HAMPTON, VA—Explaining that his current employment situation is intended merely as a stopgap, local man Simon Goldinger, 23, confirmed Thursday that he only plans to wait tables until the fundamental structure of the American economy undergoes a complete overhaul.
Goldinger, who started working as a server at the Whitecap Grill shortly after graduating college last spring, told reporters he took the job in order to make ends meet while he waits for the entire economic framework of the United States to be reorganized at the most basic level, creating a sufficient number of adequately paid opportunities for individuals with his level of education and experience.
“I’m not going to be a waiter forever, just until the nation’s job market becomes less reliant on service-sector positions, and a robust, knowledge-based economy can be built from the ground up and given time to flourish, generating more promising career paths that ensure long-term financial stability for members of the workforce like me,” Goldinger said as he scoured several job-listing websites for signs of an unprecedented transformation in the country’s economic foundations. “I’ve been working at Whitecap for about a year now, but once America goes through some massive fiscal changes and retools itself to an extent unseen since the Second World War, I’m sure I’ll have some better options.”
“In any case, this will do for now,” he added.
Goldinger explained that he is comfortable working at the restaurant for the time being, as his wages and tips are just enough to pay his bills and cover his share of the rent on the small apartment he shares with two friends while he awaits groundbreaking changes in the labor policies of developing countries, such as onsite safety measures, minimum wage laws, and overtime policies that, if instituted and expanded over the course of years, might eventually make it cost-effective for American companies to move jobs back home, thus allowing him to find a more secure, salaried position.
While conceding he had hoped to achieve more professional success by this time in his life, the Virginia native said he will just have to keep looking and trust that the current system through which resources are distributed, with the vast majority of wealth flowing to the richest 1 percent of the population instead of being reinvested in the middle class to create sustainable job growth and boost the standard of living, will be completely upended at some point in the not-too-distant future.
“Waiting tables is just a temporary thing for me, so hopefully it’s just a matter of time before the exponential gains in productivity from increased automation stop creating redundancies in the labor force and the job offers start rolling in,” said Goldinger, who has on numerous occasions texted his friends to ask if they had heard of any game-changing disruptions to the economic status quo capable of reinventing the role workers like him will play in American life for generations to come. “Honestly, though, hanging around here and serving people food isn’t the worst way to get by while I wait for the federal government to renegotiate trade agreements so they include enforcement mechanisms that require all participating nations to protect the rights of workers while simultaneously streamlining our own domestic corporate tax policies and regulatory structure, thereby ensuring that an advanced industrial country like the U.S isn’t at a competitive disadvantage.”
He added, “Once that happens, I’m out of here.”
At press time, sources confirmed Goldinger was applying to graduate school, hoping that by the time he finishes another degree, a revolutionary full-scale reorientation of the nation’s job market will allow him to earn enough money to pay back his crushing student loan debt.