again.

If we apply this level of pitiable sensitivity to Tintin in general, nearly every issue is derogatory in some way. Does this mean the comics should be out of children’s grasp? Absolutely not. The adventures of Professor Calculus and the incompetent twin detectives Thompson and Thompson are the stuff every child’s mind should be privy to.

But returning to the main issue at hand: that Hergé’s portrayal of the Congo is one of caricature verging on the point of discrimination at times is undeniable. Still: Sorry. If a child’s parents cannot explain to the reader the comic’s context, then they have no business being parents. The wrapping of the comic in plastic, plastered with a warning sticker is egregious, and a perfect example of the wrongheaded belief that parental guidance must be influenced by authorities outside the home. Furthermore, it is absolutely shameless that in today’s society, a childhood hero of my parents’ generation is ranked alongside the blood-soaked, barbaric Leonidas of Frank Miller’s 300, which was turned into a movie in 2006 with an R-rating for “graphic battle sequences throughout, some sexuality and nudity.” There is none of that in Tintin.

If we are to fight ignorance, it must be through education, not censorship. But of course, the former requires just so much effort, so why not forgo it at the expense of a beautifully-crafted and charming story that stands on the mountain-top of genius?

Originally Posted at Huffington Post Canada

Fredric V. Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers says “we have to do everything we can to preserve it and adapt.” “It” being the United States Postal Service which is reported as potentially defaulting on a $5.5 billion payment due this month. But Rolando, whether or not he realizes it, is using the same type of terminology that an archaeologist would upon discovering the dusty remains of a dinosaur skeleton.

The Postal Service is dead. If it isn’t, then it is surely in a hospice.

It seems that Mr. Rolando has come too late to the twenty-first century in saying the mail needs to “adapt.” It says a good deal about the organization of the United States’s communication system that an age-old institution possesses the same amount of foresight as a record store.

When you think about it, there is no logical reason why Apple should have pioneered the online Music Store, not HMV, that Google released widespread internet maps, not Michelin, that Amazon started selling books online, not Borders.

One would hope that an institution over two-hundred years old wouldn’t fall into such a trap, but it has. In an increasingly online world, Mr. Thomas Neale’s baby, is proving to be as relevant as newspaper subscriptions; worthwhile only to those unable to “adapt” to the shift to online, paperless content.

There was a time when the Postal Service could have saved itself, if not when United Parcel Service launched in 1907, then maybe in the early seventies when FedEx promised and provided the speediest package delivery in the land. But the Service missed the mark, having to play catch-up, and thus, losing market share when it didn’t have to.

Of course, it is one thing to criticize and reprimand an institution, and another to suggest how it could improve itself. Unfortunately, the Postal Service’s current options are limited. The agency is attempting to gain “the right to deliver wine and liquor, [allow] commercial advertisements on [trucks] and in post offices, doing more “last mile” deliveries for FedEx and UPS and offering special hand-delivery services for correspondences and transactions for which e-mail is not considered secure enough,” according to the New York Times.

To anyone with common sense, these options are “last-minute” and  desperate. More than likely they will offer little to counteract years upon years of backwards and wishful thinking that birthday cards from grandma will be enough to sustain a $67 billion-revenue-generating company.

However, the agency’s last attempt, offering hand-delivery services for correspondences deemed too important for unsecure e-mailing, is an interesting one. Surely, there is a market for that…now. Even when it faces its darkest hour, the US Postal Service still has yet to show it has learnt its lessen.

While there are currently correspondences that in fact are too sensitive for e-mail, this is surely something that will be rectified in the future. But in all likelihood, not by the Postal Service. But wouldn’t it make more sense to jump ahead of the curve (unless of course, someone else has), and have the Postal Service deliver the strongest, most reliable e-mail service in the United States?

A service that would promote and guarantee the same amount of security that a “hand delivery” would? There is little reason for this not to happen, beside lack of imagination and the same type of tunnel-vision that has led the US Postal Service to the position that it is in now.

In light of this ancient institution’s fall from grace, those in the Great White North cannot help but remember the Canadian Post strike of this past summer. For several weeks, no one received any mail: no letters from camp, no care packages from mom and pop, but perhaps most infuriating of all (and certainly one of the most important), no paychecks from work.

While the CUPW (Canadian Union of Postal Workers) didn’t realize the hypocrisy in their strike (“we want to get more money, but will prevent you from getting yours”) many undoctrinated Canadian did. I say “undoctrinated” because the CUPW acts less as an institution trying to guarantee the well-being of its members, and more as a despicable greedy fat man at a party, grasping for every single morsel of free food he can find.

This may sound like an exaggeration on my part, but when an organization that refers to its members as “Brother X” and “Sister Y” complains because there’s been a reduction in boot allowance for the month of June (and no, our famed, ferocious winters do not begin until November), it is clear that the CUPW, and potentially the Canadian Post at large is an institution not only unwilling to cope with the twenty-first century, but complain when reasonable cutbacks are being made in light of sensible change.

The mail is dying. It’s been said before, but that was mere prophecy. The post is at the beginning of its undeniable end, and this can be seen in the United States Postal Service scrambling for solutions and a life preserver from Congress, and in the Canadian Post’s vicious greed.

It’s almost as if the latter is trying to get as much money as it can now, for it knows one day, the paychecks will stop coming in the mail. But not because of a strenuous strike, but because their position, and any protest thereafter, will cease to exist. These two unique situations are proof of the fall of an industry at large: lack of organization, foresight, and imaginative progress, and desperate, take-whatever-you-can greed.

The latter is what one would expect in a scene from an apocalyptic movie: the world is about to end, grab whatever you can from the grocery store shelves and punch everyone in your way so you can get your way. Ignorance on one hand, violence on the other. With people like this running the postal industry, maybe it is in best if we see it go the way of the dinosaur and “preserve” it in a museum so future business models can learn from its mistakes.

The idea that young people don’t want to work is a myth. The exception, i.e. he who is content to lay about the house, playing video games and soaking up cheap beer, is the idiotic exception. In a generation that is defined almost completely by consumerism, work is a necessity not only to attain one’s economic desires, but also to give outline to an otherwise vaporous form. My generation needs to work, we need money to pay for things, but we also need jobs, especially during the summer, in order to give a sense of structure and purpose to our August days.

Of course, when we get off school for summer break, those of us with parental subsidies look forward to the idea of having nothing to do as wonderful.  Infinite afternoons on the patio, book propped open with a finger of Scotch. But as people begin to get jobs and leave the patio one by one, the feeling of those of us remaining unemployed is akin to the stragglers at a party.

Suddenly, doing nothing all day isn’t as much fun as it is…pathetic. In the evenings, the unemployed youth feel a certain shame as their friends talk about their days at work. The question, “What did you do today?” is a dreaded one, because while the answer “I stayed at home and read,” may incite envy among those who spent it as a barrista making minimum wage, it’s not a point of pride for the stay-at-home student. Even if he doesn’t admit it, he wishes he could wake up early the next morning and do something “constructive” with his day.

But it isn’t only the boredom involved. It’s also the money he now desperately needs. The rosy limbo of summer has passed and the harsh realities of having to pay rent and buy groceries overshadow the idea of spending money on the frivolous things of the season.  Parental subsidies only go so far.  As does parental patience with idle children.

Boredom and embarrassment are suddenly replaced by a constant fear. It might sound trite to say, but for the semi-supported student in the summer, strength, confidence, joie-de-vivre, all deplete in accordance with the dollars and cents of one’s bank account. On more than one occasion, I’ve had friends tell me they didn’t want to check their balances for fear they’d have less than they thought. As the weeks go by and one doesn’t get callbacks for summer work, a series of emotions come into play: 1. Disappointment; 2. Self-doubt; 3. Sadness; 4. Anger. And when I say anger, I don’t mean only at the economy or Human Resources, but at one’s employed peers. There is no quicker way for a young man to become unpleasant than when he sees his friends spend money he doesn’t have.

And when the jobs, as the handful I’ve been writing about, do come about for students, the change isn’t ideal. The difference between the applying student and the replied-to student is more than minimum wage. While the former undergoes bouts of sadness and frustration and fear that he may have to return home for the summer, the latter, at first content with having a paying job, quickly realizes how sad of a state he is in. Partly, this has to do with his co-workers.

When a group of my friends, all employed in the same call center for a telecommunications company had gotten together, one of them said, “You know, if the company fired, like, 12 people and replaced them with the guys in the frat house, we’d be so much more successful.” Students and recent graduates, with the jobs many of them are finding today, are being lumped in with past generations of the under-qualified, the uneducated, and the degree-less. There is a feeling of frustration and almost embarrassment running through students today when they have to work alongside someone who can barely speak English.

The other option for the college student is the internship. These invoke a certain respect within our generation. “No I am not making money,” the intern insists, “but I’m laying down the groundwork for a successful future.”

Less than a generation ago, the idea of talented, skilled youth applying for free work would seem ridiculous. Yet it’s now a lofty goal which, presently, is drifting further and further away to the sunset. The fact of the matter is that in this economy, even applying for free work is proving to be difficult. I recently met a young woman who’d graduated from the University of Toronto and who’d had a successful string of internships in the past. But this summer, she hasn’t been able to find work. Even more depressing for her is that she isn’t even deemed fit for another internship. She turned to being a telemarketer, and literally the day after being hired, was fired. Needless to say, she was furious.

You can say this anger is due to my generation’s sense of entitlement and having been “spoiled,” but when one looks at the objective numbers, we are, to a certain degree, right in feeling this anger. As been said by many before me, we spend thousands of dollars on tuition. We buy books for hundreds of dollars and then are told by the professor we only need to read one chapter from them. We slave in the pursuit of two, three letters after our names, and after all the seemingly-realistic hopes, are put in a room with people with so many names, they wouldn’t fit on a community college diploma.

Maybe I sound callous, and even to a degree intolerant. But at the end of the day, my generation has put in the work, some more than others, but cannot reap the benefits due to external factors that are so beyond our control, that making a change seems nearly impossible.

