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.
- 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:
- Take more than ten minutes to detail this concept, or
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- I know that in this nepotistic town that your friends and family are
probably either
- 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
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- You won't do this, of course, because then where would your sense
of unwarranted self-importance come from, Baby Boomer?
- All this being stated, I look forward to an efficient, effective,
direct, productive experience working with you.
- 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