For all the talk about honesty and integrity and authenticity, the most life altering circumstance where these attributes are glaringly absent is during the job search process. You may be driving on fumes, so hungry your stomach muscles are stuck in a painful concave or twisted up in a knot with fear about the phone and ISP bill that’s past due and you know full well there’s no income coming in this week… but when you show up at that interview you better look like you haven’t got a care in the world. You better act like you don’t need this job.
“People call me rude. I wish we all were nude… I wish there was no Black or White, I wish there were no rules…” Prince/Controversy
The hiring process as it stands today makes thieves and liars out 0f all of us. Worse, it transforms otherwise law abiding, tax-paying wives and mothers, husbands and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, Protestants and Catholics, Christians and Jews into cold-hearted murderers of the spirit before lunch at Subway. Given the choice between having my spirit killed and being shot 42 times, in this economy, I choose the latter.
The 21st century workplace is the new Roman Coliseum. All it takes is the downturned thumbs of the masses for you, even you, to be thrown to the lions. You don’t like somebody you work with? Conspire to make the office environment so unbearably uncomfortable, the disliked person feels compelled to quit. You don’t like somebody you work with? Don’t like the way they look, or the way they type or breathe? Subscribe to the belief that “most Christians” believe that religion is a cult? Start a bad rumor about them. Have them fired.
Never mind that person may have a child or two to support, or a mortgage, or car note, or college loans to repay, same as you. Never mind that person you don’t like may want to look toward tomorrow with a modicum of hope and confidence, the same as you.
Never mind that every thread that constitutes the fabric of life is completely unattainable when one does not have a job. You can’t make friends. You isolate yourself from family. You can’t own anything or even make plans. You can’t provide for your children. You can never let anyone in to know your shame and deprivation. You are forced to keep terrible secrets. You’re afraid all the time. You can never tell the truth.
And that’s probably a good thing because the truth is not what prospective employers want to hear from job-hopping, gaps-in-your-resume-having, slow-bill paying, deadbeats like you. That’s just the way it is.., Right?
Standing in line marking time
Waiting for the welfare dime
‘Cause they can’t buy a job
The man in the silk suit hurries by
As he catches the poor old ladies’ eyes
Just for fun, he says, “Get a job”That’s just the way it is
Some things will never change
That’s just the way it is
But don’t you believe themThey say, “Hey little boy you can’t go where the others go
‘Cause you don’t look like they do”
Said,”Hey old man, how can you stand to think that way?
Did you really think about it
Before you made the rules?”
He said, “Son”Some things will never change
That’s just the way it is
But don’t you believe them”That’s just the way it is
That’s just the way it isWell, they passed a law in ‘64
To give those who ain’t got a little more
But it only goes so far
Because the law don’ change another’s mind
When all it sees at the hiring time
Is the line on the color barThat’s just the way it is
Some things will never change
That’s just the way it is
That’s just the way it is, it is, it is, it is
Performed/Lyrics Bruce Hornsby, 2004
Let’s just say for the sake of argument all that’s true? What could anyone in this country or anywhere in the world for that matter possibly do that could be so terrible they may not be allowed to earn a living? Or eat? Or have a place to lay their head and store their stuff? Or be?
W.E.B DuBois wrote in The Souls of Black Folk “…How does it feel to be a problem?” (page 5, paragraph 1)
It’s How It Feels Not To Have a Job.
