I don't know how many of you are on the hunt for a job. I'll say I am, but the truth is I am half-heartedly engaged in the process. It's not that I don't want to work, it's just that I don't really want a job. If I, or anyone, is required to perform such a job, perhaps there should be some recompense in less hours? I mean, robots can do our work anyway.
Recently I got the chance to speak to my friend Linda, who is about my fathers age, about work. Labor. Her generation, and therefore my fathers, prided themselves on work. A good job, in a factory, marked your status in the community.
Even Norman Rockwell would find this quaint. A modern jaded hipster would find this the worst, hopeless conceit of a poor imagination. Not because we are afraid of work, but because the stable jobs are all low-wage unlivable jobs or high-stress paperwork jobs. Go on, read about the twenty hours staring at excel.
The truth is, the economy is sideways. The black-and-white Calvinistic, Austrian model of economics hasn't just been turned on it's ear, it's been kidnapped, gagged, and forced to inform people by the use of hoots, grunts, and interpretive dance.
Face it, the rules that applied back then simply don't anymore. Not in any meaningful way. Our parents, leaders, and corporate elite haven't informed us that the rules have changed. Partially from ignorance. But also, out of malice.
Job applications have certainly not changed for the better. They are, in all honestly, a hopeless bureaucracy,designed to inhibit, deter and prevent you from getting a job.
In my father's day, you could walk in, ask for a job, and get one, or told to get lost. And, if so rebuffed, you'd head down one door. "Hitting the pavement" was the euphemism for what you actually did. Now you apply on for Internet websites, press submit. Answer 400 questions about your personality. And though there are no right answers, clearly I answer them wrong because I never get a call back. i just send my application into the either.
And call on an application? They don't really do that anymore. They will call you.
Sure they will.
The worst so far, Qdoba. Do you really need to ask 300 questions. I go to Qdoba frequently, and the biggest question I have is: Can you find someone who can actually roll a borking burrito? fire the people who make those long personality tests, use that money to bus your burrito rollers to La Bamba for a day.
McDonald's was only slightly less aggravating. They ask a series of questions and you choose the question that most reflects your views. These are the same questions. For example
"I am a hard worker" vs "I like to watch butterflies fly into my bosses nose."
"OK" I clicked the former - though my boss has nose hairs you could land Apache gunships on.
"I am a lazy good-for-nothing slacker" vs "I eat baby dolphins because I hate life."
So now what? Do I contradict myself or do I make Jack-the-ripper look like a children's educator?
Sure, it's a bit of hyperbole, but it still aggravates me. What does any of this have to do with pressing burgers and dropping fries in hot oil?
I'll tell you what, I ain't no slacker. Baby dolphins be damned.
Sparkfire kindly posted this graphic. I know it's bogus when it talks about farmers. "No Job Hunt. No Career improvement."
Nonsense. Farmer is one of the most important jobs. The plight of the farmer was not one of improvement, it was about the poor economic and political policies. Yes, being a feudal serf might have sucked. But barring disaster, a skilled farmer lived quite a good life in the US.
And besides, in this hyper-corporate project-based, intern-serfdom world. Maybe a stable job with consistent pay is just the thing we need.
I tell you Zach Weiner is positively prophetic. I suspect he has a lot of Millennial friends less-than-employed.
We are reaching the existential crisis of the Job Market. On one hand, we have a a bunch of slack-jawed sociopaths babbling about "returns on investments", "10 percent improvement in process efficacy" and "item action productivity", on the other, we have an overabundance labor jobs (replaced by automation) and service jobs "not meant to be a living wage." On the third, yes, third hand, we have an ever-swelling, leviathan-like government bureaucracy that exists to leech off the low- and moderately-waged and make serfs of those at the bottom. And the fourth hand we have people who, by virtue of illness, disability, or plain orn'riness, refuse to have anything to do with this nonsense.
Yes, the current job market is basically a 4-armed tentacled monster. In my nightmares it has Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama's face, melded like a sick love child.
And it's not like the basic rules have changed. So why the horse and pony show?
The massive tentacled beast destroying or economic possibilities does have some vestigial arms - farmers (often automated), medical technicians (rapidly becoming educated button mashers), the arts. Things that were, or are, still valued for producing. But the system doesn't like those arms. Bankers making money on bailouts hate to hear that maybe the guy that grows pumpkins is doing more for the country. At least the farmer isn't giving money to people who hate the US.
At least you can become a plumber or tradesman, with years of schooling and byzantine apprenticeships.
The markets are being made to keep people out.
But that's another blog post (or two, if I talk about neo-cottage revolutions). I'm losing my point today. Forgive me.
If you are, or were, looking for a job in an old way, you are right-borked. Unless you know somebody. And I am not even kidding.
That McDonald's job? I have applied at McDonald's before. That specific McDonald's, for a soul-sucking mcjob that I can work around my desire to not actually do that job. Something that lets me pretend that I will be an artist some day.
They have ignored my application, but a caseworker of mine works with and knows the manager there. And he says he will hook me up.
Networking required for a "not a livable wage" job. This is madness. Absolute madness. Regulation and litigation have made companies terrified of just giving a job.
If I weren't already a little on the batshit side, this would be enough to make me so.
If you can't talk to people and hob knob, you might as well enjoy mopping floors. It's not like starting a business is much an option. Even in the blog post above, he needed way more money than he new. if you are in poverty, how are you going to manage that?
Remember when we were told to get a good job and not to be an artist? Remember that? I sure as hell do.
That was before Patreon and Kickstarter made fools of all of us, except the damn fools that followed their dreams. It's a new world, and prescient as I might have been, I was sure dumb on that account.
No comments:
Post a Comment