Must Have A Sincere Passion For Corporate Bullshit
I do not look for work when I have a job, no matter how much I dislike the job, because nothing in this world has ever had as negative or discouraging an effect on my spirits as reading job listings. An odor of desperate deceit rises from them. The gorge rises in my throat when, under the threat of destitution, I smell the stink of the weakening of my own resolve not to live a lie.
Just ask that I do the job. Do you have to demand that I care? Nothing provokes more loathing in me than the prospect that I will have to pretend to love. Not even prostitutes have to do that. Job listings demand that I become a prostitute, that I suck their disgusting engorged cock, and pretend to love it, while they pretend that I am sincere, in order not to suffer the scorn that acrues to the underemployed "slacker". I smell the stink of human resources personnel whose job is to make believe they live in a world where some job applicants sincerely give a damn about their company. That's a pretense too. Everything about a professional job listing screams "LIES FOR MONEY," lies going in both directions.
Why would anyone want to work for a particular company? Companies are intrinsically boring-- they function like antimatter to caring. When you are paid to do something, that means you're obligated to do it whether you really love it or not. Therefore love immediately becomes indistinguishable from the absence of love. Obligation is antimatter to desire, because whenever I become obligated, I can no longer detect whether my desire is still present.
You can take every single thing I love and make me hate it by putting it in a job listing that pretends I give a damn about making some faceless company happy. I'm a mammal, damn it; I respond emotionally to faces. Job interviews are actually worse for this reason, because lies face-to-face feel worse. HR personnel are forced to pretend to demand sincere passion for that which would require a soul replaced by clockwork. What kind of life experiences distort a human being into the ... creature ... described by professional job postings?
Comments
users on Jan. 7, 2007 7:50 PM
Not enjoying the job search?
paranthropus on Jan. 7, 2007 8:18 PM
Matt is a creative, intelligent person who is actively engaged with his friends and varied activities. Strange thing, though... one can easily imagine his words coming from the mouth of an elderly, decrepit, pitiful, homeless, penniless, jobless, friendless loner wandering the streets of Detroit.
So Matt, where do you picture yourself twenty years from now?
matt-arnold on Jan. 7, 2007 9:47 PM
I don't have such a picture.
paranthropus on Jan. 7, 2007 10:27 PM
Well, I crafted a long reply... but why bother.
Tlatoani's advice (below) is good. You are in no condition to go job hunting right now.
elizilla on Jan. 7, 2007 8:53 PM
It is possible to care about job stuff, you know. For instance, I am in tech support. I do get emotionally involved in the cases I work on, and I care whether I solve them or not. I like the customers and I really do want to help them.
Would I do this job for no money? No. I'm not a member of the leisure classes, so I have to do something for a living, and anfter a day spent doing something for money I wouldn't want to spend my free time fixing people's computers. But if someone were paying me to sit on my hands, and while I was at work these people asked for my help, I would totally help them, even if it meant the boss would be annoyed with me for not sitting on my hands the way I was supposed to. This is why I am no longer a security guard. :-)
avt-tor on Jan. 9, 2007 6:13 PM
Exactly. I work in tech support to help people do positive things. I care about the company I work for (which happens to be one of the twenty largest corporations in the US) because of our history of innovation and of helping organizations accomplish their goals; I take pride in my work and I care about the people I work with. Many of my co-workers have been able to establish families thanks to having a steady, worthwhile job; some of them have followed my example of going back to school and improving themselves, while others have followed my example of finding ways to be creative or otherwise self-actualizing.
If someone came in with the attitude that it was just a job and they only cared about the money, I wouldn't hire them. We pay okay, but the reward for the aggravation we have to deal with is the sense of accomplishment and the knowledge that we are helping people; the paycheck only pays for our time. Someone who doesn't believe that I'm doing the job in order to do good is not respecting who I am, and I don't need someone like that working for me.
I have interviewed many people who come in with a sense of entitlement that the world owes them a job. They are entitled somewhere else. About a third of our employees are people who worked for us, got better paying jobs elsewhere, and then came back to us when they found that working in companies where people only care about money are not the best jobs.
matt-arnold on Jan. 9, 2007 6:24 PM
All this is true, but the problem is what to do while waiting for this to become feasible. I feel frustrated because I do want to care, and am not yet in a place to be able to. Talent and interest in not enough to work in the field that one cares about; it requires qualifications such as education and experience. All my education and experience thus far has been in areas I want to leave. So during the interim of years in which I prepare (or try to) for my long-term plan, I have to take jobs I don't like in order to pay my bills.
I understand that the employers at those interim companies are not going to want to hear that, and I understand what motivates them. But I also feel frustration at the catch-22 that creates for me.
tlatoani on Jan. 7, 2007 8:54 PM
Serious suggestion: take a couple weeks off and do stuff you enjoy before beginning your job search. Maybe a month if you can afford it. Cool down a bit.
matt-arnold on Jan. 7, 2007 9:46 PM
Thanks. But I don't see how that would change it when I come back to it. Job hunting has been this way for me all my life, every single time, without exception. I've just got to go through with it, again; it won't get easier when the money runs out.
tlatoani on Jan. 8, 2007 3:21 AM
It is possible to care about doing a good job simply out of professional pride, regardless of any affection you may or may not have for your current employer. It's probably the dominant mode of operation among professionals, even if they do like their employer. Arguably, the definition of "professionalism" is having that attitude. So if you're saying "I can't care about a company," relax; they don't really want you to. They just want you to care about doing a good job, whatever your motivation is.
