J Is for Jealous

I get out of bed at 4 AM each morning to perform a menial job rich in stress, dissatisfaction, potential health risks and exposure to liability. It is equally-poor in remuneration and benefits.

Owing to a felony conviction for long-term unemployment, there is little else.

This allows me to hold forth on the working poor at festive occasions like birthdays, christenings and New Year's Eve parties. (Yes, I receive a lot of invitations.)

As such, I am trying very hard to understand the dullards fortunate-enough to win lotteries who see no other way forward than to continue reporting to work.

If we were speaking of concert pianists or successful filmmakers or renowned brain surgeons, that would be one thing. But we're talking about an employment strata decidedly less-elevated; one way, way downstream.

We're talking store clerks, municipal laborers and in the case of one recent winner—warehouse supervisors.

I have worked in warehouses. They are ugly, dirty and drafty places full of mice and mousetraps and unhappy people living on the margins of solvency. Warehouses have lunch rooms with burned-out fluorescent lights, sagging paneling and chipped Formica tables. Filthy microwaves and broken coffee-makers.

So I'm wondering why, when opposed to a month in Spain or Italy or overseeing the construction of a new dream home, someone would choose to remain in one. 

I mean, do you have nothing better to do than to get up and go to your dreary, dead-end job? No imagination that stretches beyond doing what you have always done?

It is sad. Infinitely and inexplicably sad. Some combination of your education and your parents have failed you, and I am sorry.

I get three magazines, a daily newspaper, read books and am a voracious consumer of movies and music. There aren't enough hours in the day to read all that I want to read, see all that I want to see and hear all that I want to hear.

I won't even broach the ten years without a vacation which has left my thirst for travel parched and unrequited.

And you can't think of anything to do but get up and go to work? 

The only thing more remarkable than your short-sightedness is why, even with the likes of you about, scientists continue to develop robots and drones. 

How about volunteering with the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity or Doctors without Borders? Or the local food pantry or children's hospital?

What about building a new animal shelter, or a complex of affordable apartments? Or buying that elderly widower down the block a new roof?

How about getting really out there and turning your job over to someone who—gasp—actually needs one?

Yes, I am jealous. Hideously so.

But whatever our respective fortunes, I at least am curious. And know how to remove my blinders.

Falling Through the Cracks

There's just something about September.

The last month you didn't post was September of 2012. Excepting the month of your father's death, the last one prior to that which found you equally torpid was—surprise—September of 2011. 

You have struggled this September to post even three pieces, and one of those was a quote. Creativity and the approach of winter do not go hand in hand. 

Autumn is a pretty word for dying of the light, which itself is a pretty metaphor for the looming calendric cancer that neither William Shakespeare nor James M. Cain could improve upon.

There are, of course, other contributors to this Super PAC of sloth.

After three months of pestering HFS (the state agency that administers medicaid) to learn the status of your re-determination, they are finally able to inform you that you are above their income limit and are no longer eligible.

You didn't know you were capable of making too much money.

You review your lifestyle and smile ruefully at the tank of gas you paid cash for just last weekend. At the groceries you purchased yesterday. At the needless extravagance of your subscription to Car & Driver.

You wonder when Forbes begins compiling their annual list of the five-hundred wealthiest people in the world.

The cold, unblinking reality is that this is the result of a raise you received at work; a raise which will barely cover the cost of the insurance you are now required by the state to purchase.

Before the indignity of it hits you, you laugh.

It is, in a twenty-first century America kind of way, quite funny. It is the answer to the seemingly improbable question when is a raise not a raise?

Being possessed of a blinding genius, you inquire of your employer whether you fulfill their hazy and nebulous definition of full-time, since you have picked-up hours and now regularly work over thirty owing to their perpetual shortage of employees.

You do, on an hours-worked basis. But it isn't that simple.

In our business-friendly culture, your employer has been allowed to declare that since your route has not been designated a full-time one, you don't.

In other words, you could work forty hours a week until the Florida state legislature acknowledges climate change and you still wouldn't be considered a full-time employee. 

This is a manifestation of your worst fears; that your life is seemingly incapable of moving forward. 

You have maintained for years that employment is an alternate universe.

You, for better or worse, are the starship Enterprise.

Forced Busing

There is a critical personnel shortage where I work. Hence the paucity of posts. Twelve-hour days spent behind the wheel are not conductive to creativity.

Only those of us too old or too far down the road of long-term unemployment remain; the younger and more employable of us having taken advantage of the rebounding economy and ditched the high-stress squalor of public transportation for greener pastures.

There is a dream-like quality to logging nearly three-hundred miles in urban traffic. Details and individual stops blur and become part of a larger, impressionistic canvas of repeated motions with no specific time or place.

Only the next address on your computerized manifest exists.

Then come the jarring intrusions of reality.

Dispatch, equally-stressed by a shortage of operators, is flooded with angry calls. Responding to outraged patrons, they insert themselves in your manifest and alter your course.

On a good day, this presents an opportunity to play hero as you swoop down out of the sky like the proud bus-eagle you are and rescue a rider from the social embarrassment of tardiness.

On a bad day, this saddles you with still-more stops you can't possibly perform in a timely manner without breaching the time-space continuum or altering the laws of physics. (Like any other bus driver-slash-physicist, I regularly search for wormholes.)

It is a frustrating little drama which finds the aggrieved customer playing the squeaky wheel and you an insufficient dollop of grease. This is likely the reason I am unusually fond of individually packaged moist towelettes.

Then the noisy thrum of the diesel engine and the mechanical whir of the transmission as it slogs through its gears yet again distances you from the evolving crises coming over the radio and the incessant stream of road construction.

You are once again a single, anonymous cell in the vast bloodstream of humanity. You set about delivering your passenger to their desired destination, not unlike the bit of oxygen headed to a muscle which ensures its continued function.

There is a brief sense of purpose.

La Piazza Gancio Finds His Flow

Several years ago, I wrote about an old friend named Lucky. He has the distinction of being the only person I know to spend twenty-five years with a single employer.

But it hasn’t been easy. Nor is it.

Interacting with twenty-first Americans in the context of retail frequently resembles punishment. One which should be meted out to deserving folk like congressmen, state legislators, city councilmen and garden-variety felons.

Misled by corporate marketing and an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, a public temporarily ignorant of corporate priorities demand that things happen the moment they wish them.

The problem is, unless possessed by multiple personalities, most employees can only be in one place at one time.

Exacerbating the situation is that, like your employer, Lucky's also believes that payroll must be kept to an absolute minimum, lest still-more emaciated corpses pile-up in the executive wing.

Maximum stress, minimum wage. Where do I apply?

