Thursday, September 13, 2007

Some friendly advice on getting a job

Well, I was born on a sunday; on thursday I had me a job.
I was born on a sunday; by thursday I was workin out on the job.
I aint never had no day off since I learned right from wrong.

Every friday, well, thats when I get paid.
Dont take me on friday, lord, cause thats when I get paid.
Let me die on saturday night, ooh, before sunday gets my head.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - The Working Man

I don't recommend work. After just 8 months on the job, I have come to one undeniable conclusion: WORK SUCKS! No one likes their job. Work makes us tired, depressed and down-right irritable. I'm pretty sure my blood pressure is in bad shape (maybe I should start smoking weed regularly just to calm my nerves). Traveling all the fucking time I'm, simply put, becoming a fat fuck. Not that I don't want to be in shape, but there's either no time or I'm too damned tired. The problem as I see it with work is that we spend 40 hours + at work per week. And that doesn't even include traveling to and from your job site. There's 168 hours in the week. So at the minimum, full-time employees are spending roughly one quarter of their week at work (and for most people that number is much greater). Think about that. This is not right. To quote Rickey Watters, "for who? for what?" Life's too damned short for this, where we spent the best years of our lives stuck at work doing some ultimately meaningless task. How lame is that? If someone told me I had 20 or so years of slogging for some company that under-appreciates and under-utilizes me to look forward to, I would've said 'no fucking thanks.'
Maybe work has brought out the existential part of me, but I got to ask, what's the fucking point? Honestly, if this is all there is, I now understand why people would turn to drugs or alcohol to find a brief solace from life. American Beauty has suddenly become a lot more meaningful and poignant to me. While we're busy working, living the so-called 'American dream', the world is passing us by. I have learned nothing useful at work. All I've learned is that I suck at driving trucks, the deep south is still racist as all hell, and guys from Milwaukee can fucking drink. My brain is slowly atrophying. You know that scene in Billy Madison where Adam Sandler tells the fat stammering kid to "stay in school as long as you can"? I wanna tell that to everyone. College is fun. Cherish living with your friends and just hanging out. After you graduate, society tells us that we have to get a job and join the soulless mass that is the corporate world. When Billy Corgan sang "the world is a vampire," he hit the nail in the motherfucking coffin. Working will suck your soul dry; take away all bastions of creativity and youthful exuberance that you ever had.
I am completely disillusioned. People will tell you to do what you love, but that would mean never going to work. Most of us, though, need the money generated fom working to buy necessary items such as food and shelter. You're fucked if you do work, you're fucked if you don't. I'd be totally for some sort of new world order. I'd be totally for anarchy, but my mistrust in people assures me that it will eventually turn into some form of oligarchy. How about an 'end of Fight Club' scenario? Raze everything and start from scratch? Sounds good to me. Thus far, work is slowly eating away at my soul. Somehow we need to stop the feast.

No comments: