Labor market indicators

In Philly over weekend without kids (a first), we dined at SusannaFoo, a much-ballyhooed place which proved to be just fine but not really supporting the hypothesis that the restaurants there are better than those in New York. What was surprising was that our waiter, and pretty much the whole wait staff, was a hispanic guy whose English was, shall we say, nascent. This is a restaurant with big bills and good tips. When I got out of college people were fighting in the streets for those kind of jobs.

His lack of a command of our fair tongue was a mild impediment in the noisy room, but it didn't hinder him much. The floor staff in general did a fine job, if perhaps displaying excess alacrity at filling the glasses with Pellegrino, but that's more a management than a labor thing: forcible sales.

All told, it's good to see recent arrivals scoring these kinds of jobs. It gives you hope.

Much more so than what we saw in the some of the poor black parts of town. The word intractable came to mind. Though there was one 70 yr old woman with an awesome sparkly hat in a McDonalds on 40th.