Yet, with all the frustration and disappointments my generation is currently feeling in the industry, there may be something to take away from it. While what I consider is menial work may be “good” work for the poor immigrant, for us, these lousy jobs may prove to be somewhat “character-building.” (“That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” says Nietzche and consoling parents, though I have a hard time imagining how selling newspapers over the phone translates into thicker skin.)

Our generation is, for the most part, one that hasn’t ever had to get its hands dirty or do what some people call, “honest work.” It might be heartbreaking, yes, it might be depressing and demeaning, yes. But to a certain degree, it humbles us and whether we like it or not, helps us realize how much better we have it than someone like Kotar from Ghana, or the cab driver who picks you up from the restaurant where you have just dropped his nightly after-tax wages on drinks. Some may even argue that it educates us for the jerks and horrible bosses we will inevitably encounter even in sought-after careers. It’s good to learn early how to deal with these people.  And it is strengthens us by humbling us. That being said, it remains to be seen if humility will help us pay our student debt.

It says a lot about the economy when students look forward to the return of classes. I am amongst them, partly to learn, partly to do something that doesn’t involve coarse labor, terrible hours, or pathetic pay. The upcoming semester acts as a sort of two-pronged attack for students who are about to go into their senior year: We will receive our degrees and, in the meantime, the economy will even itself out, we hope. It’s an optimistic way to look at things, but at the same time, when one is falling down the pit of student debt, there is no room for skepticism, or even dread.

We must make the best of things while we’re still within the cozy cocoon of academia (noting that many will never have entry into such a sanctuary) and continue to tell ourselves that, “Yes, if I can get an A+ on this paper about Fichte, I will be guaranteed a job; because these things matter.” It’s a stupid thing to think, but at the same time, what else are we expected to do this far down the road of our futures?

Picture a drug dealer in your mind. What does he look like? Whatever the image is, it’s probably not going to be a young white male wearing this summer’s latest footwear, and an untucked “secret wash button-down Coral tattersall” shirt from J. Crew. Doubtful, too, your imagination pictures him as putting aside a copy of Vitruvius’s On Architecture so he can measure out a dime bag of weed. But if you’re young and out to get high, this is probably whom you’re buying from.

In my circle, this is the summer of marijuana. Few people are drinking as much as they used to. Liquor prices have remained constant in Canada, but fewer students are employed, and when they are, their belts are tight. As such, there’s been an increase in the usage of pot—and with the demand, a decrease in the stigma attached to drug-dealing as a part-time job.

While I have never taken an interest in it myself, I do take an interest in making money. And with so few job prospects on the horizon, I briefly considered getting into the drug-dealing game myself. But before I announced it to my friends (how do I do it? do I post it on Craigslist?), I decided to do a bit more research into this “occupation” and see how much I could benefit from it.

One reason why drug-dealing doesn’t seem a likely job for students is that its very illegality would make it difficult to start up. It isn’t. All one needs is a modest bit of venture capital, and since the commodity is a favored one amongst college students (why else the posters of Bob Marley that adorn so many freshmen dorms?), the process tends to build on itself.

I spoke to Harold, a young, white youth at a university outside Toronto. His hair was brown and messy, and he dressed like anyone else you would see in a lecture hall; nearly nondescript, harmless; one would never think he was involved with drugs.

“I buy about $600, $700 worth of weed a week,” he told me in his room, a simple affair: fridge, gaming laptop, bookcase with too few books; the quintessential student quarters. “But that’s only because I’m selling the really good stuff,” he continued, “You can spend less, but the product won’t be as good. I usually make about $300 profit every week”–which is more than enough to cover the average college student’s expenses on McDonald’s and the weekly kegger.

“The hardest part when you’re starting out is getting customers,” he went on, “but word travels fast in university.” After only a few months of being in the business, Harold is considered to be one of the best dealers on campus, already stealing clients from another dealer. As in any business, it helps to be alert to your customers’ needs. “He used to be the best one around,” said Harold. “But he started selling pretty crappy stuff and would answer your calls or texts after a few hours. You were working on his time.”

When I asked how Harold operated–whether he stayed at his place and worked from there or moved about the city–he told me, “I only see people at [my residence] who have been here before I started dealing. If you’re someone else, I go to you. That was also Justin’s problem: You had to meet him wherever he was. A good dealer moves around. It’s safer and it’s more convenient for the customer. You’re always on the move.”

I thought this must be easy as all his clients were college students. He laughed and said, “Yeah, they’re college kids. But remember not everyone lives on campus. Sometimes, I have to go pretty far out of my way.” Suddenly, he no longer seemed like the man in control, but rather, a somewhat glorified, illicit bike courier. “My busiest days are Friday to Sunday,” Harold continued, “which is kind of crappy sometimes because if I’m at a party, I have to go home, pick up, and then go meet this person.”

At this level of dealing, one cannot expect to make much more than Harold. Marijuana, after all, only sells for so much. The typical going rate for a gram is $10. A half-quarter, (3.5 grams) goes for anywhere between $30-$40, and a quarter (7 grams), from $70-$80, “depending on the quality of the stuff,” Harold explained. (Footnote: Marijuana in the United States tends to be more expensive than in Canada, but the cost to the dealer and customer have roughly the same ratio.)

