Getting Random Job Offers from Strangers
You used to think it was a dream come true. Now it’s a present you didn’t ask for. Like getting silk socks on Christmas. Yes, yes…very stylish, great material, useful…but it’s not what I wanted.
Some Indian guy in New Jersey or headhunter chica in San Diego hits you up out of the blue. Fifty other people get the same email. They plug in different names and C&P these emails to people all over the country. The old “spray and pray” approach. The same method I use when job hunting. If you send out twenty applications a day, at least one is bound to call you back. Purely a numbers game.
I don’t even bother with a facade of politeness anymore. I respond with one sentence: “Can you tell me the salary range for this position?” Or “role,” as they like to say. Change the word to dull the pain of indentured servitude. Look, I get it. If they don’t tell me, I move on. I’ve sat through 20 minute phone calls with interchangeable recruiters only to find out the job pays $20K less than I make now. I don’t have time for that shit anymore. The nice thing about being thirtysomething and actually having a career path and unique experience is that you have to eat less shit when job hunting. Some shit, but far less of it than when you were fresh out of college. Now I have a pay grade and unique skills, and recruiters can’t fuck me as hard as they’d like. Who’s laughing NOW.
Oh God, ANOTHER one. That’s the fifth one in three days. Yes, THANK YOU for the opportunity, but even if I made it through the hoops, it would be the same shit I’m doing now for the same pay. Only the location changes. The office never changes. The decor and people might LOOK different but they’re all the same.
The office crushes us into uniform clay soldiers. Check your personality at the door. Be as bland and unoriginal as possible. Play it safe. Don’t make waves. Don’t fuck things up too badly while you’re here and we’ll keep paying you. Maybe you’ll make it to retirement unscathed. Then you’ll have ten whole years to live life as you please. If you’re lucky! Hopefully you don’t get sick or lose the will to live, otherwise it’s game over for you.
You stay in prison till you’re a senior citizen. Finally you get out. You’re old and weak and life has passed you by, and you have nothing to offer society, but hey! You’re free! You probably didn’t search for any deeper meaning in life, and now drift along with no purpose. Just like in your thirties. Now you have no reason to continue living and your body suddenly gives out. How many times have you heard that story? Guy does forty years on the job, finally retires to live the good life, and drops dead within two years. No reason to go on living besides wage slavery. Take that away and life is an exercise in futility.
Anyway, thanks for reaching out; can you tell me the salary range for this role?
