You Want Fries With That...? (book review)

* YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT? A WHITE-COLLAR BURNOUT EXPERIENCES LIFE AT MINIMUM WAGE, by Prioleau Alexander, Arcade.

Prioleau Alexander isn’t the first white-collar worker to abandon a lucrative career, try his hand at a succession of minimum wage jobs, and then write a book about the experience. But unlike most of his progenitors, Alexander’s goal isn’t to enlighten readers or make a political argument; he’s just trying to be funny.

A former advertising agency executive, the forty-something Alexander spends the better part of a year delivering pizzas, scooping ice cream, flipping burgers and cleaning up construction sites. He aspires to work for a big-box retailer, but fails to land an “associate” position at either of the big-box stores to which he applies.

While the rejections deflate Alexander’s ego, his sense of humor remains unaffected, at least until each of the individual jobs begin to drive him crazy. In the case of the ice cream “shoppe” this moment occurs around the time he hits “five-thousand pinks”—the five-thousanth time a customer asks for a pink-spoon sample. One day, “going pink” may have the same meaning as “going postal,” he quips half-jokingly.

In the end, however, Alexander turns serious, noting that since completing the book and returning to the white-collar world (as a freelance media planner) he makes it a point to say “thank you” and “have a nice day” to all low-wage earners. But Alexander seems to reserve the most sympathy for pizza deliverymen: “To avoid having a freakin’ pizza smashed into your freakin’ face by an enraged Pizza Man, make sure you have the freakin’ numbers of your freakin’ address on your freakin’ home,” he advises. How’s that for words to live by?

* The above book review isn't up to Failure magazine standards, so we killed it. But to avoid a total loss we decided to make it available on our blog, where our standards are obviously lower. Click here to read some of our more "successful" reviews.