The typical college student will usually buy a gram or two, often more on the weekend. Marijuana, unlike liquor, is an incredibly inexpensive habit to maintain; the average user need only spend $10, $20 at most and be set for the night. Compare this to liquor prices—let alone drinks at a bar–and it’s clear why it’s harder to make a huge profit off weed than it is for selling alcohol to freshmen.

At the end of the day, drug dealing is a job like any other. Most begin it with a feeling of energy and enthusiasm. Hip-hop blares out of the dealer’s room, he holds himself in a certain way, and is eager at all times to make a sale. The rookie dealer reacts the same way to phone calls or text messages as if he had just started dating someone. Every ring or beep is a hopeful signal that someone is asking for marijuana.

But as with all work, as time goes on, the ringing phone (which tends, as in relationships, to ring more often) becomes a cue to sigh. Eventually, the music in his room is lowered and the dealer, once thinking he was “the man” resolves himself to whiling away time at his computer playing video games, always on hand, always on call like a doctor.

At the university level, drug-dealing, especially pot, is a mostly harmless affair. Possession laws in Canada are far less stringent than they are in the United States, and the typical customer is, as I’ve said, the usual college youth. Much like the dealer, he is harmless and only wants to get “high” with his friends while listening to music. When I asked Harold if he ever grew paranoid that one of his customers would rat him out to university authorities or even the police, he shrugged his shoulders. “If you’re buying weed, why would you screw over a petty dealer?”

The risk factor involved for being a low-level dealer isn’t too high. “It’s only at the higher levels of dealing that you have to worry.” By the “higher levels,” Harold means who he buys from, that is, the dealer to the dealer, who typically holds “about 15 pounds [of marijuana] at any given time.” Just under seven pounds of marijuana possession for the purposes of trafficking can lead to a life imprisonment in Ontario.

This leads the dealers-to-the-dealers to be exceptionally careful people, often not giving their real names even to those they sell to. And needless to say, these people stand in clear contrast to the comparatively innocent, naive college dealers. They are more dangerous, and more prone to violence, which is frightening considering the petty dealer will often have to meet face-to-face with them in order to buy his goods. A small mistake, and things could go very badly for Mr. Majoring in Sociology.

While seemingly innocent and easy and exciting at first, drug-dealing, even at the petty level, can act as a gateway to more dangerous environments. I am not suggesting that every college dealer will one day rise to the levels of Escobar, or even get involved in a turf war (maybe in the dining hall, but I doubt beyond that), but he is nonetheless exposing himself to a corrupt and potentially violent lifestyle, one which, with the wrong steps, could lead to criminal, or even in some cases a death record.

It shouldn’t be unthinkable that some students would be willing to take this dangerous path to make some spending money. Many of them do already because, as Harold put it, “taking everything into account, it’s really easy money.” Easy and accessible, which is more than one could say for many job prospects in this economy.

Myself, I do not have the stomach to be constantly watching my back. That being said I would be lying if I denied a constant, easy cashflow is an attractive proposition to make end’s meet.

Daniel Portoraro, 21, is a senior at the University of Toronto, majoring in English.  This is the fourth in his five-part series of trying to find summer work in a tough economy.

While I waited outside the building for the second round of interviewing for my first real job, I saw a man get into a fight with a homeless drug addict. I was 17 years old. After I had gotten the job, I sat down at my desk. And in the cubicle next to me was the same man who had downed the vagabond. I was working as a telemarketer, selling newspaper subscriptions from an office in one of Toronto’s most dangerous neighborhoods.

I quit after a few weeks, and found work in a trendy clothing store, surrounded by pretty girls who, on more than one occasion, nearly had me fired for creating a heartbroken work environment.

Back then, I was about to start college in the fall with my then-girlfriend, and things were looking wonderful. As I sat in my first lecture, and saw we would be studying The Great Gatsby in the spring, I looked back at my first job, thinking how sad it was and how I would never have to go back to work like that.  I’d be “university educated!”

I’m about to go into my senior year, and The Great Gatsby is still one of my favorite books. In fact, I bring it to work every day so that I have something to read on my break and take my mind off things. You see, I’m working at that telemarketing place again, and nothing has changed except me.

The interview process was the same. The video they showed us (circa late 1990s) was the same. My pay, $10.25 per hour plus a measly commission, was the same. And the people were the same: immigrants from the Third World, people with faces cracked like bark who reek of Old English, and Somali women trying to put themselves through community colleges that advertise on television. And the product we sold, newspaper subscriptions, was the same. The only tangible difference in the company is that demand for paper subscriptions has shot down dramatically since I worked there last.

As then, I come into work at four every day and sit at my desk. The office is gray, the cubicles are gray, and even my supervisors’ clothes are gray. Their faces too, and their hungry eyes as they stare at the shapely, shy young women from Nairobi who come in looking for work. The room is windowless, and all the cubicles are devoid of personal effects. No one seems to speak to each other.

Telemarketing goes along the lines of,“If I’ve met you one day, you might be gone the next. If you’ve met me, I might gone tomorrow.” It has one of the highest turnover rates of any job, and more often than not, you’ll be fired for not having made a sale for a few days straight.