One memorable day, Lucky found a “guest” rifling through the contents of the department stockroom. It seems the guest was time-challenged and could not wait for Lucky to finish with his customers.

When confronted, the guest took great exception to Lucky’s contention that the stockroom was off-limits to customers. The guest channeled his howling, righteous indignation and repeatedly attempted to intimidate Lucky by yelling “Are you through? Are you through?”

To his credit, Lucky resisted the urge to escalate the encounter and merely asked the guest if there was anything he could help him with. Frustrated (and perhaps even embarrassed), the guest stalked off.

I regret that Lucky wasn’t more familiar with the films of Groucho Marx, who famously asked in one “Shall I call a cab or would you like to leave in a huff?”

Inspired by this incident and by my own experiences, I wrote this.

It’s dedicated to retail workers everywhere.

Put shoes up
Take shoes down
Carson’s is a circus
And I’m their clown

Please don’t stare
I’m painfully aware
Of just how long
I been there

It makes me ill
I wish I could fix
The fact that I been here
Since eighty-six

Employer’s clueless
The public’s shoeless
I keep thinking
How long I gotta do this?

Beat up beat down
Self-esteem is just a noun
Like the bosses Rolex
I get wound

I caught this chump
In my stockroom
Bitch kept asking
Am I through?

I see his ass
Just one more time
He gonna wish
He stayed in line

The shoes get stocked
I get mocked
Maybe you should know
My Uzi’s cocked

Ask me again
Am I through?
My other gun’s a Glock
It’s loaded too

Employer’s clueless
The public’s shoeless
I keep thinking
How long I gotta do this?

Beat up beat down
Self-esteem is just a noun
Like the bosses Rolex
I get wound

The biggest irony
The seventh circle of hell
Is that fate demands
That I must sell

You the shoes
That walk on me
And kick me
Til I bruise

I’m a slave
You don’t need to behave
It’s the sale
I got to save

You want a better deal?
A bigger coupon?
Then log your sorry ass
On to Groupon

Employer’s clueless
The public’s shoeless
I keep thinking
How long I gotta do this?

Beat up beat down
Self-esteem is just a noun
Like the bosses Rolex
I get wound

The Grand Illusion

At this stage of the game, I’ve come to understand that retail is theater. It’s a dramatic production, complete with set, director, cast, crew and backstage theatrics.

It has a script. A set of words that, in addition to bringing uniformity to employee-customer exchanges, will hopefully distinguish this production from the others currently being staged.

But even as one production works to separate itself from another, they invariably end up being indistinguishable. They unfailingly adopt identical twists and wrinkles, like teen-agers embracing the same fad even as they seek to establish their individuality.

Case in point is the reluctance of business to write or speak any word or phrase which imparts the faintest inference of ‘no’.

I recently wrote a letter to a frozen pizza manufacturer, bemoaning the sudden disappearance of my favorite variety. Instead of receiving a simple confirmation, I received several paragraphs of public relations froth extolling the virtues of its replacement.

At no point was my query addressed, presumably because it meant acknowledging that my life was now bereft of my favorite frozen pizza, and they were to blame.

Despite my deep and abiding love of this pizza, I can promise with absolute certainty that life would have continued even had this company possessed the clarity and intestinal fortitude to address my question with a simple “We’re sorry. The pizza you inquired about didn’t meet sales projections, and as a result has been replaced by another variety. Thank you for your interest in Home Run Inn pizza.”

Then there was the live, in-person example I received at my place of underemployment.

A man had been waiting at our contractor’s desk. Manning the register nearest this desk, I approached and asked if I could help. After hearing the reason for his visit, I informed him the desk was closed weekends and was on the verge of directing him to the people who could help when our new store manager swooped in.

After informing me in tones an aggrieved teacher would use with an errant pupil that the desk is “never” closed, she escorted the customer to the department I was directing him to in the first place.

I stood and pondered our contractor’s desk. Despite it lacking any of the five employees who normally populated it and the attendant bustle of activity, I had obviously erred in assuming it was closed.

What was I thinking?

Exactly how does this deception benefit our customer? Then I realized the irreparable damage his psyche would have suffered as a result of hearing our contractor’s desk was, indeed, closed weekends.

So there’s that.

And then there’s the irreversible damage my employer could have suffered had this customer gone online and vented. It’s too horrible to even consider.

Write this down—customers must never hear the word ‘no’. It doesn’t exist. No never happens.

So yes, retail is theater. A carefully-packaged drama where reality is whatever the playwright says it is.

In addition to his more-obvious gifts, who knew Shakespeare’s declaration “All the world’s a stage” would presage twenty-first century business models?

You must excuse me now. I have a matinee at two.

You and Your Job

In my ongoing efforts to supply you, the valued Square Peg reader, with timely and relevant blog content, I offer this highly-scientific profile builder designed to articulate your feelings about work.

It will tell you whether it's time to look for a new job or get measured for a boardroom-ready designer suit. You need only to respond to the statements below to discover if you and your job are just a tawdry one-night hook-up or a bona fide LTR.

Read each of the eleven statements and choose the true or false answer that best matches your feelings. Hint: first responses are usually best.


01. Work is a continual annoyance, like a stone in your shoe which cannot be removed. True or false.

02. Only kidney stones pass more painfully than time at work. True or false.

03. When you exit the building at the end of the day, you look skywards, spread your arms in supplication and beseech an uncaring and spiteful god with the words “What did I ever do?” True or false.

04. You’ve ceased listening to Highway to Hell because it bears an uncomfortable resemblance to your drive to work. True or false.

05. Every day you don’t claw your eyes out in sheer agony is a small, but significant, victory. True or false.

06. Sartre’s concept that hell is your co-workers (admittedly a rough translation) may be truer than anyone suspects. True or false.

07. Only a proctologist sees more assholes than you do. True or false.

08. You understand the significance of the German expression arbeit macht frei, and wonder that your employer hasn’t inscribed it on the walls of the cafeteria. True or false.

09. Horrible Bosses isn’t a comedy, it’s a documentary. True or false.

10. Inducing internal organ failure is becoming an increasingly reasonable alternative to getting up and going to work tomorrow. True or false.

11. You are troubled by recurring dreams of animals chewing off their limbs to escape a trap. True or false.


Scoring:

For each true response, give yourself three points. For each false, zero. Total your points and match the total to the profiles below.

00 – 00 Once, you were upset at work. But you don’t remember why. You wonder why you’re paid, because you’d work for free. Work is fun. Like a puzzle. And you like puzzles. And singing songs. And just having fun. At least until your meds wear off.

03 – 12 Stealing office supplies provides temporary, short-term relief only. It’s not a cure. In other words, when you find yourself in a hole, put down the shovel. It’s time to update the resume and begin the search for new employment.

