It's Tough Out There

While listening to yesterday's NPR Talk of the Nation discussion, Keeping Your Resume Out Of Online 'Oblivion', reporter Lauren Weber said that Starbucks receives 7.6 million job applications every year for about 65,000 openings.  That's about 117 applications for each job, and this is a low-wage job!  This isn't earth-shattering or particularly profound, and it's not really anything we didn't already know, but it does help illustrate just how tough the job market is out there, even for menial poverty-wage jobs.

Middle Finger Law:  In other news, if you're bored and want to listen to a short, entertaining NPR story about the legality of flipping the bird (the "impudent finger") to police officers, check this out: Flipping 'The Bird' Just Isn't Obscene Anymore, Law Professor Argues.  Perhaps this will create some more business for struggling solos.

ROBBINS: It is considered illegal in many jurisdictions, but there is a case from Oregon in 2010 in which a regular guy thought that he had an absolute First Amendment right to give the finger to police officers whenever he saw them. Not just if he was being ticketed.  Dozens, sometimes hundreds of times a day, whenever he would pass a police officer, he would give the finger.

And they brought him to court on this on disorderly conduct charges.  He ultimately won. He settled for $1,000, but in other jurisdictions in which the application of the disorderly conduct statute has been tested, there have been settlements for as high as $50,000.

Don't try this at home.  It's probably a YMMV sort of thing depending on your jurisdiction.