LUDIC LOG

I'm looking for a job.

That is, I've officially moved from the "perhaps someone will show up on my doorstep with an interesting job" phase of the situations-wanted game to the "time to crawl on my hands and knees and beg the Man for work" phase. Or, to be more direct, I have gone from dating to prostitution.

Now is not the time for another rant about the evils of employment (although, really, isn't any time a good time for a rant about the evils of employment?), nor will I lament my lack of talent, skill, drive, ambition or any of the rest of that stuff that employers claim to value. It's my own fault I don't have those things, not Mr. or Ms. Theoretical Personnel Director. I'm not even here to complain about the absolute necessity of selling yourself like a common trull to anyone with cash money to throw on the bed afterwards; in publicity-driven America, even successful artistic types have to shill on TV shows. We like Jasper Johns' pictures and all, but who can forget his cameo on "The Simpsons"?

The thing that exhausts me about job-hunting is the pretense. It's been noted that society can only exist on a solid foundation of necessary lies, and I have no reason to disagree with that; it's only a matter of more or less tolerable lies. I'm fine with the polite "no, you're not a fat smelly loser" lies; I can tolerate the comforting "it's the principle of the thing" lies; I don't really care for the "we have to do this even though no one really likes it" lies, but there doesn't seem to be much I can do about them, so okay. But the thing that makes all such deceptions tolerable is that they run both ways. They allow for pleasantly scented bullshit on both sides that allows us to live with ourselves after the lying is done. The girl says "I'm not really looking for a boyfriend right now", and the guy says "it wouldn't have worked out between us anyway"; the teacher says "anyone can be a success in this country if they just work hard enough" and the student says "oh, if only I had the time to work on this paper"; the president says "I'm doing this for the good of the country" and the populace says "he knows best; after all, we elected him". Both parties are lying -- to themselves and to everyone else -- but both go away with a vague satisfaction that they're the ones benefitting from the lie.

In the working man's game, things aren't so even-handed. When I sit in front of that desk, I'm telling all sorts of lies: I have a college degree. I don't have a spotty employment history. I enjoy wearing this suit and tie. I would consider making PowerPoint presentations about why your product is marginally better than your competitor's product a very good use of my time and intelligence. I actually give two flying fish fucks about you and your whole worthless company or any aspect of it other than its utility at keeping my creditors at bay. All these lies and dozens more do I tell at any job interview you care to dream up, and if I must, I must.

What galls is that the employer doesn't have to lie about anything. It's a situation in which the power dynamic of a capitalist society is utterly naked; the interpersonal niceties are stripped away and they have all the leverage. They don't care, and the unusal part -- the part that cuts, that differentiates itself from even the basest stuck-next-to-you-on-a-Greyhound-trip social encounter -- is that they don't even have to pretend to care. They've got you over a barrel, and they know it.

Look at it this way: I don't care about their company, their branding strategy, their market niche, their cross-promotional opportunities, or their mission statement; I just want to do my job, get my check and go the hell home. Likewise, they don't care about which Iron Man armor was the best, what I think of Jacques Derrida's exhumations of Marxism, my analysis of sci-fi references in the lyrics of MC Chris, what the weed I smoked last night was laced with, or the influence of the descriptive geography of Vollman on the novel I'm trying to write; they just want me to show up, do my job and go away. But since they're the ones in control, they make me lie about the stuff I don't care about, without having the good taste to lie themselves about the things they don't care about.

I realize it's a lot to ask from the Man; He's so used to getting things His way that people have neglected to tell Him what an asshole He is sometimes. All I'm saying, really, is this: if you're going to spit, fine. Then spit. Just try not to spit in my face.