15 – 21 You regularly experience significant discomfort at work. Ditto the realization that sleep aids and anti-depressants only camouflage symptoms. Time to increase your dosage, find a good therapist and ramp-up your search.

24 – 33 Elvis isn’t the only one who’s left the building, is he? Let’s face it: at this point, quitting is just a formality. Like our favorite besotted and jump-suited singer, you left the building a long time ago.

More shaving. More screwing.

When I was young, I worked in a tough, uncensored warehouse. PC had only recently begun to stand for personal computer. Politically correct wasn't even on the radar.

So after depositing a skid of merchandise in the wrong shipping lane, an irritated foreman asked me: “I know you’re a dumb-ass. I get it. Why do you keep proving it to me?”

I want to ask the same question of my employers. But an inconvenient need for food and shelter renders this behavior risky. So I administer yet another self-inflicted bite to my poor, pockmarked tongue.

And my employers continue to see the circular firing squad as the best path forward.

Case in point is a part-time position I landed in spring at one of those big box home improvement stores. You know, the ones with everything from rebar and cement mix to sub-zero refrigerators and orchids. I’m sure there’s one in your neighborhood.

My training consisted of three eight-hour days spent watching videos—in solitaire. Videos about customer service and store procedures and how to operate equipment. Videos about workplace safety and sexual harassment and company policy. And then there were the videos on customer service.

Did I mention the ones on customer service?

I should add that the “hands on” portion of the training was eliminated because of insufficient staffing.

The hard part came when I was to convert the content of the videos into living, breathing, three-dimensional reality. But I spent my first three days in the self check-out area. I'm not sure what I was supposed to learn by watching people check-out, but I'm sure there was something.

Then an entire week passed before I was scheduled to work again. If this makes sense on another plane, it’s a flight I don’t have a ticket for.

A few weeks in, I discovered that the self-proclaimed industry leader who preached customer service non-stop got all obsessive-compulsive when it came to shaving payroll to a bare minimum that would make a stripper blush.

That insufficient staffing I encountered during training? It wasn’t an aberration—it was business as usual. Standard operating procedure.

As a consequence, customers can’t find salespeople. Employees attempting to contact other departments get busy signals when the phone doesn’t ring endlessly. And theft is rampant because aisle after aisle is bereft of even a token human presence.

You don't need the radio telescope in Arecibo to discover what kind of customer service this is. But no worries—Wall Street really loves our rate of return.

However much I enjoy having a customer stare a hole into me because I can’t get another department on the phone, or because the hardware section is completely uncontaminated by hardware clerks, it gets old. Really old.

And it’s not just the wee folk who suffer.

Department managers manage sour and dispirited staffs made up of underemployed part-timers because Wall Street says full-timers get benefits, and benefits are profit-killers.

So instead of juggling eight schedules, they juggle twenty. Instead of informing eight staffers of a new procedure, they (theoretically) inform twenty. And instead of tracking eight people's performance, they track twenty's. It must be wearying.

Then there are the monthly updates, which are little more than a mechanism for disseminating company propaganda.

Last month, the update focused on theft. I mean shrinkage. It offered fascinating statistics on theft, er, shrinkage, and what employees can do to combat it. And like the information contained in the training videos, it made perfect sense.

The problem is that the folks in training never got the memo from finance about payroll, so the gulf that exists between what this company wants to do and what it actually does remains unsullied by anything resembling a bridge.

I mean, I’d love to root between the two-dozen bags of cement mix/potting soil/road salt and grass seed customers routinely buy for circular saw blades, power tools and silver solder—just as soon as the 'wait to checkout' metric is eliminated. Ditto the one for 'cashier friendliness'.

Apparently, this needs to be said: you can’t have rapid check-outs and thorough inspections for hidden-on-purpose merchandise. They’re incompatible. Mutually-exclusive. A wordy oxymoron.

And while I’m at it, you also can’t staff a hundred-thousand square foot store with a dozen people and not expect thieves to have a free-for-all.

Let me know when you figure out what your priorities are. K?

My employer has demonstrated—repeatedly—they’re not about the customer service. They’re about extracting the greatest amount of cash from the store in the shortest amount of time with the fewest possible expenses.

It’s rape as a business plan.

The secret shoppers and the metrics and the marketing can't obscure that hoary old expression about actions speaking louder than words.

But as long as those guys with mansions in the Hamptons and fleets of Ferraris say it’s all good, it is.

Who am I to argue with success?

I Almost Have a Job!

If the paucity of posts weren’t clue-enough, you should know: I found a job.

Not a full-time-with-benefits one mind you, for I am clearly unworthy of such extravagance. But I have found temporary work--with benefits (the exact nature of which escapes me at the moment).

Oh yeah. I’m being paid.

What I do was once the province of college graduates. I am a human resources benefits administrator. Yes, the finer points of health insurance, 401(k)s, pensions, payroll, COBRA, vacation and FMLA administration are being stuffed into me as rapidly as I can clear space on my internal hard drive.

Week five was completed Friday.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I am. To have a forty hour paycheck for the first time in two years is the proverbial rain in the desert. But I am troubled.

Troubled by the degreed HR staffers who no longer have a job because their jobs have been outsourced to temporary workers like me. Troubled by a company that either doesn’t realize its raging hypocrisy as it speaks of the importance of commitment from its temporary workers or doesn’t care.

I am troubled by the ongoing conditions in a supposed first-world country in which highly-educated people make fifty and one-hundred mile commutes for a temporary paycheck while chasing a vague and nebulous chance at permanent employment.

As I suspect is true in many American offices circa 2011, the mood is grim.

Weary, stressed-out workers swallow hard and multi-task while working for stagnant wages as executive compensation rockets upward in an unbroken trajectory independent of company performance or economic conditions.

In the hour and a half it takes to negotiate the twenty-five mile trip to work, I realize I am uncomfortably close to a conundrum where I work merely to perpetuate my ability to get to work.

But then there is my resume. The official record of my contributions to corporate America.

If nothing else, this position will allow me to show recent experience. Which, if you haven’t looked for a job lately, is the mantra of our business class: only the employed (or recently-employed) need apply.

And would all of you ninety-niners please just go away? Or something?

But the days aren’t without mirth. The monumental tedium that results from eight hours of ‘What are the restrictions on withdrawals of after-tax contributions made to the DC plan after December 1, 1986?’ is an extraordinarily fertile breeding ground for humor.

I long to quote Dr. “Bones” McCoy from the original Star Trek and say “Dammit Jim! I’m a doctor—not a retirement specialist!” I struggle to resist publicly identifying the three types 401(k) distributions as hardship, regular and regular with cheese.

Or to inquire of our off-site facilitator “Does a 401(k) participant get a treat when they roll over?”

