Another Way to Use that English Degree: Cafeteria Worker

The insurance company refused to return my post-interview telephone calls. I finally concluded that they were put off when I said, “I never imagined using my degree in creative writing to come up with creative ways to deny insurance coverage in writing.”

The Christian schools both wanted me, but I would have to wear dresses every day, attend the churches affiliated with their schools, and moonlight as a server in the school cafeteria during lunch. In addition, they proposed paying me with free tuition for the children I didn’t yet have.

So I went to work for the very large church. And before I ever got to write the first word of the first script, the pastor’s wife decided she wanted the job. So they redirected me to the church cafeteria, where I began my career as a writer by making large posters of the weekly menus for the Oasis Seniors Club, which we in the cafeteria affectionately called the Old-asses Club. And when I finished with the menu posters, I got to serve mashed potatoes to people so old they remembered the last Great Irish Potato Famine.

Given the lack of actual writing my new job demanded, I continued using my writing skills to further my husband’s Bible college education.

But I refused to be paid in sex. I opted instead for dinner out at the nicest restaurant we could afford, Taco Bell. Hell, I’ll take a burrito over a blow job any day of the week!

Writing for Sexual Favors

Six days after the president of Georgia State University in Atlanta handed me a rolled-up piece of paper declaring that I had fulfilled the requirements for a Bachelor's degree in English, a minister handed me a piece of paper declaring that I had fulfilled the requirements for a Mrs. Degree.

In other words, I got married six days after I finished college. I was twenty. My new husband was nineteen and still in college.

The week after our honeymoon, I began searching for a job, naively believing that multitudes of companies were salivating over the idea of having a writer on staff. After one month, I’d interviewed at a large insurance company for a position writing creative claim denial letters, at a large church writing television scripts for the pastor's personal show, and at two Christian schools for teaching positions.

The only problem with these jobs was that they paid slightly less than a waitress at Hooter’s could make.

Discouraged, I whined to my husband about the trouble I was having finding a job doing what I had trained to do. “I just want to write,” I said.

My new husband looked up from his plate of spaghetti and said, “I have a paper due Monday. Why don’t you write it for me?”

“I need to get paid for writing,” I answered.

“I’ll pay you. Write my paper, and I’ll give you the best sex of your life.”

Now, paying for sex is one thing, but being paid in sex was a whole new can of condoms. As a preacher’s daughter, I had to spend a moment contemplating the moral ramifications of the situation. Since I was still unemployed, though, and scared for my writing abilities because of the old axiom "if you don't use it, you lose it," I went ahead and wrote his paper, for which he received an A. His professor, thoroughly impressed with the quality of writing, called my husband into his office and said, “This is the best undergraduate paper anyone has ever turned in to me. My question is, ‘Did you write it?’”

And without hesitating, my husband said, “Yes, I did.” In relating the story to me, he justified his lie by saying, “The Bible says that since we’re married, we’re considered one flesh.”

Wow. So I’d just used my newly-minted English degree for the purpose of enabling my new husband, who was a student in Bible College, to lie and cheat. And on top of that, I was to be paid in sex.

In that light, writing a creative letter denying insurance coverage to a little old lady who’d been paying premiums for a gazillion years seemed ethical. I called the insurance company to check on the status of my application.