[johnvanommen]

A friend of mine was sick of her job and planning to quit. She's a journalist with a college degree. Her plan was to get a job at Starbucks until she could figure out what to do next.

As I see it, this is the LAST thing you should do in a situation like that. Though it's counterintuitive, service jobs can be very difficult to attain, because almost anyone is qualified to do it. IE, she thought that working at Starbucks would be easy. I'd argue the opposite: it's hard, because so many people are competing for low-end jobs.

My recommendation to her was to figure out how to do something where the demand is high and the supply is low.

My first job paid $3.35/hr, and some of the hardest jobs I've ever had paid minimum wage.