But these aren’t even my biggest temptations. Let me explain.

In our classrooms, we sit in individual, high-walled cubicles. As mentioned earlier, we take our instruction from an off-site source as we are monitored by on-site instruct—I mean facilitators. The off-site facilitator speaks to us from Texas via speaker phone.

When questions are asked over the speaker phone, they produce a stadium-like echo, which creates in me an irresistible urge to say things like “Upon further review, it has been determined that the offensive player had both feet down at the time of the catch. The call stands. Touchdown Chicago.”

Alas, I have not. Corporate America takes itself very seriously.

But as any temporary can tell you, dreams die hard.

Behold the Power of Chocolate

For those of you who know me from MySpace, sorry for the re-run.

For those of you who don’t, this is one of four blogs I salvaged from the two-hundred and something I posted on MySpace before they went down. 

Er, reinvented themselves.


It was plainly the sweetest moment I’ve ever enjoyed at work. It was my last day at J.C. Penney’s catalog desk, a job I had taken to put some much-needed legal tender in my wallet following a move to New Mexico.

It was a deceptively tough job, owing to the variety of services we offered. Each had its own highly-detailed set of procedures and processes that needed to be followed—and learned on the fly.

The department manager was a woman named Helga. She was in her late-fifties and clearly exhausted by the continual turnover in the department. Even the most earnest questions were answered in a weary and resigned monotone.

A few moments stand out.

The night an anxious customer watched me wrap her wedding gift, distress written all over her face as she frantically searched for the politically correct words to get me to stop and let a woman take over. In a fiendish mood, I suggested pairing a tartan plaid ribbon with the pink, satiny wrapping paper she had requested.

(I'll admit to being a bit put-off by her condescending attitude as I've been wrapping gifts since I was old-enough to give them and do a pretty fair job of it.)

Then there was the middle-aged Native American woman who wanted to return a comforter. In accordance with store policy, I removed the comforter from its heavy plastic storage bag for a quick inspection.

After unfolding it, I needed a moment to digest what I was looking at. The comforter looked as if she had given birth on it. Or murdered someone. It was covered with red stains and others the cast of CSI: Miami would have trouble identifying.

I looked at her in disbelief. “I can’t take this back, Ma’am.” Expressionless and unblinking, she asked why. “It’s used” I said. “No it’s not.” I wasn’t in the mood for a Monty Python skit just then and summoned the assistant manager.

She took one look at the comforter and then the woman and went blank. It was the only time I saw this wise-cracking New Jersey transplant speechless.

She went to the phone and called the store manager, who—unbelievably—gave the woman her money back. No questions asked. I don’t remember if the comforter went to the CDC in Atlanta or the Navajo police in Shiprock.

But I digress. This is about sweet moments, not comforters.

After a month at Penney’s, I had found a “real” job and given notice. My last day would be a Saturday. That morning, a new marketing promotion (miniature chocolate bars wrapped in coupons) was to be introduced.

I was chosen to hand them out, and positioned myself near an entrance. It didn’t take long for the mostly-female clientele to figure out that chocolate, no free chocolate, was being handed out

Within minutes I was surrounded by women. Women with broad, beautiful smiles. Women who looked at me with something approaching adoration. If I wasn’t the fountain of youth guaranteeing eternally moist and youthful skin, I was at least handing out chocolate.

The circle surrounding me grew three and four deep. As best I could, I attempted to get a bar to each of them.

The eye contact was deep and lingering. And full of unspoken surrender. God I loved this. Was this what it was like to be a rock star? Or Brad Pitt? Or George Clooney?

I didn’t want it to end.

“How’s it going, Randy?”

Then peals of laughter. The assistant manager had approached with another box of chocolate, and was taking in the success of Penney’s new marketing promotion.

But all too soon, the second box was empty as well.

The women? Gone. My fifteen-minutes were over. I was a has-been.

The truth emerged late one night in one of those soul-baring conversations we sometimes have with ourselves. And it was this: it could have been Charles Manson handing out the chocolate and the results would have been the same.

Despite the appearances to the contrary, I resigned myself to the fact that I had been a mere delivery system for a woman’s true love—chocolate.

Please Dispose of Responsibly

Unemployment really fucks with your head.

You hear 'no' long enough and you begin to believe you’re the piece of shit corporate America says you are. Things like self-confidence and self-esteem erode imperceptibly, like paper yellowing or paint fading.

You haven’t won the lottery, but still manage to defy the odds. You’re told the unemployment rate for those with bachelor’s degrees is just four-percent. Yet you have come to the inescapable and bitter conclusion after two years of searching that not looking for work is the same as looking.

You learn what it’s like at the very bottom of America’s social strata. It doesn’t matter what you did, how long you did it or for whom you did it. What matters is that you are long-term unemployed, and for this single reason must not be employed.

The effects on American business could be catastrophic.

You listen to Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) say “The unemployed just don’t want to work” while you perform two highly undesirable part-time jobs only the desperate would even consider, much less take.

You attempt to forget she is the daughter of a millionaire former senator and has roughly the same relationship with struggle that you do with menstruation.

You witness the let’s-heap-dirt-on-the-victims antics of Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as he freely questions the continued existence of unemployment benefits since “They’d just use the money for drugs.”

Or watch as newspapers publish cartoons in which a tree labeled ‘unemployment benefits’ bears fruit labeled ‘unemployment’.

You fail in your effort to not take this staggering misinterpretation of cause and effect personally, even though you yourself don’t qualify for any type of assistance. You search job listings for a position which requires falling through the cracks and to your utter lack of surprise, find none.

Yes, you are employment-proof.

As you prepare for a second downsizing (this time into your parent’s home), you wonder if there will be a third. And if so, if it will involve cement and the outdoors. You ponder your options, which sadly fall into two categories: slim and none.

Of course, you could always go back to school, take out a fifteen-thousand dollar loan and hope that in a year or two someone will want to hire a fifty-something pharmacy tech. By the time you are sixty, the loan might even be paid off. Which leaves you free to begin saving for retirement.

You could also continue looking for work.

After all, in the past decade you have witnessed the New Orleans Saints win a Super Bowl. The Arizona Cardinals compete in one. Seen the New Jersey Nets visit the NBA Finals—twice. And the Tampa Bay Rays make it to the World Series.

So it could happen.

And let’s not forget it was just last week that you picked up two-bucks in the MegaMillions game.

Yes, things are looking up.

Counter Culture, Pt. 2

You have manned the take-away register seven days out of the last eight. Co-workers greet you with comments of the “What did you do?” variety.

The register is awkward, being positioned on a postage stamp-sized cart with an acute shortage of space for groceries. Never mind the cell phones, purses, babies, water bottles and key rings shoppers have with them.

