A Response to an Interview with Sauce

Did you know that 2010 only has eleven months?  Yup, it sure does.  Obviously that whole November crap didn't work out so well for me so I decided to just get rid of it.  If your birthday is in November, I apologize; go ahead and decide on October or December instead.  So here we are in December, the eleventh month of 2010.  I'm feeling pretty good about this one.

To jump us off, I'm going to remind you of an interview I did in a month that no longer exists.  I expected the interview would get some interesting comments and response.  And it did.  In fact it got so many responses that Brianne - creator of the site that I was featured on - posted her reasons for featuring me.  It was the first posting that wasn't an interview.

Below I present Brianne's reasons for including me on her site as well as why I think I deserved to be featured.

The other morning I was at work when I received a text from a good friend. It said, “Really, Bri? A Hooters girl?”

I knew he was talking about I Want Her Job.

Then a little later on I had a phone call with another good friend. She said, “It took everything in me not to write a nasty comment on your blog. I really enjoy coming to your site, but I don’t feel like working at Hooters inspires anybody. I am a teacher, and I work with kids all the time to find out what it is they really want to do. Do you really want girls to say they want to grow up and be a Hooters girl? I think that’s just degrading.”

My response to both of them was this, “Did you read the profile?”

The first friend had not read it, and once he did, well, he seemed to understand it a bit more.

The second friend I mentioned read the profile and didn’t change her mind.

She felt like the job was degrading to women and couldn’t believe I would promote it on this site.

I then asked her, “Well, if next week I featured an interview with an anchor from ‘The Today Show’ or the editor-in-chief of a magazine, would you read it?” “Yes, of course,” she said. And I responded then by saying, “Well, then it didn’t change your mind about the site?” “As long as you don’t feature a stripper … ” she responded before we changed topics.

Here’s the thing. When I made the decision to feature Sauce, I thought about it for a night. I didn’t make a quick reaction. While her job is not one that I had a targeted plan to feature, I was impressed with her viewpoint and her entrepreneurial spirit. Sauce doesn’t just work at Hooters. She trains other girls, she runs a website that gets as many as 500 views a day (which, for the record, is not easy) and furthermore, the website that she created led to an opportunity for her to write for the company’s magazine. I admire that drive.

As someone with a background in journalism, I was taught to always consider all sides of a story. The job of a reporter is to not insert your own voice and to present two sides … and even if I couldn’t find the other side of the story, I had to actively seek it out. Now, with blogging, I feel mainstream news has tried to insert more of an opinion into what they do. And beyond that, writers are looking to have more of a voice. Opinion counts these days, but sometimes it’s still best to step back and be the publisher of content that strikes a chord with people, without inserting your own thoughts. And with I Want Her Job, I am striving to motivate, but also to feature women in all types of jobs. Who am I to say what kind of jobs people should love?

The other thing about this site is that as long as you’re a woman, you can be featured if you can convince me of one thing — that you really, truly love your job. And while I realize some jobs appeal to some people and other jobs don’t, I think there’s something interesting in the fact that Sauce has to wake up every morning and no matter how she feels, she has to look her best. As a woman, I’m sure you can understand how exhausting that can be. There are some mornings when I just don’t care if I have mascara on my lashes or if my hair is curled. I’m just not into it for one reason or another. And the fact that she does this is interesting to me.

The bottom line is this: I Want Her Job is here to feature women with all types of jobs who love what they do. We’re also here to support one another. So, keep the comments coming, because we’re not just profiling women who love their jobs, we’re starting a community that has an opinion and motivates us as women.

And if we can’t be one another’s biggest cheerleaders, then who will be?

So why do I think I deserved to be interviewed on a site meant to empower women through the success of other women?  Yes, I realize I have a job that many would conventionally consider demeaning.  But I don't think my job had anything to do with me being featured.  I was chosen to be featured because I created an amazing opportunity for myself.  I took my job as a simple waitress and created a second job that has become wildly successful and that fact wouldn't change whether I waited tables at Perkins or Cracker Barrel or Hooters.  Now I'm not just a Hooters Girl, I'm a Hooters Girl with a popular blog (that makes money) and a recurring magazine article (that also makes me money).   And I don't think either of those things are easy.

 And that is why I was featured.  It wasn't my job, but rather the drive that let me turn my job into something that has boundless opportunity.  Whether I was a teacher or an artist or a garbage man it wouldn't change the fact that I created something that speaks a lot to my own spirit and ingenuity as a woman. 

Yes, I'm just a Hooters Girl, but what I choose to do with that opportunity is what I feel gives me the ability to inspire.  The whole point is that no matter what you're doing you can still put your heart and soul into it and experience a great return.

I, for one, can't wait to see where it takes me.