So how does one reach his quota? Our supervisors say skill and talent, and to a certain degree, that is true. But the fact of the matter is that selling over the phone is more a game of roulette than poker; it almost certainly depends on who picks up your call.

My first sale was pure luck. I happened to come across a brash woman who wanted a subscription even before I gave her my pitch. Another person in a small town said to me, “You’re a good salesman, but you better try it on somebody else.” I did, and the next person laughed. “You almost sound pre-recorded, but you better try elsewhere, honey.” Elsewhere is usually the sound of a phone slamming in your ear, or a fed-up wife (because you have to push, my superiors say) getting her husband to yell obscenities until you apologize and hang up.

If telemarketing happened over Skype and the potential customers could see the sad faces of the salespeople, I’m sure we’d see a huge increase in subscriptions.

The general perception is that telemarketers have lousy or menial jobs; as I’ve said, people constantly mistreat them, or slam the phone in their faces. But as a telemarketer, you realize there’s something else that gnaws at you whenever you come into work: you’re expected to be a machine.

Telemarketing is based on a script. Veer away from the script, and you’ll get a serious talking-to by your supervisor. You begin with the same introduction every time, “Hello, this is Name calling on behalf of Newspaper X. How are you today?” and continue until the customer cuts you off, or, more often than not, turns you off. In the former case, he’ll respond with something along the lines of “I read the news online” or “I already subscribe to another paper.” But don’t worry! You won’t have to think up an answer! Because in such circumstances, the script provides the telemarketer with the appropriate, company-decided response.

Regardless of how feeble it may seem to you, or however you think you can improve on it, you’re made to follow it. There is no room for creativity or individualism in telemarketing; I’m not exaggerating when I say a machine could do this job—and in many cases, now do. After a couple of shifts, you won’t even need the script anymore; the words are burnt onto your tongue.

To give you an idea of how many times you’ll say the same thing over and over again, my supervisor told me our office calls about twelve and half million households within the span of twelve months. That means, we each call about a hundred and fifty people an hour; that’s twelve hundred a day. Some are faulty numbers, others answering machines, many are immediate hang-ups. But regardless, this is the truly grueling part of telemarketing: the constant repetition.

Sometimes, you won’t get past the first sentence of your pitch. Other times, you’ll have spent three minutes talking only to have the person say “Sorry, not interested” and then hang-up. I might be wrong in saying this, but some people seem to enjoy wasting a telemarketer’s time. People tend to hate telemarketers, but what they forget is that, as annoying as they may be, they don’t mean to be. They’re people trying to make a living, and if they insist on you buying their product, it’s only because their supervisor is breathing down their neck, dangling a noose alongside a quota chit.

Over the course of this summer, I had tried time and time again to find real work. Telemarketing, where they say “come back anytime”, was always a back-up. But a back-up that seemed more like a step-back, and as such, highly improbable. Surely, I could find better work. But I obviously didn’t, and I’m not exaggerating when I say the work here isn’t only embarrassing, but downright depressing.

Some people may get used to it. But after years studying the flower-wreathed passages of Wharton, or the golden glories of ancient Rome, life suddenly becomes harsh when you sit next to someone with almost no teeth and what looks like steel wool for hair.  Surely I could do better than this?

Daniel Portoraro, 21, is a senior at the University of Toronto, majoring in English.  This is the third in his five-part series of trying to find summer work in a tough economy.

I’ve always thought that working at an airport must be one of the most depressing jobs available. Far, far away from the center of a city, and often, in an ugly, poorly-designed environment. However, here in Toronto, we are lucky to have the Billy Bishop Airport, a small property in the heart of downtown. Situated on Centre Island, 200 yards from the mainland, one rides a ferry to get across. So in my hunt for a job, I figured such a nearby and urban location might be not so bad—even suited to my needs.

I walked into the Toronto Port Authority offices with high hopes. I envisioned myself riding along the tarmac, throwing suitcases into small airplanes. The fresh air and surrounding lake sounded appealing, and such a job seemed within reach. After all, how hard could it be to be a grunt? Especially for someone like me with the best of both worlds: a higher education and past summer experience as stockroom boy.

“We don’t handle tarmac operations,” a duty manager told me, shattering my low-level dreams. “But,” she continued, “we do offer positions for students and recent graduates.” I had my pick from three: greeter, deck-hand laborer on the ferry, and building attendant. The last one piqued my interest. Building attendant: it sounded noble and almost prestigious. But after asking what the job would entail for someone with my qualifications, my query was met with politically-correct, PR-generated response employing enough vagueness and foggy terminology to make Orwell rise from the grave and puke his brains out on customs floor: I would essentially be a janitor.

Now, while I need money, I’m not going to wear yellow gloves and mop up a nervous passenger’s vomit; I do enough of that at my frat house. But apparently, my pride is unique in this job market: “Most of the people applying for this job are actually graduates,” the duty manager told me, “And the position acts as a foot in the door; there’s definitely room for growth and promotion here.”

