Job Hunt

Letter from Anytown, USA:

I realized my new job hunt is not a project to find satisfying work, but rather a game to try to trick people into hiring me.

It became clear after a recent interview. I schlepped down to (some-other-town) to this fancy biotech firm. I didn't like it very much -- kind of pretentious, open-space offices (no privacy), and the bosses seemed real demanding. Nonetheless I thought I had a good shot at the job.

Well, I never heard back, and my reaction was, I got really mad. And my next impulse was to start scouring the ads for someone I COULD trick into hiring me.

This doesn't seem healthy.

During my sabbatical I tried to gain some clarity into what I might "want to do." But I realized I'm doing it: relaxing, keeping up with the news, cooking, doing odd projects, reading, and fiddling with the stock market.

So I guess I'm just a person who is unmotivated and has no vision, but who needs income, and will have to posture and compromise to get something that pays.

I think this describes most workers. But for most people, satisfaction is achieved by buying houses and TV's and clothes and trinkets. So for these people, the work/money contract is satisfactory.

The whole employment exercise affirms this: the emphasis is on trickery -- how to dress, how to banter, the "right" questions to ask -- basically how to manipulate everything you need to, in order to get an offer.

Many employers, too, seem to perversely demand conformity in interviews -- they only want certain pat responses and questions. Which indicates they aren't really interested in your answers, but rather your ability to conform and internalize routine.

Have a great day!

I think that last line is sarcasm. (No! Not really! Is it?)

Stolen complete from "Bad Dogs and Such"

I was going to just quote part of it, but then I decided, shoot, just copy the whole thing. From a soldier in Iraq.

22 September 2008

MORE cultural awareness

We spend so much time studying the way "They" like things that you occasionally have to wonder whether, assuming this is a clash of civilizations, they might already have won.

We were having the Ramadan discussion.

They abstain, the instructor droned, from food, drink and sex from sunup to sundown for a month.

Hell, we've been abstaining from booze, sex and decent food 24/7 for closing in on a month now. It's making all of us pretty cranky, so perhaps that explains the ongoing rage problem from the Islamic world. Food for thought.