Jobs Are Overrated
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006I’m looking for a new job. After seven years of my loyal service and/or web-surfing, the corporation eliminated my position. 
I wasn’t unhappy about it. I had already decided that it was time to move on, and if they wanted to finance my job search with a severance package (a bribe the corporation gives a departing employee so he won’t swing by later with an assault rifle and 2,000 rounds of armor-piercing ammo), then so much the better.
The only problem is that every job I’m qualified for appears to involve, well, work. I know – I should be a good little American and happily work 80 hours a week, using my spare time to finish the basement and landscape the yard. But I’ve done a lot of work over the years, and I think it’s overrated.
People have been working since the dawn of history. Probably earlier, in fact, because even back then, there was probably a workaholic caveman who got to work while it was still dark. At first, everyone had the same job, gathering or hunting for food. People probably didn’t even think of it as work. It was just something you had to do in order to eat. Like picking a restaurant, nowadays. When enough food had been gathered, and everyone had eaten, then they just sat around the cave, drawing pictures on the walls and making tools.
Then someone had an idea. He realized that he liked making things more than he liked hunting and gathering, and it occurred to him that if someone else were willing to gather enough food for two people, he could make enough tools for two people, and both of them would be happier. “Hey, Thag. You know how much I hate gathering food, right? How about you gather enough nuts and berries for both of us, and I’ll give you this Ford Taurus.” And that was how the used-car-salesman job was invented. It is also interesting to note that the resale value of Fords is exactly the same.
Now here we are, twenty thousand years later, and we have so many different kinds of jobs that hardly anyone remembers that most of them are desperate attempts to avoid having to gather, grow or hunt your own food. Unless you’re a farmer, in which case you’ve made very little progress. Sorry.
In the past, you at least had the ritual of receiving and depositing a paycheck, and paying the bills, to remind you why you work. Now there’s direct deposit. And automatic bill-pay. You have to remind yourself that the reason you sit in a little box with a desk and drink eight hours of coffee, five days a week, is not because you are an incredibly dull person, but because if you don’t the bank will take your house. Your dullness is an unfortunate side-effect.
What scares me about losing my job is not that I won’t find another job like the one I had. It’s that I will. When I started with the company, my job didn’t pay very well, but it made sense. There was an obvious, logical connection between the work I performed and the successful operation of the company. After years of moving upwards in a company that frequently reorganized, refocused and restructured, any such connection eventually was lured into a dark conference room and tortured to death. I couldn’t have described my job without using a lot of made up words and acronyms, and I couldn’t have told you how it helped the corporation without using a shovel.
One time, a financial analyst asked me to estimate the number of hours expended for a particular project. I calculated, to my dismay, that I had spent 542 hours cajoling, begging and threatening three other people into performing 84 hours of actual labor that would have taken me 40 hours to complete had I been allowed to do it all myself. And that doesn’t include the 7.3 hours of drinking it took me to get over the whole affair.
Until I’m able to figure out how to get paid for doing absolutely no work at all, such as by working for the federal government*, I am going to try to find a job that provides me a decent paycheck, good benefits, and the satisfaction of knowing that I’m actually producing something valuable. And then I’m going to win the lottery, photograph the Yeti, and develop a weight-loss plan which doesn’t require eating less or exercising.
* If you’re a hiring manager for the federal government, please note that this statement does not reflect my actual view of the federal government or any of its parts, and was, in fact, almost certainly inserted by evil hackers. Please hire me.
It’s warm, and Spring is just getting started here in Denver. We didn’t get a Winter this year, just an extra three months of Fall. I don’t mind one bit. Put a half-inch of snow or ice on the road and my 30-year-old BMW handles like a 2,000-lb, greased water balloon.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper today announced that the state capitol building had been seized by the City and County of Denver and would be converted to lofts. “The Capitol was one of the few old buildings in Denver that hadn’t yet been converted to lofts,” said Hickenlooper. “It was really only a matter of time.”
Therefore, I hereby declare November to be … drum roll, please … Don’t Leave Your Bodily Fluids On The Damn Toilet Seat Awareness Month. I’ve even designed a rubber bracelet for everyone to wear. It symbolizes how, if we band together, we can overcome. I hope you’ll choose to wear one. If I sell enough of them, I’ll buy a porta-potty for my cubicle.
Ok. I’ll admit. I’ve done it once or twice. But both times I was being chased by corporate security, and I still grieve for what I was forced to do.