This is likely the reason for the ‘6 Items or Less’ sign. Thankfully, most of your customers can read. (But more about that later.)

There is even less room for maneuvering flimsy styrofoam containers overfilled with sauces, dressings and gravies into plastic bags mounted on a rack only slightly more stable than Lindsay Lohan.

When pulled, the bags are supposed to tear along a perforation, much like a sheet of paper from a pad. But then, the Great Recession supposedly ended in June of 2009, too.

Then there is the change cup. By the time a customer is standing at the register paying for their groceries, it is actually positioned behind them.

So during the lunch hour, the line of customers is continually performing a polite but poorly-choreographed samba as they move backwards, and then forwards, to accommodate customers retrieving their change.

You wonder if this could be parlayed into a slot judging contestants on Dancing with the Stars. If not, you still retain one measure of celebrity, because the register is located in the store manager’s favorite area of the supermarket.

This means that when it’s 9:45 AM and there isn’t a long line of customers waiting to purchase BBQ, soup or salad at your register, you become visible in a manner desired only by unknown actors, writers and musicians.

You proffer reasoned arguments that your position is an on-demand one; that standing around is your job. They fall on deaf ears. The fact that it isn’t the lunch hour is never an excuse for it not being the lunch hour.

The area's track lighting is specifically arrayed to reflect off the stainless steel counter and into your eyes. Customers have observed that the resulting squint gives you an uncanny resemblance to Sergio Leone–era Clint Eastwood, especially when you don’t shave.

You are crestfallen when you learn that ponchos, cigars and black cowboy hats are prohibited by the store’s dress code.

In addition to the revolving door, there is also a traditional one store architects thoughtfully placed near the register. Due to their exhaustive studies of prevailing wind conditions, it allows maximum blasts of icy, Arctic air into the workspace.

Locking the door activates a silent alarm in the manager's Blackberry. Or at least seems to. Technically, there is a wall-mounted space heater near the door. But only in the same sense that technically, you are no longer unemployed.

So yes, employees clamor to work here.

Strange things happen. Like the time you are summoned to the main registers to cover for several late-arriving employees. You shut-off your light, flip the sign to ‘Closed’ and head to the front of the store.

When you return some twenty minutes later, there are several people waiting at the register. You didn’t know ‘closed’ meant ‘wait’. You are gobsmacked.

The knock-out punch arrives courtesy of the woman at the front of the line, who says “You were open when I came in here.” You choke back several less-considered responses before telling her you're sorry, but you had to help out in another part of the store. She repeats herself before snatching her bag and storming off.

The sixty-ish man behind her is irritated also. “You could’ve told someone how long you’d be gone so people didn’t wait around all day.”

He slaps a ten-dollar bill on the counter. You look for Ashton Kutcher. This is an episode of Punked.

You desire fervently to tell him that your ESP is in the shop for its 60,000-mile check-up, thereby inhibiting your ability to predict the future. But you wear a name tag, and despite the abundant evidence to the contrary, this man may know how to read.

Instead, you tell him you’re sorry. He is unmoved.

You hand him his bags without saying “The door is straight ahead. And unlike my register, it’s open.” This is a small-but-important victory.

As is resisting the powerful and insistent urge to quit.

Counter Culture

They are palaces of promise. Of anticipation. Of things yet to be savored. In their aisles lies an ocean of sensation needing only to be thawed, sautéed, grilled or broiled. Places without stripper poles aren't supposed to provoke the flights of fancy a supermarket does.

If asked to entertain a visitor from a foreign country, I would bring them to one. Show them the dozens of aisles with food neatly stacked upon shelves and produce artfully arrayed. Here is the bounty promised by a post-WWII America. This is the Land of Plenty envisioned by millions of immigrants.

Yet after working in one, I have come to understand that mine is a view very much in the minority. Despite the wonders of Stand n’ Stuff taco shells and laundry detergent scented like a mountain stream, it is apparent the majority of Americans find their weekly visits to the supermarket only slightly more appealing than an IRS audit.

In an effort to cease irritating my customers, as a supermarket cashier I have dialed down my formerly cheery “Hi! How are you?” to a no-nonsense “Have your preferred customer card?” as I begin whisking all manner of produce, meat, cartons and cans down the conveyor belt.

Adding to their unease is my occasional failure to correctly suss Italian parsley from curly leaf, or sale rolls from bulk rolls. Rest assured that whatever ADD tendencies Americans display while driving, we remain capable of laser-like focus while watching our groceries being tallied.

We may be too overscheduled to cut out (or even rip) the coupons we plan to use. Too addled to notice the ‘15 Items or Less’ sign over the check-out lane. Too distracted by ringing cell phones, whiny kids and trying to remember the PIN on our debit cards to notice what supermarket chain we’re in.

But god forbid the sale price of chicken breasts doesn’t appear within milliseconds of it being scanned lest a customer shriek “They’re supposed to be $1.99 a pound!”

Then a box of never-before-seen Italian three-cheese crackers appears. Or chipotle chilies in adobo sauce. Or a still-warm loaf of marbled rye bread. Sense of wonder rebooted.

Dreams die hard.

Much Ado about Nothing

I will admit right off the bat that life could be much worse. I could have been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this morning. I could be homeless, or filing for bankruptcy. I could be off to the hospital to visit my girlfriend after she was raped and beaten last night.

But I’m not.

Yet at the same time, it could also be a great deal better.

For example, I could have two compatible part-time jobs. Or just one full-time job with a living wage. Or sleep not riddled with eye-opening anxiety. Is an apartment with appliances that don’t date from the Carter administration asking too much?

I am weary. Life has become a slog through wet cement. Round and round and round I go, expending energy and effort but never arriving at my destination. True, you could argue that I now have two part-time jobs, whereas last spring I had none.

But consider this. Part-time job number one mandates where I live. And despite its offering of one week’s employment per month, it forbids me to be otherwise employed, as I must (technically) be available virtually around the clock, each and every day of the month.

Forgive my impudence, but didn’t the Emancipation Proclamation eliminate slavery?

Part-time job number two recently informed me that after September, I will no longer be able to take a week off each month to perform part-time job number one.

This despite my making this condition clear when asked if I had any extenuating circumstances that might affect my availability in a job interview last August.

With their subsequent extension of a job offer, didn't they indicate that this was reasonable and acceptable? That they were okay with it? Or am I just a dumb fuck?

Alas, I ask for too much. What on Earth am I thinking, smoking, drinking or otherwise ingesting? That I could conceivably be self-supporting? That I could conceivably possess two crappy part-time jobs?

My presumptuousness is as alarming as it is outrageous.