As if a glory story for the airport, my guide introduced me to Kotar, a young man who came from Ghana in 2003 to find a “better life.” He worked as a deck-hand laborer. “It’s a position we reserve mainly for immigrants,” I was told, “because they tend to have experience on boats.” I asked Kotar what he did on the ferry, and while my guide, answering for him, gave me yet another one of her politically correct responses (a trait which doesn’t seem to extend to her mentality of immigrants and boat skills), I took what she said with a grain of salt. “I basically push the button to raise and lower the ramp on the ferry,” Kotar told me with a straight face. I had to hand it to him, he knew he had a crappy job, and made no efforts to over-complicate it as his superior did. I asked him how he got this position, and the manager told me he was “promoted” from being a building attendant. “You see?” she said, “Kotar here is moving on up in the company!”

Now, I put “promoted” in quotation marks because a few hours later, when my guide and I spoke to the Ghanian some more, I asked him what his position in the food-chain was. That is, what’s he making in comparison to everyone else. Kontar didn’t know, so I pressed his manager. “Well, the closest thing to deck-hand laborer at the airport itself would be building attendant.” Some promotion, I thought to myself.

As we got off the ferry, I was beginning to get annoyed with my guide. There is a difference between help and hand-holding. But here, this was tongue-holding. She was obviously put-off by the Konar incident, and when I told her I’d like to speak to a greeter on my own, she furrowed her brow and told me she would prefer it if she stayed with me. I was introduced to a young girl by the name of Celine, and this was the final straw to an already disappointing day.

The way Kotar, an immigrant with a degree from the Third World, is treated is expected in the West. Maybe not right, but expected. What is not expected however is to lower our own graduates to such menial tasks. Meet Celine, a young woman of 23, and graduate from one of the country’s most prestigious universities. What’s more is that over the course of her four years in college, Celine wasn’t wasting her time with an English degree (as I am), but spent thousands of dollars on completing the finance program from the Rotman School of Management, a grueling business school which ranks alongside Wharton and other top programs. Now, with a Bs.C. in finance, Celine is working as a greeter in a small airport. Her job? To stand at top of the escalator and point travelers to the check-in line…a line a mere 10 feet away. A sign could do her job, and the girl knew this.

“I don’t like it here,” Celine told me after I had managed to ditch my guide ( I’d told her she had given me all the information I needed in regards to work in the glamorous airline industry.  Then I bolted back to chat with Celine.) “I don’t really do anything except for point people in the right direction,” she continued. “And even then, customers are just rude to me.”

A young woman of Celine’s age walked up as we spoke and asked where the line for the ferry was. “There,” Celine said, pointing to the queue. I could read what Celine was thinking: it was meant to be her on these flights, traveling to meet clients and the like—not relegated to having to watch others travel while she stays put in front of an escalator.

“It would help if the pay was better,” she continued, “but $14 an hour? That’s nothing. I have to pay back my student debt, I have to save up for graduate school, I have to pay for gas.” Celine lives an hour away from the airport. “It doesn’t matter that I’m still living with my parents. There’s almost no mobility here. At least I was making $18 an hour at my old job and had benefits, as a security officer for CATSA [Canada's less-perverted version of the TSA] even though I was part-time. But as a greeter, I’m doing this full-time and yet for some reason, I’m considered a casual worker.” What does that mean? “I don’t get benefits even though I work more hours and for less.”

In an environment that’s fraught with security, vigilance, and such an appearance of officialism, one would think an airport, even a small one, would compensate its young employees more competitively than your run-of-the-mill clothing store. And the fact that a business school graduate, someone who very well could be at the administrative level, is pointing people her own age where to wait in line for their flights to Myrtle Beach ,is a clear indicator of these difficult economic times. If this young woman, with all her knowledge of, in short, how to flip singles into thousands, is in such a low position, where does that leave me, who only knows the slight difference between a rispetto and a strambotto?

On my way out I stopped by the office to thank my guide, but I’d be looking for a job elsewhere…

Daniel Portoraro, 21, is a senior at the University of Toronto, majoring in English.  This is the second in his 5-part series of trying to find summer work in a tough economy.

I have a friend who has recently graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in History. I’ve been living with him this past summer, and he has been unemployed for most of it. About a month ago, he came home happy. He had found a job at an upscale restaurant in the city.

After a bit of prodding, he finally admitted to what it was. After years of education, thousands of dollars spent on tuition, countless readings and promises for a bright future, my friend was now a busboy.

This isn’t a one-off, freak accident. In these economic times, the horizons of university students, once bright and wide, have grown dim and dismal. I’m about to enter my senior year at the U of T as well. My own recent employment issues have only dealt with trying to find a summer job.  In April, I had high-hopes I’d land something glamorous in advertising. A few interviews later, no Mad Men for me—just mad men.  On street corners.  Was this where I was headed?

Suddenly bussing tables didn’t seem so bad.

I had an easier time finding work as a busboy than my friend did. After a few days and a few phone calls, I was in all black. I walked into what I will call Restaurant X, a Japanese place in the west end of Toronto.

In many ways I was lucky to get this job. Sang Kim, a perennial figure in the Toronto culinary industry, told me this about the sociology of bussing: Having worked as a consultant for super-trendy local restaurants such as Blowfish, Ki Modern Japanese and a host of other key hotspots in the city, Kim has experienced the highs and lows of the industry.

