Hmmm, Smells Like Bacon...

"OooOoo!  Red...pretty..."

Greetings, Fellow Carbon-Based Life-Forms.

Every time I sit down to look for a job I'm overcome by a primal fear.  It's not that I'm afraid that there'll be nothing to apply for.  I'm terrified by the prospects of actually getting something.

I've been toiling away for half my adult life and in all that time I can count the number of decent jobs I've had on two fingers.  The first one doesn't count because it was only a make-work project and the second one shouldn't count because I was hired by my best friend.  For everything before, during and after I've had to feign levels of interest and aptitude that would earn anyone a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance in a Existential Comedy. 

And then there's all of the overt screwage.  I can point to at least four distinct occasions in which I've been royally buggered by an employer, in spite of all my dedication, hard work and proficiency.  Three out of those four times happened at the last place I worked, fer Chrissakes!  But as needlessly monotonous and/or stressful as that last gig was, by far the worst part about it was having to listen to everyone bitch, moan and complain about how terrible everything was from 9:30 am to 6 pm, all day, every day.  And let me tell ya, folks, after marinating in a stew of negativity like that for eight and half hours every day for three years you start to think about throwing on some Pink Floyd, climbing into a nice, warm bath and then turning your wrists into venison. 

And then there are all the telling work-related Facebook notification that I see each and every day.  On Friday everybody's doing back-flips, on Saturday they're livin' large, on Sunday they're paralyzed by indecision, on Monday they're all shell-shocked, on Tuesday they're all sitting underneath their desks with a loaded revolver, on Wednesday everybody unlocks a mid-week survival achievement, on Thursday they wake up hoping it's Friday and on Friday they're all back to start.  Then the whole brain-damaged cycle starts up all over again.

I'm also not looking forward to being the "new guy".  Y'know, the guy with zero seniority.  The schmuck with the rapidly bleaching hair who can't seem to grasp things, even after fifteen quality minutes of training.  The dweeb who gets to scrub the virtual toilets at 8pm on a Saturday night.  The clown who gets paid with bottle caps and loose bits of string.  The yahoo who stands to earn forty-eight minutes of vacation time if he can just avoid getting sick or take a day off over the next six months.

Seriously, is anyone out there happy with this arrangement?  Does it make sense to spend the lion's share of our best days performing meaningless, ethereal tasks that have no positive or lingering impact on the world?  Duties that you won't even remember doing a month from now?  All the while surrounded by backbiting, petty, sabotaging co-workers that you just want to smoke in the head with a keyboard tray? 

I know that you're gonna say: "Well, that's just the way it is."  Well, I'm here to challenge that with a simple question: Why?  Why do things need to be this way?  Do you remember having a say in how our society operates?  Have you ever asked yourself why decent jobs are so scarce?  Do you ever wonder who really benefits from the current North American labor paradigm?

Insanity is often described as performing the same action over and over again and expecting different results.

Well, personally I'm tired of the insanity.  I'm tired of putting my hand on an open burner just because some stranger assures me that I won't get burned this time.    
   
EPIC SENTIMENTS

FAIL-URE TO COMMUNICATE  Okay look, I loves me some Jodie Foster, but if people need a friggin' Rosetta Stone to figure out what you're trying to say in your acceptance speech, then it might not have been particularly effective. 

Choose Your Poison...

Hello, Unflagging Followers!

With my savings starting to ebb away like beer from a damaged keg, I find myself now hunting for a new day job.  Given my p!$$-poor track record with past gigs, I've set a few simple conditions in stone for this new career:

(1) I don't want to be yelled at by customers for some stupid decision that my employer made.

(2) I don't want to asked to sell something that I have no vested interest in.  This includes (but certainly isn't limited to) paper clips, window dressings, auto-gyro insurance, salt and pepper shakers and batting practice helmets. 

(3) I don't want to clean up any bodily fluids, regardless of how many assurances I receive from my employer that the protective gear I've been given is "state of the art".   

(4) I don't want people's lives to depend on my ability to put shit together properly. 

(5) I don't want to work in an enterprise that encourages me to knowingly rip people off. 

So, to get a feel for what I'm about to wade into, I thought I'd take a look at the latest employment by industry figures courtesy of Stats Canada.  Here's an impressive-looking pie chart which I cobbled together to help break down the numbers (click to embigginate):

Okay, let's break down these very broad categories with some added description and coupla' 'xamples:

• Agriculture (2%) includes growin' stuff, running "Poison Ivy's Carnivorous Plant Nursery", keepin' critters in barns n' fences ("ATTICA!  ATTICA!"), choppin' down trees, and wrasslin' with giant squid.  
• Natural Resources (2%) takes into account pannin' fer gold, gettin' gas (?) and doing your best Daniel Plainview impersonation.
• Utilities (1%)  includes (as one might expect) electric power generation, water treatment, poo disposal and natural gas distribution.  "Hey, somebody's bakin' brownies!"     
• Construction (7%) a.k.a. buildin' stuff.  
• Manufacturing (10%) i.e. makin' stuff. 
• Trade (a whopping 15%) is essentially wholesale and retail in all of its glorious forms.  This includes retail call centers ("HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!")
• Transportation (5%) also includes "warehousing".  Air, sea, rail, Pinto, rickshaw, bobsled:  it's all here, homes. 
• Finance (6%) should also be paired up with real estate, leasing and the aforementioned auto-gyro insurance sales (which, I'm told, gives you ample coverage against liability, collision and Humongous-related firearm attacks):

• Science (8%) is short for "professional, scientific and technical services".  This category also includes lawyers (for some odd reason), accountants, architects, engineers, designers, consultants as well as your run-of-the-mill beaker-chokers.  
• Support Services (4%) was chopped down from "business, building and other support services."  Since I still had no clue what this meant, I looked for some examples.  As it turns out, this broad category includes such disparate things as record keeping, collections, employment services, pest control, landscaping, waste management, security, travel agencies and (more) call centers, this time for people who dropped their Blackberry in the terlet.  Seriously, can't you people stop texting long enough to take a pee?!?  
• Education (7%) Learnin' people up since 859 AD. 
• Health Care (12%) also includes "social assistance" and, presumably, "changer of bed pans".
• Culture (4%)  was truncated from "information, culture and recreation".  This includes makers of newspapers, software, movies, music, telecommunications and the fine folks who brought us such cultural touchstones as Work It. 
• Food Services (6%) was also supposed to include "accommodation" and jobs which require the utterance of such pithy statements as "Would you like to super-size your fries for only 43 cents, sir?"  
• Other Services (5%)  includes such esoteric things are repair, maintenance, laundry services, religions (!) and that always-lucrative cottage industry: death. 
• Public Administration (6%) In other words, THE MAN: government, bureaucrats and the po-po.  

So, after careful examination of this data, I can easily extrapolate the following scientific conclusions:

(1)   If "Natural Gas Distribution" is a real job then this means that my buddy Dean has been moonlighting all these years without proper compensation.  Little wonder the poor bastard's always so tired.

(2)   I'm pretty sure Batman falls into the "Science" category.  That is, if he lived in Windsor, Ontario.

(3)   I'm gonna go ahead and assume that independent writers, artists and performers were just lumped right into the "Culture" category, otherwise they didn't even rate in this survey at all.  And, frankly, that's just too depressing a thought to consider.

(4)   As far as I can determine, my return to work conditions have eliminated approximately 92% of what Canadians routinely do every day in order to eat.

(5)   The odds of me finding myself in a creative career is approximately the same odds of a celebrity marriage lasting for a lifetime.  Or getting hemorrhoids.  

EPIC

More wacky information on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).

Okay, make yer own damn pie graph.

"Never tell me the odds."

FAIL  It amazes me that someone like Harry Knowles has a writing career and I don't.  Check out this inexplicably weird, random and vaguely embarrassing tidbit shoe-horned into his recent review of the Godzilla Blu-Ray:

"SO yeah… I love GODZILLA. It probably has to do with me going to strip clubs with my parents on Halloween with my 'Uncle BOB' in a full-bodied GODZILLA costume for the Costume contest and seeing the Big G dance with naked girls at the Yellow Rose."