On my good days, I think to myself “OK. This isn’t working. Change it.” But it soon becomes evident that I am between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

The apartment? Even within the geographic area allowed by part-time job number one, I’m stuck. Landlords in my adopted state are the definition of provincial.

“You haven’t lived here all your life? You haven’t been at your job fifteen years? Hmmm. What are you? Some kind of transient? A job-hopper? You’re not very stable. You’re a very poor risk. And I can’t rent to you.”

And the job(s)? Logic would decree that if I find my current employment unsuitable, I should seek employment elsewhere. But I’m already playing the lottery, thank you very much.

Which is another way of saying I may as well petition the Yankees to become their centerfielder as apply for a position in the field in which I’ve spent the majority of my work life.

Employers have made it crystal clear that as a prospective candidate, I rank somewhere between a death row felon and a drooling imbecile who smells of feces.

Which is why I find myself in two incompatible part-time jobs that can dictate so many facets of my existence. Only the desperate need apply.

Serfdom, anyone?

Through My Eyes

As a young man working his way through school by alternately washing dishes in the student cafeteria, scraping paint for the local public works department, wiring outdoor signs as an apprentice electrician, heaving forty-pound boxes of fine china around for Marshall Fields and writing for the school newspaper, I had a vision.

A constant in my life that lent meaning to even the most menial labor.

I knew that if I diligently and relentlessly applied myself in my studies, I could conceivably one day become (drum roll, please) a supermarket cashier. Not a full-time cashier mind you, for that is a position both beyond and unworthy of my station. But a minimum wage, union-dues-paying, part-time cashier.

This was something that could happen.

Which isn't to say I have anything against supermarkets. Or cashiering. Or even unions—at least what’s left of them. But it’s not what I busted my ass getting a college degree for.

A year and-a-half into my job search, is this really all I have to show for it? Two part-time jobs which will barely slow my descent into financial oblivion?

I like to think that somewhere down the line, my do-what-you-gotta-do grit would impress an employer. But in our over-evolved society, being a supermarket cashier is viewed as an unfortunate detour from the pristine career trajectories employers now prefer in their candidates.

Yeah, I’m bitter. Wouldn’t you be?

I live in a world where radio talk show hosts must relinquish their jobs for saying the n-word. Where funding for the most profound breakthrough in the history of medicine is put on hold over a notion that it is injurious to embryos. And in which judges wring their hands out of slavish concern that felons aren’t made too uncomfortable by their surroundings.

Yet I belong to a group of people publicly and repeatedly demonized by the representation entrusted to look out for it.

I belong to a group of people employers resolutely refuse to hire. One Republicans maintain is a drain on America’s economy, and for whom all public funding must be stopped lest we drag the country further into the death spiral of deficit spending.

This as they fight tooth and nail to preserve tax breaks for the wealthiest one-percent of the population.

Somehow, treating the unemployed as if they're carriers of the plague is OK.

It is difficult—if not impossible—to avoid seeing the world through your own eyes. And this is the world through mine.

Living Lucky

The phone rang. It was Lucky.

"How you doing?" he asked.

“No different than last time” I said. “How ‘bout you?”

“I’m so tired of this crap. I want to retire.”

I laughed in knowing acknowledgement.

“You want to get together? Have a few beers, shoot the breeze?"

“Can’t” I said. “So what’s up? You still have a job?”

“Barely” said Lucky.

“What do you mean?”

A long sigh. Then the sound of a bottle being emptied.

“Well, remember how I needed to make my numbers in June, or that was it?”

“Yeah."

“Well, I didn’t hit ‘em. Then I got called into Amber’s office, and I walk in and the district manager’s there. I figured it was the end.”

That Lucky figured it was the end meant, of course, that it wasn’t. What bullet had he dodged now?

“They give me this crap about how they’re going to go out on a limb for me, and how they’ve decided to give me one more chance since I’ve been with the company so long. And you know what I find out when I go back on the floor?”

“What?”

“Janie, our best salesperson, is leaving. And they finally fired this screw-up Jason, so they’re short. They’re not giving me another chance—they’re shorthanded. And with a big sale coming up. Assholes.”

I laughed. “So that’s a bad thing? You have a paycheck for another month, plus some commission. What’s the problem?”

“Those assholes acting like they’re doing me a favor. Piss on ‘em! They think I’m some kind of idiot. I sat there hat in hand and said ‘thank you’ and ‘I really appreciate it’. God.”

“That’s why it's called work” I said. “That’s why we need to be paid to be there. Who the hell would put up with it for free?”

Lucky huffed in affirmation.

It being nearly ten PM, I didn't want to further ignite his/mine/our considerable rage, so I nudged the conversation in another direction.

“You hear anything about that gig you took the personality inventory for?"

“Yeah. I interviewed Tuesday. The HR person is on vacation, but the manager said they’d like to move on it when she gets back.”

“Wait. So you have another job lined up?” I began to laugh. Lucky was great therapy.

“It looks that way.”

I collapsed into laughter. I couldn’t stop. I needed to investigate the possibility of having Lucky purchase lottery tickets for me.

“I’m glad you’re in such a great mood!”

I was able to stop only long enough to ask a question.

“Can you do me a favor? Look out the window and tell me if there’s a truck parked outside that says Publisher’s Clearing House on it and a bunch of people approaching your front door with balloons.”

“Ha ha” said Lucky.

“I’m serious! I can’t believe you!” I said. “It’s incredible! Every time you come close to being fired, it's like a giant bird swoops down and saves your ass! You're fireproof!”

Delirium set in as I pondered my friend. Life will seemingly not allow him to lose a job, nor me to find one.

The contrast is remarkable.

The Other End of the Line

A friend of mine recently posted a very funny blog about dealing with the phone company. It doesn’t seem to matter what continent you’re on, the phone company is always The Phone Company.

But the cluelessness isn't limited to one end of the line.

I should know. I spent many years working for one. The following is a faithful recollection of a call I received while working there. I doubt I’ll ever forget it. The names have been changed, etc.

Me: Thank you for calling Qwest Communications. My name is Danny. How can I help you?

Customer: Now listen up Danny. My name is Joe Strocek, and I’m a snowbird from Erie, Pennsylvania. I was told that a technician needs to come out to start up my service, but there’s just no way that needs to happen. There’s been service there before.

Me: Okay. Let me take a look at the address. Where did you want to set-up your service?

(Customer gives me the address of a popular RV park in Phoenix. I run a facility check and it comes up as ‘technician visit required’.)

Me: Okay Joe. I checked the address, and it’s coming up as one that requires a visit.

Customer: Now don’t tell me that Danny. That’s not what I want to hear.