The busboy, he said, is the lowest in the restaurant food chain. He is easily replaceable, has a menial job, and is looked down upon by the rest of his co-workers. “Sixty percent of people who apply for bussing are Arts & Science students,” says Sang Kim. “Most of them are coming straight after school, and frankly, I’m not going to hire them. In fact, everything else being equal, I will hire a Sri Lankan who may or may not have papers over a recent graduate.”

When asked why, Kim went on to explain that as bussers, or any low-level position at a restaurant, Sri Lankans are willing to put up with harder times, be willing to be paid less, and also have a work ethic that is second to none. “People who are in process [of starting a new life] are hungrier; they want to prove things. The university student has a sense of entitlement,” proof of the racist adage that “Tamils run the kitchens in Toronto.”

“With Sri Lankans,” Kim continued, “there is no strained power dynamic between the busser and the customer like there is with college graduates. Nor do they have the attitude problems students do.”

This makes sense, for after all, who wants to have gotten a degree in political science and spend his days setting forks and knives on a table? But I felt I ought to try and prove Kim’s theory wrong.

I began my job with the enthusiasm and hopefulness every young person feels when he first starts a job. However, while it took me a week to begin hating my drudge work at an office last year, it took me a mere shift to loathe my position at the restaurant. Diners waved me away, barely spoke to me or answered my questions, and treated me like I was nothing.

For all intents and purposes, I was nothing. The busboy is the person no one wants to speak to. He’s not selling anything, he doesn’t know the wine list or what the specials are; he’s there to literally get dirty things out of the way and scrap 50-dollar scraps into the garbage bin. It’s odd when one considers that the busboy clears what he can never eat; he isn’t far removed from the maid who cleans an apartment she will never be able to afford.

“At the bottom of the restaurant food chain, everyone gets paid minimum wage; the dishwasher and the busboy,” Kim observed. In Toronto, that’s $10.25/hour, and even lower in the United States. Most restaurants now pool tips to balance things out. This means that four to eight percent of a server’s sales go to those who “supported” him, i.e. the busboys, line cooks, dishwashers. “However,” Kim added, “we’re seeing a trend today in which parts of those tips also go to the manager, and the front-of- house staff”–that is, those who are already making well above minimum wage.

“There does exist another method however,” Kim continued, “in which the busboys take care of the servers who regularly make big tips. That way, since they both helped out, the tips gets split more evenly between them.”

While this method may seem better, it evokes the image of an ecosystem: the busboy is the flea on the elephant, picking up the former’s scraps of bacteria. While the waiter does benefit from a diligent busboy, he can do without him; the busboy, on the other hand, needs the feeding hand of the server; this is testament to his position in the hierarchy.

As a busboy, my end zone was the floor, but my start zone was the kitchen, alongside the dishwasher. His name was Mac, a 25-year -old white male (besides me, the only one working behind the scenes), who, I’m afraid I have to say, did look like a dishwasher: unshaven, earring in the ear, and with a coarse, gruff attitude. As I brought him dirty plates I hoped to find a kindred spirit; after all, we were both dealing with the sordid tasks of cleaning off bits of partially eaten food. Yet he never spoke to me or even thanked me for bringing in his duties. This could partially have to do with the fact that his job was harder than mine. As another restauranteur, who wished not to be named, told me: “Being a dishwasher is much harder than being a busboy. So no, you can’t be a dishwasher without experience.”

As an undergraduate studying the allusion to Christ carrying the cross at the end of The Great Gatsby, it’s difficult to grasp that in order to use a nozzle, I must have “experience.” The idea that someone who merely hosed down glassware had more qualifications than me made my job all the more embarrassing.

But beyond the sheer lousiness of my job in the restaurant food chain, it was also menial, repetitive and draining. On my feet all day, without cigarette breaks (which means my hands shook even more under the weight of plates), I passed into a drone state that had me start throwing out plastic chopsticks on more than one occasion. There is literally almost no thought process to what I did. I saw empty plates, I picked them up. I began to dread the day someone would ask me at a party what I did for a living.

The worst part however of being a busboy might very well have been the waiters. It says a lot about a man when he begins to want to be a server. In comparison to bussing, their job seems prestigious—more, in the pantheon, or something higher. They interact with credit-card-carrying diners and recommend wines from Argentina and Napa. But the best part? The tip on the horizon. It must be Christmas Day every night for waiters, anticipating the cold, hard cash they’re going to take home with them at the end of their shift.

Naturally, not all diners tip well, but there is always the guy trying to impress a girl on a first date, or the old man who’s had too much to drink. It’s heartbreaking to be a busboy and pass by bills on a silver platter, and then tell the waiter who’s chatting with someone at a table that his night’s drinking money is waiting for him. I’ve mentioned the tip payout scheme that restaurants now employ, but at most, that’s eight percent, and no consolation for what my better-dressed, “eloquent” superiors get.

