I Hope My Future Boss Isn't Reading This
The Internet is truly an amazing invention -- right up there with the automobile, which helped us realize our dreams of spreading far away from each other; and the sick day, which enables me to get paid for staying home and drinking White Russians. But it can also be a tool that operates against us, with identity thieves and government agents lurking in the shadows.
The worst part about the Internet, though, is that it has enabled a new era in boss douchebaggery and job interviewer faux superiority. Now, with the help of Google, your future employer can look you up, and actually decide to not hire you based on your past self.
Does anybody realize the implications of this? Now, depending on how old you are, your 14 year-old self has to interview for the job right along with your embarrassed 22 year-old self, who has to sheepishly explain what you meant when you said on your friend's blog that all fat people are fucking fatasses who deserve to be put through a meat grinder. I don't know if you know this, but there's a great deal of fat people in America today. The chances of you getting a fat guy as your job interviewer are pretty high.
Sure, I have an okay job now doing something or other at some office, but who knows how long that will last? Especially if I keep writing stuff like this when I should be working! Before you know it, I could be out on the street, needing to get a job because of the influence of the Internet got me ejected from my old one, and that same Internet would also stand between me and a new job. Sometimes I just want to eschew all technology in favor of life in Nebraska.
And suppose I do need to look for a new job? Would my future boss find this and read it? Could he really hold it against me that I have a penchant for writing down my thoughts and occasional drug-related exploits in a public forum? Well, what the hell did he do when he was younger -- eat rainbows and crap children? I have news for you, future boss: I've tried to turn a rainbow into a mind-altering substance, and it doesn't work, let alone cause you to defecate children. It's just light. Maybe if I hadn't been on acid at the time, I would've realized that.
It didn't used to be this way. I'm not one to long for living in the past, but before the advent of the Internet, getting a job was a three step process: 1.) You applied for the job. 2.) You went in for the interview. 3.) If you weren't strange-looking or a black guy or something, you got the job. Doesn't this simplicity sound appealing now, when we have to worry about the time that we might have made a vague death threat against the President in that one leftist forum, but only to look cool in front of this one communist chick who looked hot in her profile picture? Something's not right here. Something went wrong with our society somewhere along the way, and now guys like me are paying the price of this horribly convenient existence.
I guess the only answer is to be work-oriented your entire life, or at least beginning around age three or four. You have to realize that the ultimate point of our existence is to get hired somewhere, and that writing about the time you drove your car behind your garage to evade the cop trying to flag you down for speeding -- and, in due time, driving drunk and without a license and with cocaine on the seat -- is only going to hurt your chances of fulfilling that existence. That's not good for the Company. Corporate America has a sterling reputation to live up to, and they don't need your reckless teen behavior mucking it up.
So, future boss, I hope you'll consider me for the position despite my well-documented shortcomings. And future self, please put aside some money now, so that when I get to where you are I'll have some spending cash for a little dope.