Me: I know it’s frustrating. But at…

Customer: Look. I spent thirty-seven years working for a utility in Pennsylvania. I know when a technician needs to come out, and when they don’t. And a technician doesn’t need to come out here, Danny. Now what are you going to do about this?

Me: Let me double-check with Tech, and I’ll be back to you as soon as I can. Can you hold for a sec?

Customer: Sure.

(I call our facility technicians in Phoenix, and get a status report on the availability of lines at the RV park the customer is moving to. A technician does indeed need to go out and bring a line to the CO for this address.)

Me: Joe?

Customer: Yep.

Me: Thanks for holding. I called our office in Phoenix, and we definitely need to send a technician out to get your service up and running. I wish I could tell you differently, but we need to bring a line to your box. Are there any extenuating health conditions that would allow me to make this a priority install?

Customer: Now look here, Danny. I know you have a switch there by your desk. Will you please just flip the dang thing so my wife and I can have our phone service?

Me: Joe, we’re a for-profit company. Believe me, if we could start billing you now we would. But we can’t.

Customer: I know this game. Okay? Now will you PLEASE just flip the damn switch?

Me: Joe, this is what I have in my cubicle: a computer, a bunch of binders and manuals, some pens, a cup of coffee and a scratch pad of paper. That’s all. No switch—I promise.

Customer: JUST FLIP THE GODDAMN SWITCH!

(I'd already spent over ten minutes on this call, and it was going nowhere. It was obvious that only a technician visit and the subsequent sound of dial tone was going to convince Joe. Which is why I said...)

Me: Okay. It’s flipped.

Customer: Thank you! (click.)

I left extensive notes on the account explaining the conversation and what had (and had not) been confirmed, but never checked back to see when ol’ Joe got his telephone service.

The Right Profile

I’m always grateful for the chance to laugh at corporate America. If reinventing the wheel and fixing what isn’t broken guaranteed success, America’s corporations would be world-beaters.

They would be the indomitable industry leaders their help wanted posts say they are—even without the corporate welfare, government subsidies and abundant tax loopholes.

The latest opportunity for mirth comes from a friend, referred to in earlier posts as Lucky.

Lucky is looking to make a lateral move within the company he has faithfully served for nearly a quarter-century. It is commonly agreed that Lucky is a fine person, and has done a wonderful job in whatever department he has landed.

But the new and improved version of his employer requires that Lucky submit to a personality profile, which guarantees a perfect match for the companies who use them.

This is likely the reason people no longer leave their jobs or are fired, because thanks to the personality profile, every hire is now a perfect hire.

Oh wait, they do. And they are. But now I'm not being a team player. *sniff*

Long story short, Lucky failed his personality inventory.

After determining that he possessed an unacceptable number of undesirable personality traits, the computer e-mailed Lucky at his company e-mail address to inform him that no further action would be taken on his application.

Imagine the employment that could have been prevented had personality profiles been in use when Lucky first applied twenty-five years ago.

Think of the profits, the market-share so cavalierly and ignorantly thrown away. They coulda been a contender. Sigh.

The same corporate America that brought you the Chevrolet Vega and Coke II has decided the personality profile is its latest panacea. Could someone cue Public Enemy's Don't Believe the Hype?

To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of corporate America.

Awkward

It’s awkward, this unemployment thing.

I’m talking to my oldest friend on the phone. For the purpose of this post, I’ll call him Lucky. He’s the only person I know who’s spent a decade—twenty-five years, actually—with one company.

Don’t get the wrong idea—his isn’t a tidy ascent up the corporate ladder to the corner office. Lucky has been laboring in a strata with a far-lower profile.

The thing is, Lucky has avoided screwing up, pissing anyone off or likewise calling unwanted attention to himself for nearly a quarter-century. It is a remarkable achievement. He has perfected the art of workplace camouflage.

He was smart-enough to pick a company that has never been the object of a hostile takeover, and a job that has never been determined by a financial analyst to be a profit-sucking hole.

He has successfully avoided the employment contractions that have become a fact of life for virtually every other person I know. In 2010, when fifty-something white males bear a disproportionate share of America’s job loss, Lucky has a job.

But judging by his phone calls of the past eight or nine months, he is convinced this will soon not be the case. Faced with sales goals for the first time in his work life, he is struggling.

Yet every time the guillotine is set to fall, there is a store-wide sale. Or a homeowner in need of a custom-made bedroom set. Only RNC Chairman Michael Steele has dodged more bullets.

If the twin pressures of a weak economy and working in the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately arena of sales aren’t enough, Lucky is also in the midst of a full-blown mid-life crisis. “What have I done with my life?” he asks.

I assure him there will be no statues of me in municipal parks, either.

As best I can, I caution him that 2010 isn’t the year to embark on a journey of self-discovery. I tell him 2010 is all about the survival. I can hear him straining against the newly-understood confines of his life.

The conversation then circles back to other things, like June’s unmet sales goals.

I confirm for Lucky that if his managers, coaches and supervisors really wanted him gone, he’d be gone. They would have waited by the door at the close of business June 30th and requested his name tag and work ID.

Lucky suddenly realizes he’s doing Chicken Little for someone for whom the sky has already fallen. “How are you doin’?”, he asks.

I give him the short answer and attempt to kid.

“There’s no way you’re going to be fired. I’m putting up a life-size cut-out of you and I’m going to rub its head every time I send out a resume. You’re Teflon Dude. Nothing sticks!”

My jealousy is showing. Friends aren’t supposed to be jealous of their friend’s lack of unemployment, are they? I have farted in an elevator.

I take a hard right and steer the conversation towards sports. “You think the Bulls are going to sign LeBron?” We then take the obligatory digs at each other’s favorite baseball team.

And so it goes until we simultaneously notice the time.

Like I said, awkward.

This, That and the Other Thing

I don’t remember my dreams. Apart from providing a haunting metaphor, it’s also true. I could be in bed scaling the summit of sexual ecstasy with Megan Fox and I wouldn’t recall it. It’s sleep-induced amnesia.

But last night was different. Not surprisingly, I dreamt of work. I was in a meeting room, seated at a conference table. I was new to the company. The air was thick with stress. Every time the faceless leader said something, a different co-worker leaned over and whispered something bitter and contradictory in my ear.

The meeting was grid-locked. The harder management pressed for resolution, the more staunch the employee opposition. Yet when the leader called for a vote, the vote was unanimous. It was disturbing; I felt trapped by the employee’s public agreement and their private dissent.

It's the usual propaganda about speaking freely and the unwritten rules about never, ever doing so. Work in a nutshell. A head-on collision of colliding contradictions.

Then there’s the Christmas Day terrorist fiasco over Detroit. Republicans have seized it as another opportunity to plant the seeds of fear in our always-receptive soil. Democrats can only issue a wobbly, off-target response about it being proof that ‘the system works’.

