July 6, 2012

Kim Blanck

Today, the United States Labor Department revealed that the national unemployment rate has remained unchanged at 8.2% for the second month in a row. This year’s job creation numbers have also diminished, compared to the number of jobs created in 2011. This news likely leaves many Americans – both jobless and employed – discouraged. Glum readers, I ask of you:

Why do you want a job anyway?

Here is my experience with jobs, both working them and seeing my parents work them. They take up a LOT of your time. More often than not, you’ll have to get up very early for your job – I’m talking BEFORE 10:00. Also, you will likely have to get TO your job. It won’t exist right beyond your bed, like your television. You will have to drive there. You may even have to walk to your job from your car after having spent ten minutes finding a parking space. Doesn’t that sound awful?

You will also have to do things that other people ask of you. Many of these things will probably be very boring, and some of these things may require you to speak to other people, who will be dull and never as attractive as the people generally seen on Criminal Minds or The New Girl. At your job, you can’t even eat when you want to eat! Consuming your ham and cheese sandwich when your body requests it is a basic human need, but lunchtime will always be determined by your employer. 

After all this, you don’t even get to leave your job until 5:00 in the afternoon. You have wasted the entire day and it’s almost sunset. You have no time to ride your bike or play a game of softball. You didn’t even have a moment to catch up with friends from college over coffee. That matinee? You couldn’t see it. And that trip to Amelia Island you’ve been planning? You can’t go anymore because you have to be at work tomorrow morning before 10:00, where you will remain until 5:00. Again.

Cheer up, you doldrums-dwelling citizens of America! See? You don’t ever want a job. Join the ranks of jobless people who are happy to be unemployed day after day, seeking small amounts of money here and there – collecting from both the Department of Unemployment and their parents’ savings – and enjoying life at every possible venture, riding bikes and catching up with friends from college and seeing matinees. 

You don’t want a job, ever. So, come on over. It’ll be just like you have a BFA in the arts!