Adam Selzer: King of the Wild Frontier - Done!

Afte days of obsessive attention to detail, I've sent off the revised version of "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland." The last sentence added, I think, was "the cold air was thick with the smell of french fries and dirty snow" early in the book.

Meanwhile, since I talk a lot in the book about bumming from nametag job to nametag job, I've been trying to come up with a list of all the places I worked before becoming a writer/tour guide, but it's tough. There are quite a few places where I worked about one week before switching to a slightly better job, but I'm counting those, too. I keep thinking I'm leaving a few places out, but here's the list as it stands:


- 7 restaurants (including one cafe)
- 3 Starbucks (7 if you count places where I just did a couple of shifts)
- 3 pizza places
- 3 retail places at the mall (all owned by one company, though)
- 2 grocery stores
- 1 parking lot
- 1 office
- 1 theatre*
- 1 gig as a merchandiser (which took me to work in about every Wal Mart, K-Mart, Target in Toys R Us in Chicago)
- 1 day as a piano mover**

I think that just about covers the period from 1994-2005. During that time, the only minimum wage hike was in 96 (unless there was one a year or so before that).

* - I trained to be an usher at a college theatre, but never got any hours. This is the only job in which the application process asked me if I'd ever been a communist.
** - this was really just an odd job I was recruited for while hanging around outside a building, but it was paid, and looked too good on the list to leave off. I suppose, since it's there, I should put on the other odd jobs, like babysitting, pigeon feeding, assisting my dad when he was a chimney sweep, etc, but I won't.