If you say so.

Lost in the fumbling and the fear-mongering is the fact the kid didn’t board the plane in the United States! But by all means, let’s re-invent the wheel. When we’re done running around shrieking, I mean.

I’m in complete agreement with a recent Time magazine cover story calling this the worst decade ever. It certainly is the worst I’ve experienced. I’ll be the first in line to give this decade (and this year) a good, hard kick in the ass tonight. Good fucking riddance!

And Happy fucking New Year's to you all. We need it.

Giving Thanks

This is what it’s like. In a desperate attempt to extract yourself from the Land of Entrapment (a.k.a the Land of Enchantment) and move to a state with an actual economy, you drain your bank account. Every single penny.

Unfortunately, you do this just as the nation's economy is getting bent over the couch by Wall Street. The entire country becomes the place you're trying to leave.

Every day you get out of bed, you fall further into debt. Every bite of food, every watt of electricity, every drop of gas consumes a non-renewable resource called cash.

It gnaws at you. It infests your sleep.

You once enjoyed the luxury of being self-supporting. But that requires a job. You wonder why you get headaches every day. And you wonder how long before the stress and the strain and the mounting hopelessness splits you and your girlfriend.

There isn’t any government assistance. You’ve got a dried-up carcass of an IRA that, seven years after 9-11, still isn’t worth now what it was then. But that won’t stop the government from snatching a third should you decide to cash it in for impulse items like food, gas and rent.

Or from finding hundreds of billions of dollars for the vermin who flushed us down the toilet in the first place.

You mull over the fact that because you have an IRA that wouldn’t cover an appendectomy, you’re too well-off for food stamps. You attempt to reconcile this with the fact that you have given-up taking pictures because you can’t afford to develop them.

You haven't gone to a movie in a year and-a-half. But the government says you’re rolling in it.

You make a note of it.

You haven’t held a job in over a year, unless you count the two-months you spent in a hell-hole known as the Van Ru Credit Corporation. Fifty-percent of the employees don’t see their three-month anniversary because the training isn’t worth the shit up your ass.

If that's not enough, your supervisor is delusional.

Joyce Tillis sees herself as the Oprah Winfrey of the collections world, and will lead her team of inner-city African-American women not just to meetings, but to life-changing empowerment. She will then receive national exposure and a talk show of her very own.

There are just two problems: you're white. And you have a penis.

When she’s asked what’s wrong with this picture, the answer is you. You’re the speck of plaster the paint didn’t cover. She humiliates you. Lies about you. Makes no effort whatsoever to conceal her resentment of you.

She accuses you of stealing another agent’s call, and becomes apoplectic when you deny it. She threatens to run a report. You suppress the urge to tell her you hope she runs reports better than she does teams.

When it becomes clear you are innocent of all charges, it goes without saying the bitch doesn’t have the balls to apologize.

On the other occasion you impress decision-makers, you have a job offer withdrawn because after receiving two, you inexplicably choose the permanent one over the temporary one.

You’re not some poor, dumb fuck trying to stay dry in the sewer-bound torrent of 2009. No. You’re a sneaky, manipulative con-artist who pulled a fast one on the company and needs to be removed before you spread, virus-like, throughout the entire chain.

At least that’s what Laurie Colson, the manager who low-balled you with the offer of temporary employment, says when her inflamed ego can't bear the indignity of seeing you work for a competing Half-Price Books store.

Your continued employment is an affront to her self-perception as a savvy, experienced manager.

The remaining companies who express an interest in you are the backbone of newspapers and job sites everywhere because their openings are permanent. The only way they could retain an employee is to dress them in a straitjacket and lock them in a burial vault.

In an act of transformation Dr. Phil would appreciate, employees in these jobs morph into Harry Houdini with alarming regularity.

You’re over or under-qualified for everything. Apply for menial jobs with a college degree and employers assume you’ll be bored and unhappy.

Go up market and there’s invariably some twenty-three year-old with a master’s degree, fifteen-year’s experience and every one of the one-hundred fifty-eight characteristics the ideal candidate should possess.

This includes setting-up and collapsing a Mongolian yurt in under ten-minutes.

Which isn't to suggest business is unreasonable. Far from it.

You recall an article from the Wall Street Journal titled "Only the Employed Need Apply" which attempts to explain business's belief that only the employed deserve consideration. The thinking is that those still employed are a strain of super-employee, impervious to the cutbacks, layoffs and rampant downsizing so many of the rest of us have fallen prey to.

Despite the fact that 60% of jobs are currently found through networking, business insists the time-honored maxim of it's not what you know, it's who you know is untrue. That those drawing paychecks aren't just friends, pals and buddies.

This is very different from performance-based employment. This is also very different from being good at what you do.

But then, what do you know? You forget that in America, intelligence is measured in dollars.

And you're broke.

Confronted with your six-billionth attribute inventory, you want to retch. That these are gateways to mansions in Florida for the slicks who sell them seems invisible to every HR department in the country.

You want to get this straight: no business using them has ever had to fire a single, solitary employee, because every hire was a perfect fit. Is that correct? Because you know differently.

Then you remember the expression “Monkey see, monkey do” was inspired by the business world. And if it wasn’t, it should have.

If America’s corporate managers aren’t the most-obedient bandwagon-jumpers in existence, you're too big to fail. If personality profiles are this year’s model, you can bet the thirty-five incher in the living room that business will be the first in line and want one in every color.

While applying at the local supermarket, you answer one-hundred eighty questions about your moods and self-esteem and whether feelings are important in the workplace. About how strongly you believe in rules and hierarchies for a minimum wage, part-time job placing boxes of cereal on a shelf.

No health insurance, no benefits, no vacation.

Just one-hundred eighty questions bent on finding out how hard you’ll squeeze your eyes shut and pretend the shit you’re being served is caviar. And that the piss you're drinking is champagne. One-hundred eighty questions bent on finding out how desperate you really are and just how much you'll take.

You’re a fucking circus dog. Beg. Roll-over. Sit.

Afterwards, you visit the supermarket you applied to and buy a newspaper. The cashier is able to wordlessly express a multitude of thoughts and emotions. Namely, that she'd rather be the subject of a televised gynecological exam than ring-up you and your goddamned paper.

She snatches the dollar bill and pounds the register keys. She accuses you of wanting a bag. The register drawer springs open. You say you don’t. She slams the drawer shut, rips the receipt from the printer and hands you your change in an angry blur.

Before the quarter hits your pocket, she’s reaching for the next customer's purchases. It couldn’t be more clear you’re in her way.

You wonder how she answered the questions about moods and leaving problems at home and not just meeting, but exceeding customer expectations.

Yeah, you wonder.