Thursday, August 25, 2011

There must be easier ways to make a living. Then again…

The oldest profession has never held a lot of appeal for me. But if it had been a last ditch career possibility, I do believe I would have wanted to work for the Mayflower Madam, and deal with higher end (albeit kinky) clientele like Eliot Spitzer. Streetwalking? Ho-ing for some pimp? Advertising on Craigslist and showing up at hotels. Nah… Yuck factor aside, way, way, way too much stranger-danger.

When I was in college, rumor had it that a couple of students did outcalls to the Sheraton. Supposedly, someone would call on the communal hall phone in their dorm, and a message would be left with a room number. The girls would then head out, dressed in Mary Quant baby-doll dresses, and wearing their hair in little-girl punches tied with brightly colored yarn. I didn’t know these students personally, but I did spot them leaving campus a couple of times. Who knows what they were up to? Sure, this was a Catholic women’s college, but there were ample sordid tales floating around about girls who engineered (or performed) abortions, or sold drugs, or did whatever. The “whores from Julie Hall”? Why not?

My college jobs were more prosaic, but decidedly unlikely to result in arrest, death (unless dying from boredom or getting killed while hitchhiking home), or a venereal disease.

Naturally, the pay was commensurate with the risk (and the yuck factor), but that’s life.

Anyway, I’m all in favor of decriminalizing and regulating (yes, I am a nanny-stater) the world’s oldest profession, which probably wouldn’t stop those who would choose to operate on the fringes.

Into which category I would have to place the New Jersey woman who worked the Dunkin’ Donuts night shift “to offer the coffee shop's customers her services as a prostitute on the side.” (Source: AOL.)

Yikes! You go into a Dunkin’ and innocently order an iced latte  - let alone something more provocative, like a box of munchkins or a honey-dipped cruller (which are now called sticks and aren’t even real crullers anymore. And they call this progress?) -  and who knows what you’d be setting yourself up for. (“Honestly, officer, I really did just want a jelly donut.”)

Melissa Redmond worked the drive-through window, offering fans of Dunkin’s unparalleled iced coffee a “good time,” which she gave them in the parking lot.

I wonder if they could use their Dunkin’ smart cards to charge “it” on, or whether this was a cash operation.

Speaking of which, I once overheard, in the NY Hilton lobby bar, a working girl – who looked pretty young and inexperienced – tell a guy that she would take a check. I couldn’t help thinking that this was a bad idea on both sides. Hope it worked out for her…

Anyway, someone (a fellow worker? someone had to be covering for Redmond when she took her frequent 10-15 minute “breaks”) tipped the cops, who set up a sting dubbed “Extra Sugar”, and nabbed Redmond.

I’m sure that working the night shift – or any shift, for that matter – at Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t pay a lot, but there really do have to be better ways to make a living than having sex in the parking lot of a donut shop in Rockaway, NJ. I was going to write that there “have to be easier ways to make a living”. But maybe for some folks, there really are no easier (or better) ways that they can think of.

After all, it’s probably the one job that there’s always going to be demand for and is in little danger of being outsourced.

Still, it is pretty pathetic.

Anyway, it gives new meaning to the tagline “America runs on Dunkin’”.

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