Hirable

I'm thinking about employment, because why not? I could join the throngs of people who are hopeful, or desperate or stymied, and are themselves looking. Perhaps they are more prepared, with their resumes and their re-hemmed business suits or whatever people wear to cattle-call interviews, sitting through the humiliation of waiting for their turn, their woeful five minutes with some asshole who's going to end up hiring from within. I'm willing to wager that they have loads more college debt than I do, and you can't buy that kind of blitzkrieged futrescape that gets people hunting through their closets for some rare DVDs to barter...for less than $100,000.

But thinking about becoming employed is not simple, because you have to figure out what your "skill set" is. (Or are-? "Skill sets"? Why can't we just call them "skills" any more?) And having been unemployed for a good while, and what with the whole "chronic invisible illness" thing (Interviewer:.could it be a sham? Because it's not visible!) and having the kind of smart, creative, vibrant ADHD kid to wrangle for ten years now (Interviewer:...ADHD isn't visible, either! I see through your lies! Good Luck With Your Search!) I figure...this should be a snap.

Here are my skills, so far... Handles Pain Very Well. This could be a great asset to any service that provides bedside fussing. The patient or grieved could hold my hand very, very hard- and I wouldn't cry. And that's not just because my medication is dehydrating and teardrops are just too much to ask of my ducts. It's also because I, along with countless other chronic pain sufferers, am as tough as rhinoceros hide. I can hear my birdish and poorly anchored finger bones crash inward when anyone holds it too hard, but I don't even flinch. I am almost French about it, looking bored and not bothering to use my manners: "you call this hard? Sigh...I am fine. give me a challenge and we shall see if this sensation qualifies as this 'pain' you are so concerned with." (Please picture me smoking while I say this, just to fulfill the stereotype. Thank you.)

Very Moody. On the surface, this appears a bad thing; any prospective employer would picture daily hallway dramas about deadlines and perceived slights and lady problems involving the cutest, youngest guy on my floor. They'd picture me on the floor itself, perhaps in my cubicle, perhaps under the table in the break room, where I'd be crying and/or raging, using the office's only three-hole punch to collate the manifesto that I'd written (on company time, no less) about office etiquette and "flex-time," whatever that was. I'd have to point out that it would keep the staff in a constant state of low tension, waiting for me to have a mood snap, so they'd keep their collective heads down and work instead of generate any sort of low-stress camaraderie. Also I'd be great in the customer service department, being sweet like sugar for the first two questions from a customer or client, then I'd switch over to barely repressed loathing and answering the next questions in a more and more sarcastic tone; then the client or customer would go away, leaving the company alone so that they wouldn't have to look any deeper into the possible faults of their product. What a boon!... So after I had explained all this, the manager person who's doing to hiring would offer me a job, starting at $2.55 an hour for the first year, after which I'd no longer be on the mandatory probation that kept me from getting a raise, and my wage would launch upward, rocketing up to $2.67 per hour. Plus benefits! I would get a medical plan, even- one that covers unnecessary trips to an ER for something that might easily have been handled at a plain old doctor's office, except that these benefits would not cover that. In the event that said ER visit happens, the company would graciously cover 10% of the adjusted total. Provided I used a fake name and address at check-in and didn't mention the company once during the entire process, of course...and here, also of course, I would throw their application papers and retinal-scan equipment all over the conference room and say- yell- that I would never take a job in a place that treated it's employees like so much sewage, and that they should be ashamed of themselves. Then I would stomp out to the maze of cubicles and shout "all of you who wish to be free of this corporate tyranny, follow me! You are worth more than the chemicals and fluid that make up your bodies- you are even worth more than the black market value of one of your kidneys! Let us storm off in a huff, together!" Having barked this call to embrace the freedom of the unemployed, I would grab the first three-hole punch I could see and run.

Also I would be a great soap opera villainess, all evil and incomprehensible  in one episode, then sweet and recalcitrant the next. Heck, I could do that in separate scenes in the same episode, even. During the audition process I won't mention the memory problems that come with this pain condition- but I'm confident that once on screen, I will be able to improvise plot lines and snappy one-liners, just like Dustin Hoffman in the movie Tootsie except with more career longevity.

Memory Loss. Now, this one is fairly obvious: anyone who wanted someone to officially look the other way whilst the company ransacks it's employees' pensions would be able to find a place for me easily. I could probably be tricked into cooking some books, since I'd lose track of one book, forget that I lost it, forget that I entered numbers into it- and then some lackey could slip a different book and a different set of numbers in front of me, and I'd wonder how it got there for a second (fairies? Please say it's fairies!) and then do it all over again. And yes yes, I realize that there are no actual books left in the world and that I would be entering the bogus accounting into a computer, but I chose to go old school with the metaphor because I don't remember how to enter information on a "field". It makes me think of fields, and the fields I have known- I remember those- and then I'm off into it, dreaming away the daylight, in full ignorance of the fleecing the shareholders were subject to. La la la.

So that job is also not good, and no one would hire me really because I've never been a bookkeeper (I mean, I don't even know what a "field" is.) Plus, because of the terrible things I did at work, I would go straight to Forgetter's Hell when I died, where Satan would constantly hide my car keys and then tell me I'm ten minutes late to my daughter's Show and that I said I would re-attach cardboard tree branches to the second graders. And where were the cardboard tree branches? Huh? Where are those? They're around here somewhere...then Satan would laugh (AH HA HA HA HA HA, etc.) watching all the morally reprehensible and chronically forgetful souls scuttle around searching for stuff they never had...but what might be a great fit is as a professional forgetter at a brain trauma ward. I would ask the person I was Forgetting with a question, and they'd answer the best they could, and that would make me think of something totally different. I might say "You're looking well today. Did you go on some outing or something?" Then the person might say "...uh, we did do that, yes. We did go out. There was a polka band, and someone thought it was a good idea to mess with the stunt bear." And I would reply "Polka dots are the best pattern on bears. There was a slide show once by my friend F- I can't remember her name right now- and the fanciest bear wore Polka dots." And they would go "Theater is awful. Dennehy was fair to middling in that one with the boulders hanging from everywhere. I liked the boulders more than Dennehy but I don't think that was entirely his fault."  And on and on- entertainment for hours! It's the greener choice, too, because we would never remember to turn on the television, and that saves energy!

I think the best job for someone like me might be distracting preschoolers. I could use all of the tools in my toolkit (see "skill set.") Bearing up under the kicks to the groin from whichever kid had been inappropriately exposed to a Jet Li video the previous weekend; Turning into a nightmare-inducing teacher's aide, clenching my teeth and bulging my eyes if so much as a peep was uttered during Nap Time (because the Gods of Sleep are sacred in every culture, and must be obeyed;) enjoying endless looping pretend stories that go on for hours...actually, that part sound pretty nifty. I'll just check the Classifieds tomorrow and set something up. Easy Peasy!