Originally Posted: 2007-11-02 13:02 (no longer live)
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To Olympia Employers

Dear Olympia Employers:

I am writing this on behalf of myself and all other frustrated male job-seekers in the Olympia area. I am going to delineate a few crucial points that you need to know before you talk to another potential new employee.

  1. I understand and practice the philosophy of punctuality - that is why I was on time for the interview and you weren't. You should certainly stress the urgency of punctuality, but should not:

    1. Take more than ten minutes to detail this concept, or
    2. Take more than ten minutes explaining how you really don't expect anyone other than yourself and your other management staff to be capable of understanding its importance. If you genuinely believed this you wouldn't be wasting so much time expounding upon it.
  2. If, though some amazing chance, you actually hire me, please get it through your head now that I owe you no favors. You pay me to do something unpleasant and boring, and I do it promptly with a smile while saying ``Sure thing!''. Our mutual obligations to each other end there. I am not here to provide advice for fixing your home computer, picking up your laundry, doing your telephone calls, shopping for muffins for your kid's school presentation, or whatever overprivileged bullcrap you've decided is beneath you today. I do not care about you, nor can you ever pay me enough to. As this is an opinion you're more than happy to express towards me, I thought it might be good for your mental health to consider it as applied to you.
  3. I do not regard you as an amazing, fascinating, social and business success, regardless of our respective social positions, and therefore it is not an honor to be in your company. If you aren't going to let me do the work you pay me for, you hovering pointlessly over the top of me discussing what Mary said last weekend is pointless, wasteful, and annoying. If I choose to quit because of your intolerable personality kindly refrain from acting surprised or hurt - as has already been stated, we both know we both don't care. Save your acting efforts for the Academy, or for your own boss when you're attempting to poorly rationalize unusually high employee turnover.
  4. Lecturing me about time management when you're an hour late and about to leave for another hour to acquire pre-meeting donuts is simply moronic. Do it and know as a concrete reality that we're pissing in your coffee. You don't pay us enough to be that openly hypocritical. Do it, say, three times really openly and I walk with a little happy smile on my face.
  5. Get it through your head that neither I nor anyone else believes that you are in any way a superior being due to your position. Power and wealth in our society are beautifully ephemeral - we all know that due to a single report, an awkward balance sheet, or the president's son nicking the retirement accounts and going to Cancun, that you can be applying for work managing 7-11's tomorrow, just like me. You are on top right now - therefore, soon, you won't, statistically speaking. So simply watch your attitude and your mouth, as the underlings you are lecturing are actually your peers.
  6. Leave your gadgets alone when you're talking to me. If you're truly that vitally important, then it's in your best interests to state what's on your mind in a crisp, clear, articulate fashion and fuck off as fast as possible - then you can answer your phone or play with your Blackberry or look at your porn on your iPhone, whatever. Just go away while you do it, as I'm not paid to admire your toys, nor do I care.
  7. Make the standard statement about discouraging web-surfing at work, and then shut your mouth and move on. I understand why you have to say it. I also understand that I was a network admin for the 90's, and know better than anyone exactly how the upper echelon amuses itself on its computers when no one's looking. Furthermore, I'm bright enough to make friends and buy lunch for an IT intern who will gossip with me about what they've spotted, as they always do. So you let me view Craigslist on my lunch hour, and in return we won't discuss in any way those images you took down in Tijuana that are probably skating on the ragged edge of legality, which you've been storing on the company server and printing out at night on the high-quality laser printer with the glossy white paper with the high clay content. You're not fooling anyone, jackass. Move on with your spiel, and if you manage to get through it without blushing too much we'll both regard it as a win.
  8. Since I am a man, the women that interview / work with me need to stop oscillating wildly betwen acting cute and flirty (when they want something), or alternately icily feminist (when they wish to crush visible maleness that threatens them). I am unimpressed and unmoved by either maneuver - I have babysat many young aged-three-to-six sister-siblings and recognize feminine juvenile passive-aggressiveness when I see it. Save your bipolar bullshit for meetings where you have an audience, and I can make an excuse and be absent.

