While writing about the benefits of working for The Man even when you are self-employed, Brian Lee at Genuis Types puts into words an opinion I have held dear:

Working for The Man and not needing his money is a whole different story. You’re doing him a favor. You’re not afraid of being fired. Your confidence shines through and tends to get you what you want.

That’s golden stuff right there.

When you need your job, and the pay or insurance or benefits it provides, your entire experience becomes colored by that fact. The job becomes “the daily grind”. You do your work sort of grudgingly, as if everything is asking more of you than you want to do. You work late only because of deadlines. And you don’t do the little extra things that allow you to learn cool new stuff, or work on exciting projects. It becomes a rut.

Oh, but how different it is when you don’t need your job. When you have the comfort of knowing you’d be just fine without that job, you have confidence. You take the job because you want it. You stay only because you like it. You stay late only when you’re doing something really cool and you just don’t want to leave yet. You’re willing to take risks and try new things. And you soak up every new learning experience that comes your way.

You don’t have to be rich to reach this point, you only have to make smart decisions and be financially sound. Even while I am still working at paying off the last of my debt and being truly debt free, I also have a comfortable savings to hold me in emergencies, and should that turn out to be not enough, I can also liquidate some investments if it ever became necessary. I’ve never had to do it, but just knowing that I have those options gives me the confidence to be myself wherever I go, rather than become a part of the machine.

The difference it makes in life is huge. Speaking for myself, I am currently in a job that I love, working for a company that is fun and innovative. I am surrounded by interesting, intelligent people and I have opportunities to try new things and learn new things all the time. And best of all, I know that my voice is heard. These are the benefits of taking a position because I wanted it, rather than because I needed it.

I’m a highly skilled person, and I have a relatively desirable skill set, so I tend to get a lot of phone calls and a lot of emails from IT recruiters… and there’s something that’s been bugging me for a while now.

If I’m looking for a job — and why else would you be contacting me if that’s not your assumption? — then it stands to reason that I’m going to be most interested in what fucking jobs you might be able to offer me. ¿N’est-çe pas? Yet for some reason, these people always send a form-letter email, obviously hand-crafted by some PR lunatic from a planet where the sun never sets, that tells me two sentences about the job and two pages about the recruiter!

For example:

Hello Randall,
I am a recruiter with Asshole, Inc. Asshole is a Fortune 1000 company with over 20 years of experience in the staffing industry. We offer a choice of opportunities that will utilize your experience within some of the world’s top companies. With the latest resources, salary comparisons, interview coaching, and resume preparation, we’ll help you find the position you’ve always wanted!

I have a developer position available in Armpit, US. It is a 6-month contract-to-hire for a Java developer. Let me know if you’re interested.

We continuously open doors to top quality positions for professionals with your skills. We provide our candidates with exceptional service and treat individuals with personal respect. Asshole is the employer of choice for many of the most qualified professionals in your industry.

Call or e-mail me today to learn about the immediate opportunities listed above or many others. Or, if you know someone that would be the RIGHT match for Asshole, please feel free to forward this e-mail.

Sincerely,
Fred Flintstone
Senior Staffing Specialist
Asshole, Inc

So is it just me, or does it look like the second paragraph was written by someone else and inserted later? Of course it does, because it was! The PR department took a big shit on a piece of paper, planted tulips in it, and handed it to the management who said “yes, we’ll use this!” Then, the one technical person in the office built it into the email program so the recruiters could merge the job description into the document and send it. Unfortunately, I have to read that whole thing just to find out that there’s a Java job available in Armpit, USA.

News flash: There are Java jobs available in every fucking city in the U.S. of A. If I’m not going to be working for Asshole IT Staffing, Inc, then I really don’t care about your company. I’m not impressed by terms like “Fortune 1000” and “over 20 years”. And who decided that there could be senior staffing specialists? You’re a phone jockey. A glorified salesman. Stop posturing.

I want to know about the place in the Armpit of the US. I want to know if I’ll be sitting in a tire factory smelling molten polybutadiene while writing software to track suicide attempts in the plant, or if I’ll have a comfortable, air-conditioned office in a financial center where I’ll write accounting software. I want to know if they wear suits and ties, or bibs and flanels. I want to know if there’s a real, honest-to-god owner and president, or if there are just a bunch of disenfranchised stockholders and a self-important board of directors.

Is it really asking that much?

Tags: rant, staffing, jobs

…popcorn will be banned from office buildings. In fact, there will be no microwaves in any area where people have to work and smell that nasty food some fat-ass wants to shovel into their mouth. Try a slim fast, they’re good for you and I don’t have to smell it.

Every week begins with a team meeting in one of the small, poorly ventillated conference rooms at the end of the hall. Today, like every Monday before it, my reminder popped up on screen at the specified time, and I joined my four coworkers in the tiny room.

Like every other day, I found the monotone voices of my four fellow nerds gently lulling me into a sleep-like state. Body odors stagnate in the air as we all try to pretend not to smell them. Like clockwork, I found myself gazing around the room for something — anything — to keep my attention so I wouldn’t commit career suicide by falling asleep in front of my boss while he’s talking.

And then suddenly, there it was.

As I glanced just below the table, I could see that the coworker to my right — let’s call him Bill — had apparently stepped in dog shit. A thick, brown, caked-on mess, with bits of dead grass smashed into it, clung to the bottom of his ancient shoe, telling me that it wasn’t body odor I was smelling — at least not today.

Sufficiently distracted, my drowsiness gave way. Soon enough, it would turn to panic. As Bill crossed his legs, the offending excrement started to hang perilously close to my $80 Calvin Klein dress pants. With catlike dexterity I slid back in my chair, my leg (and pants) barely ducking under the approaching dog shit.

Then, as if I wasn’t already being tortured enough, this sadist started to shake his foot. What a time for restless leg syndrome to pay a visit. He was practically waving dog shit under my nose like a freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookie!

I had to readjust in my seat and fight off the urge to vomit. When I did, I coughed, and Bill must have thought that was a subtle hint because he saw me coughing and looking at his shoe. So he looked and saw the shit on his shoe.

At this point, the smell is making me light-headed and the proximity is making me downright nauseous, but nothing could prepare me for Bill reaching down with his bare hand and scraping the dog shit off of his shoe. Then, for lack of a place to discard it, he sat through the remainder of the meeting holding this dog shit in his hand!

I don’t know what the project status is, and I honestly can’t say that I remember much of what was said in the meeting. All I can be sure of is that I’ll probably wake up tonight with nightmares about what he touched with those hands before finally washing them.