Water through a rusted pipe

[j4]

I would like to be able to say that from where I sit I can only see a small square of sky, but in fact it is an irregular polygon of sky. It is dissected neatly by window-frames; it is bounded by rooftops and walls.	How will I know when I am happy?	Applying for jobs is a collaborative exercise in self-fictionalisation. However, the multi-layered roleplaying involved in the application process is probably a better test of suitability for working life than any qualifications. I am acting the part of a person who is doing my job.
This is the throwaway line on which everybody will focus their answer.	I am constantly frustrated by myth; I long to be granted a role in the stories I know, so that I can use my knowledge to take the correct path. This desire is misguided: we are writing the stories we will come to know, walking backwards along the correct path.	I never believe what I write.

Comments

[kaet.livejournal.com]

Water through a rusted pipe

That's how they make Irn Bru, :).

Applying for jobs is a collaborative exercise in self-fictionalisation.

Writing a CV must bring to mind the psychoanalytic, Becketian, pomo overidentity, I am a text, doo-dah that seems to wrorry you often?

[simont]

Occasionally I really wish "m" and "rn" didn't look alike. "modern" is quite bad enough.

[j4.livejournal.com]

> > Water through a rusted pipe
> That's how they make Irn Bru

Damn, that almost scans, as well!

Writing a CV must bring to mind the psychoanalytic, Becketian, pomo overidentity, I am a text, doo-dah that seems to wrorry you often?

Hmmm, it's not so much that as the Knots problem -- we are playing a game, etc. Applications say the things that the employers want to hear, and employers know that, but they still have to pretend to want to hear them.

The Beckettian malaise only really comes in when I realise that applying for a new job means writing and rewriting my life to the exclusion of living it. LiveJournal doesn't help, of course; "Dear Diary: today I wrote my diary entry". Current mood: buried up to my neck in sand.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, it's not so much that as the Knots problem -- we are playing a game, etc. Applications say the things that the employers want to hear, and employers know that, but they still have to pretend to want to hear them.

Was hired half-way through first interview last two places I've worked to a large extent the strength of the degree to which I didn't do this; have since made at least one in retrospect very wise hiring choice on similar grounds.

Some of it is doubtless luck; some being in the right field at the right time; nevertheless, if that element of burn-the-maps nerve was a net negative, I think I would have noticed.

[ "Yes, I know the person I passed on the way in was in smart office-dress. If I couldn't carry it on raw ability, I'd dress like that too." ]

[kaet.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, the mutual lie thing. For some thing, the instance of that which annoys me almost the most is the way they put water in bacon, and the way it shrinks immediately to about a quarter of its size on grilling. I know they're presenting a lie (or exageration, or putting the best foot forward, or whatever), and they know I know and, so on. It's all rather depressing. You just wish you could say 'cut the shit'.

It reminds me too of the (probably apochraphal) story of the man who wanted a job in the mail room, and had wanted a job in a mail room since being a kid, and would have been really good sorting mail, but was turned down because of lack of ambition in wanting to work his way out of the mail room.