Bussing may be better than no job, of course, but then again, what isn’t? I decided to leave the bussing industry. I’m happy no longer to have to be a busboy, and so was my friend when he found out he had been fired. In fact, we all went out drinking to celebrate that night. But now that the due date for rent is coming up he’s getting squeamish; the real jobs he’s applied to just aren’t calling back.  Nor are mine…

Daniel Portoraro, 21, is a senior at the University of Toronto, majoring in English. This is the first in his 5-part series of trying to find summer work in a tough economy.

We exist in a time in which our enemies have no face. We fight wars with little consideration for boundaries or frontiers. In effect, our “War on Terror”, as has been stated numerous times, is a war on an idea, and one without a finite number of soldiers. This vagueness, this cause with questionable foundation prevents a country from lining up behind its leaders. As such, there is a schism within America: those who follow, and those who stay back and criticize and protest. The end result is simple: this is not good for morale, and even less so for patriotism.

However, upon its release in July, Captain America will hopefully change this in some small way. Viewers will be transported back to a time in which enemies did have names and faces (and no, were not hidden in Pakistan for nearly a decade), and reasons for battle were tangible and clear to understand. More importantly, the setting of the film, World War Two, is one in which there was little to no  moral ambiguity of what the United States was doing in Europe and in the Pacific; they were fighting against evil forces. Yes, it was bloody and violent and terrifying, but regardless, there was a clear enemy: the Third Reich and its allies, and they had to be stopped.

What’s more, the film portrays the United States as being the vanguards of freedom in Europe. It was a time of glory for the country, emphasized by the fact that at the war’s end, the Americans had won, pure and simple, with nothing up for discussion. Taking Western viewers to what some would consider to be the heyday of American foreign policy can only lift morale, and reassure Americans that while some things might be going wrong today, there’s no reason they cannot be fixed in the near-future. As superficial as it may sound, it’s an uplifting sentiment.

Furthermore the consequences of attaching a single face, or country, to a threat entails the humanization of the enemy. The further villainization of one’s foes to the point where one can no longer feel empathy creates a stronger body of followers. Things become black and white. Static villains are often the most effective ones in action movies, and in politics for that matter. As trite as it may sound, would the James Bond series, with its accented, wealthy, homicidal anti-heroes, be so successful if they struck us as more humane? Obviously things are not truly so extreme under “normal” circumstances, but they must be in crises to assure unity. Gray-zones are a luxury for times of stability. And currenly the American government is in the former camp.

The superhero motif in film might seem childish and superficial at first glance, but its idea of the noble hero and his arch-nemesis is something a country desperately needs, and that the government would do well to reconsider. The most effective results sometimes simply require the most simple means.

Food is no longer a theme in the cooking-show sense of the word, where a movie, such as Julie & Julia is about cooking and little more, or it makes its appearance in passing as physical sustenance. Rather, it seems that food has morphed into a symbol of “spiritual” sustenance. We see this therapeutic aspect briefly in the aforementioned Bridesmaids, but almost entirely in Eat Pray Love, Julia Roberts’s latest attempt to inundate the movie-going masses with phoney messages of the soul, and what it truly means to be happy.

The movie does this with panoramic zooms of exotic locales (where joy is always just around the corner!), and seemingly incessant shots of the degustation of “goodhearted” food prepared by “goodhearted” people such as smoked eggplant and ricotta, and pappardelle with rabbit ragu.

In the course of “finding herself” after a divorce, Julia Roberts — after a (thankfully) brief dalliance with James Franco’s character, a humming, drumming Buddhist — leaves Manhattan for Rome.

The film then drowns the viewer with shot after shot of fresh greens being chopped up, homemade pasta being strained, and laughing conversation over interminable meals. Roberts’ character, Elizabeth, proceeds to find her identity not so much in any spiritual or emotional revelation, but more in the various rustic dishes she enjoys. Contentment lies, as she tells a friend, in gaining weight if it makes them happy. And if we are what we eat, then Elizabeth is a plate of linguine.

This isn’t the first time such a message is set forth. In the 2009 Italian film, I Am Love, Tilda Swinton’s character — again, a middle-aged woman — is faced with the fact that her family is changing, and she has no control over this; the family company is being passed down, her children have grown up and are getting married. So what does she do? She takes on a younger lover, one who also happens to be a chef. After having sex, they partake in the supposedly uniting ritual of cooking.

What is it about food, cooking, and women of a certain age? For the female characters in Bridesmaids, I Am Love and Eat Pray Love—and also with Meryl Streep, in It’s Complicated-- cooking acts as the only refuge in a time of emergency. It allows the woman to create something, and then decide its fate immediately by eating it, or having it eaten. She has full control, while the rest of her life is a tangled, independent mess where nothing is certain, allowing her, the “time to murder and create,” as Eliot wrote in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

Why attempt to take charge of life, when one can take charge of the kitchen? It might be easier to wipe down a granite counter-top than tears off a face, but regardless, this is the newly-masked sexism in film, and it would be a shame for viewers to think that these are independent women, while in fact they are the weakly veiled representations of the housewife from years gone by, something which women have striven so hard to escape, and yet, now accept as the ideal.

But if that shortened cupcake scene in Bridesmaids is anything to go by, it’s that films are veering away from the literal food-for-thought motif.  Let’s hope that Hollywood will choose something a bit more interesting than a pastry as the way to a happy, fulfilling life.