Who They Are: Fry Cooks man the flaming-hot grills of electronic commerce. A spatula in one hand, a gantt chart in the other, Fry Cooks divide their time between fighting grease fires and responding to the insane orders of Customers. ("We want the opening picture to morph into a twenty-minute demo of our product, narrated by our CEO, who will then do a real-time Q&A session with our shareholders."). Fry Cooks are the "get-it-done-at-all-costs" project people of the New Media Caste System. Fry Cooks earn slightly higher wages than the average NetSlave and are known to take occasionally brief vacations, but at the end of the day every extra penny and benefit is wrung out of them like an old slop-rag.

Where They Can Be Found: Fry Cooks are most often found sweating profusely over a legion of projects that are behind schedule ("I need the copy, the graphics, the database -- basically, everything by tomorrow, or I'm ficked!) or else taking the brunt of managerial tirades over projects that are already late ("What do you mean the site's not up yet?! We told the client we could get it done in three days!"). NOTE: The fact that no one involved, including the Client, answered e-mail or returned phone calls from the get-go is no excuse.

Other Habitats: Other common places to find Fry Cooks, when they are not manning the grill, include the local bar (Gotta deaden the pain somehow, right?), the fouton of the company's somewhat shapely Administrative Assistant ("I can't take it anymore. What do they want from me? Let's run away!") or when time's an issue, in front of the building, taking long drags from a cigarette and hoping for a quick death from cancer.

Average Age: 92.3 (in "Internet Time". For details, see Cab Drivers.)

Average Income: 60K per year (which figures out to 20K per year, after factoring out exorbitant bar tabs, weekly trips to a shrink and the costs of late-night meals, which more often than not go unexpensed.)

Favorite At-Home Activities: Trying to coax the Administrative Assistant over for a "romantic evening", watching "On the Waterfront" for the 200th time and mouthing the words to Brando's "I-coulda-been-a-contenda" speech.

Last Book Read: "Post Office" by Charles Bukowski. Also partial to anything by Hemingway, Celine, Hamsun, Baudelaire. Main criterion for enjoying a work of literature: It has to be written by a lonely angry man on the verge of cracking up.

Average Number of Jobs They've Had: 7. Like Cab Drivers, Fry Cooks tend to work on a per-project basis, even though when they are hired Management gives them every impression that they are an "integral" part of the team. Having been burned several times before, most Fry Cooks have stopped believing this come-on and never keep more in their desks than what they can pack into small bag at a moment's notice.

How They View the Internet: Fry Cooks view the Internet as a way to earn more money than what they would be making had they pursued the more traditional paths offered them by their educational backgrounds. NOTE: Given their tastes in Literature and Movies, many Fry Cooks are often English Majors in disguise, who got into the Web biz completely by accident and have remained in it due to a bone-chilling fear of ending up back in Graduate School, writing books on "The Role of Moustaches in Dickens".

Psychological Profile: Fry Cooks are in many ways the most existential of the New Media Caste System. If a project's late, it's their fault. If it's on time, it's also their fault because "key features" that no one ever mentioned to them have been left out. Their universe cold and absurd, Fry Cooks are the whipping boys (and girls) of the Waitstaff ("Salespeople") and the Head Cook ("Chief Developer") , who rather than blaming themselves for glitches and miscommunications, find it much easier to glom it off on them. Fry Cooks have developed a fifteenth layer of skin to protect themselves from such flaming assaults, although every now and then they suffer extreme injuries causing them to run screaming through the restaurant, holding up their singed appendage and threatening to cut up everyone in sight -- the usual upshot of said outbursts being immediate dismissal, due to accusations of no longer being a "team player" or else a shift in organizational "priorities" (translation: The Salesperson and the Chief Developer didn't appreciate being called, "A Lying Bitch" and "A Bureaucratic fick", respectively.).

Career Aspirations: To run away to Cancun with or without the Administrative Assistant and alternate between selling sea shells down by the sea shore and working the local waiter/party-boy scene. (Despite Fry Cooks' intellectual pretensions, Isaac from the "Love Boat" was always a secret hero.)
 

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