For Experienced Workers, a Tough Menu to Swallow
(Washington Post) — In hundreds of applications for jobs at the District’s new IHOP, candidate after candidate reels off impressive work histories: One woman was a clerk at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, another assisted clients at a tax prep firm, and another spent the summer canvassing for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s reelection campaign. “I speak Spanish well,” wrote one woman, noting that she was also a choreographer at a dance school. Last week’s opening of an IHOP in fast-gentrifying Columbia Heights – home to Target, Best Buy and a gastropub featuring $7 pints of British draft beer – offers a glimpse into a stalled economy that has produced a vast pool of experienced job seekers, some of whom are desperate for work, yet quite conscious of having to aim lower than they might in better times.