    1. When a woman at work, particularly a boss, uses that fake squeaky-little-girl voice to whine and manipulate, I want to knock them unconcious with a bound ream of copier paper. I won't do it, and never have. But I thought you should know.
    2. When a lesbian at work, partiuclarly a boss, uses that fake ``masculine'' growling strangled Bart Simpson voice to wave their phantom penis, I have a similar feeling, one that's a lot harder to resist. You should know that too.
    3. Both of the above statements go triple for the goddamned thirty-something neo-jocks who keep trying to pretend they aren't fathers with mortgages while using that ``Dude'' voice. You're wearing a tie. Let's drop the illusion that you went to Burning Man last year.
  9. Feminists: Just fucking knock it off. Whether you privately regard me as subhuman or not, wipe that expression of permanent, bitter condescension off your withered face. If I even looked at you in passing at the grocery story the way you do, you would call the police for feeling ``threatened'' before I could say 'Andrea Dworkin'. While you are interviewing me, we are going to talk under the pretense that you do not live at the top of a mile-high ivory tower. That means that you will make eye contact, smile, use complete sentences, standard polite honorifics (``please'', ``thank you''), refrain from the standard insulting phrases (``the male of the species''), choke down the endless traditional nagging male-hating social commentary, and behave as you would have the hot Asian intern chick behave towards you when you two take the company car and go out for a two-hour lunch. If you don't, I have no compunction about walking out of the interview in the middle of your sentence. After all, as you've reassured us on many occasions, there are plenty of jobs digging ditches out there. Why should I extend to you courtesy you have no understanding of and no mechanism of reciprocating?
  10. When I am in trouble, written up, or fired, by all means do what you need to do with gusto, but don't threaten me. As an employee, I already have come to terms with the idea that you regard yourself as above me. However, you don't pay me enough to voice judgements about my marriage, religion, home life, family, social & political views, dress, appearance, or personality aside from those aspects that are directly the cause of my firing. Call me into your office, say your piece in three sentences, and have me escorted out. Do any more than that to masturbate your ego and I will do my best to see how much phlegm I can spontaneously expectorate upon your hideous overexpensive silk shirt. Save your phantom penis-waving for some Evergreen college grad who's too stupid and inexperienced to know any better. You have never paid me or any employee enough to have the privilege of having a temper tantrum at us to make yourself feel better. We're workers, not agony aunts. You need to scream, go play raquetball or take it out on your au pair.
  11. Promote whoever you like, whenever you like, using any specious logic you like - I'll be a good boy and keep on pluggin'. However, you do not pay me enough to require me to like or approve of it. If you promote someone over me and I'm disappointed, I'm going to be disappointed. You have no right whatsoever to expect me to be otherwise. If you don't like it, fire me and get someone else who's more marshmallowy for your needs. What kind of employer is so weak and cowardly that they require their employee's hearts and minds to adhere to their will? Is the work done, and well? Great, then cram it, Big Brother, we've got units to move.
  12. Yell at me for anything you like, provided you're not committing exactly the same fault in exactly the same way at the exact same time - or I walk. Yes, my ego can take that. No, you're not going to lecture me for inappropriate computer usage when I know you have Web pages with huge beautiful black asses sitting right on your screen. Hypocrisy of that blatant level requires nothing more than a calm, serene ``fuck you'' and a discreet, quick collection of personal belongings, followed by exit. If you find this unreasonable, you are a waste of life as a human being and as an economic force in the business world. Good business-level hypocrisy requires more cleverness and subtlety than you're capable of exhibiting.
  13. I know that in this nepotistic town that your friends and family are probably either

    1. Very, very, very white Christian people who drive trucks and are ex-military and have cowboy hats and secretly hold beliefs that are a weird mix of Calvinism and Aryan Nation, or
    2. Very, very, very white crusty neohippies who drive Mommy's used Lexus and smoke pot and smell bad while constantly critiquing all efforts of all others in a perfect storm of limp-dicked estrogenic offensensitivity.
    3. As a result, all of you are only trying to hire members of your tribe. I am not of either of your tribe, as in non-employment life I loathe both of you. If either one of you were the progressive, forward-thinking genuises you portray yourselves to be, why then do both of you keep trying to categorize me on the other side?
    4. Even if such a categorization attempt were rational or feasible, why on earth are both of you idiots so BAD at it? You ask your clever leading questions to try and learn my religion and politics, and whatever answer you like it isn't zealous enough. Why are you even wasting my fucking time? Just call your half-brother Earl and be done with it, and quit wasting honest people's valuable time.
  14. My suggestion is that you treat me with the direct precision, efficiency, straightforwardness, and lack of emotion you expect from me - in return, I will work hard, be honest, do what I'm told, and keep my mouth shut with equal neurological indifference.
  15. You won't do this, of course, because then where would your sense of unwarranted self-importance come from, Baby Boomer?
  16. All this being stated, I look forward to an efficient, effective, direct, productive experience working with you.
  17. I do not expect it, but I do look forward to it, as despite your best efforts my optimism isn't quite crushed.
Sincerely,

A Potential Employee

post id: 467092058