But if you are in fact saying "as soon as I commit to something, I'm just doing it because I promised to and I can't bring myself to care about it" -- and I honestly can't tell but your marriage comment seems to imply that -- then that's a different situation and I don't have any advice.
marahsk on Jan. 7, 2007 9:45 PM
And this is *before* the job search has made you jaded and cynical...
stormgren on Jan. 7, 2007 11:02 PM
I know that this is probably a sensitive topic for you, but hey, comments are for differences of opinion, right?
Why would anyone want to work for a particular company? Companies are intrinsically boring-- they function like antimatter to caring.
Depends on the company. If you'd said "large corporation", I'd agree with you. As for why, well, there's a couple of companies that I'd love to work for right about now, because doing so would further my knowledge, provide leverage in terms of non-tangibles, or because I know the management there would be great to work for. These tend to be small, agile, non-dysfunctional companies that actually give a damn about their employees exist. They're just damned rare, to boot.
It boils down to risk vs. reward, really.
When you are paid to do something, that means you're obligated to do it whether you really love it or not. Therefore love immediately becomes indistinguishable from the absence of love.
Well, granted, one must do what one has agreed to be compensated for in order to keep being compensated. I just don't see the logical leap here from that to love becoming indistinguishable from the absence of love of what one does.
Such a leap seems rather unlike you.
Personally, I'd write it as "Therefore, even if you hate it, you have to do it, until a better opportunity comes along, or you can alter the situation until it's tolerable again."
Love converting to hatred is why I left my last job to take a risk. I love what I do, and love what they were paying me to do. It was just that the environment was converting that love to hate through deceit and bullshit.
I'm now trying to start my own business and working a part-time contract for a school district, in a very positive environment, where I love what I do. It still feels like I'm on vacation. You know you've found somewhere good when you start getting the feeling that it's amazing that they're actually paying you to do this, when you'd normally do it for free.
Obligation is antimatter to desire, because whenever I become obligated, I can no longer detect whether my desire is still present.
And for that, I feel sad for you, that those two things are opposites in your mind. Obligation is obligation, desire is desire. I have many obligations that I like to do, nay, even *want* to do, but I also have many that I do not have any interest in wanting to do whatsoever. But one generally, in my opinion, should have an interest in any task. Assuming this extends to your volunteer commitments, given that helping run conventions at the level you do tends to generate certain obligations, how is it you have desire to do anything?
As they say, work to live, not live to work. Employment is what helps provide the means to do the things you want to.
This seems rather unlike you, Matt. I hope you can find answers you can live with soon. I'd be more than willing to chat with you if you want to talk to someone who's been through more than a few crises lately with their path in terms of employment.
matt-arnold on Jan. 8, 2007 2:44 AM
If I were obligated to help conventions, they couldn't call me a volunteer anymore. And I stopped loving R when I was married to her, and started again when we got divorced. If you have to do something whether you want to or not... how can you detect from your own behavior whether or not you still love it?
overthesun on Jan. 8, 2007 3:45 AM
To me, that's easy. When I have to do something, and don't love it, I make excuses to be late, take long lunches, leave early, and try to whipe it from my mind as soon as I step foot out the door. And I try to ignore all but the most persistent caller from work, when I am off.
When I am in love with what I do, I wake up at two in the morning with ideas running through my head. I work late without even considering leaving, because I want to get this next thing done now, not later. I skip lunches, or eat them at my desk, brain completely focused on the task.
In other words, I always give my job 50% of what I am capable of. Sometimes I manage to pull 110% out of my butt. . . And that never happens because of fear, or stress, or "motivation" .. . But only because I am loving what I am doing right then.
I feel some luck that, though I work for a huge soulless company, I have some enthusiasm for most of my job. But I still oscillate between those two extremes, depending on what I am doing today / this week / this month, and how I am treated by my bosses and co-workers.
To me, it's proof that I am on the right career track, and in the wrong job.
dawnwolf on Jan. 8, 2007 4:40 PM — Ah
But when you are running a convention, you make commitments to people. Those are obligations - but they're obligations you're taking on out of your desire to run the convention.
I also get what you mean about corporate job descriptions and that hiring process. But then, that's why I held out for the non-profit, or for-profit-but-for-a-cause, type of work. I also suffered long and hard before I found my fit. Because I don't give a goodly damn about the corporate machine, either - of course, I'm mostly a Socialist, so my attitude is a rather predictable outcome of that philosophy.
overthesun on Jan. 8, 2007 12:08 AM — Glaah
I have been there. . . In fact, every time I have job hunted in metro Detroit, I have gotten there.
In Vermont it was different. Big companies were rare. Most job postings were from small companies. And the jobs they outlined were fit for a human. The best rule of thumb I can find is: Did you deal with H.R. for the first interview? Iffy at best. For the second interview? Run.
If your interviews were conducted by someone in the department, or even better, your expected supervisor. . . Then you might be in a good position. And, amusingly, you can read through the classifieds, and pick those out. They are the ones that don't look razor-line professional. Means the boss wrote it, perhaps it was approved by someone, and it was posted.
So, yeah. You are right. See if you can skip the "professional" job listings. Get a job with a human. You will like the interviews better, the people better, and the work better.
Hopefully.
palindromeg33k on Jan. 8, 2007 8:37 PM
Matt, this post is the most eloquently phrased expression of something i've been saying for years that i've ever read. Working for just such an employer as those you spoke of, i can tell you with certainly that Speedway Superamerica LLC genuinely expects its employees to care about the welfare and profitability of the company, and they very frequently allow this expectation to warp the way they treat people in negative ways. I have many boring and exhaustive opinions on this subject, but no one wants to hear them, so i will desist at that.
eternalmaiden on Jan. 10, 2007 7:43 PM
I share most of your opinions, but very little of the venom. I hate begging for work that I know I'll hate in six months.
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