I Have Something for You, Craigslist Spammers!

As everyone who could have accidentally stumbled to this page already knows, Craigslist job postings are filled from the bottom of the hooves to the top of the horns with spammers and evil fucking assholes. Since I live in Portland, OR, the spammers run even more freely along the Craigslist plains because the entire state of Oregon is currently either unemployed or underemployed. And even though I promise myself, over and over, that I will simply never ever apply to companies that fail to reveal their names anymore - sometimes, I still get pulled in.

A few weeks ago, I applied to one such job posting. I spent maybe forty-five minutes on the cover letter - enough so that I definitely wasted my time. And several hours later I received an e-mail letting me know that I would definitely be interviewed and given a royal crown and all the Ben & Jerry's I want - but would I mind getting my credit report?

Needless to say, I was pissed off.

While my artistic skills are often limited at best, I have designed a poster that fake credit report Craigslist job spammers can use in their future fake evil Nazi postings:

Sincerely,

One Such Stupid Dumbass

Retail, and Name Tags are Stupid

I am currently aware of more than one person with a bachelor's, and even master's, degree braving the world of retail. Dress-code-and-name-tag retail. Time-card and 30-minute-lunch-break retail.

There you were, sitting in VM40I - Seminar in Advanced Literary Thought - and for what? So that two years later, you could ask someone else with a bachelor's or master's degree whether they'd like to try those slacks in an 8. Either that, or you sit nervously waiting for an interview for that "ADMIN SUPERSTAR!!!" position, which everyone knows is monkey bullshit, because "admin superstar" is an oxymoron.

Half of the time, these job postings don't even have company names. What the hell? "A well-established company is seeking..." - Why does this continue to remain so damn subversive? Don't companies know that if job seekers can't read about them before they apply, the cover letters are going to be nothing but bullshit? You could be a "Well-established energy efficiency company" - but unless you tell me who you are and where I can read about you, I always translate a lack of a company name to mean, "Child pornography ring looking for eerie receptionist. Company name will not be revealed. Receptionist must send out letters without looking at them. Lie detector tests will be administered weekly."

Anyway, retail. Unless I open my own business (My most consistent idea is Suds'n'Scotch - A bar/laundromat with an excellent scotch selection, but I realize that this is impractical, because most people who do laundry in a laundromat probably don't go out of their way to buy scotch. But I like scotch. There'll be PBR too.) I'm not ever going to return to retail.

I've been there before. For about a year in college, I worked at GreetingHell, an overpriced greeting card/useless knick-knacks company. Specifically, I remember rearranging piles of tiny greeting cards on a rotating whatever-the-hell-it's-called and being coated in glitter everywhere I went. We actually had a greeting card that cost $14, which is usually what I can afford to spend for people's birthday presents. And when our normal boss got promoted, she was replaced by the most insecure woman on the face of the planet - who once threatened to report myself and my friend B. to corporate when, after a major snowstorm and an extended wait for the subway in the middle of Boston, we arrived to work six minutes late.

What's funny is that she said nothing when we actually walked into the store, covered in snow. What she did was passive-aggressively post a NOTE near the time-cards letting us know that if another unexpected snowstorm hit Boston, the subway ran late, and we walked in six minutes after the start of our shift, her store would explode and she would report us to corporate. Strangely, when the next major snowstorm hit a month later and I arrived five minutes late, she didn't. Hmm.

Major corporations like to impose unnecessary rules over their employees to justify more lunch meetings at CorporateBase, so the GreetingHell Employee Handbook instructed employees how to greet customers. We were forced to say, over and over, to everyone that walked into the store: "Welcome to GreetingHell, how can I help you?"

Naturally, 99% of the time, the customer declined the offer to be shown around a store that was the size of an average living room. Occasionally, the customer failed to reply altogether and responded with a dirty look, or mumbled "Hello," and looked startled, as if it was the craziest event of all time that someone greeted him or her in a store. And once, a woman ignored me so well the first time I asked, that I thought she didn't hear me and I asked again. She turned to me and shouted at the top of her lungs, "If I wanted your damn help, I would have asked for your help!!"

The idea behind corporate retail is that you come in, fresh-faced and full of personality and ideas, which are subsequently completely suppressed until you are the ghost of what you used to be, echoing "Welcome to GreetingHell," in your brain even when you fall asleep at night. This is probably carefully designed by corporate psychologists.

The next time you walk into a corporate retail store (notice I say "corporate." Working for mom-and-pop shops is not the same, because usually normal people won't try to make you into a character-free robot), look carefully at the face of the employee. Are the eyes glazed over, much like that of a drug addict? Is s/he wearing a smile anyone would ever use in real life?

The reason that the name tag is more clearly visible than the other elements is because name tags are the very worst element of corporate existence, and I have actually wondered whether corporations use name tags as a way to display their ownership of employees. Probably.

First, name tags are awkward. If you're an employee, it's awkward to wear something on your chest, because generally even people that stare at your chest don't like to let you know that that's what they have been doing. If you're a customer, they're awkward because theoretically, you've been raised to approach strangers with phrases such as "Excuse me." Not, "Hey (searches chest) Annie!"

Second, I've found that most people are willing to introduce themselves anyway. I was shopping for dresses a few months ago, and a woman took my dresses, hung them in a dressing room, and then turned to me and said, "If you need anything, I'm Michelle." Crazy, right? She introduced herself, and then I knew her name! No name tag or anything!

Third, only creepy people address total strangers by name. Did you hear that, corporate? I was standing outside at my friend's house a few days ago, and a friend of a friend came up to me and said, "Heya, V!" and since I hadn't seen him before, I said, "Who the hell are you?" I am a very small woman, and he was a very big man, so yes, I find it creepy when large older men who I've never seen call me by name.

Gradually, the combination of repeating "Welcome to X, Can I Help You?" over and over again and catching glimpse of your name tag in the mirror takes your happy-go-lucky character and transforms it into this:

To help you understand the experience of the corporate retail employee, I accompanied this post with a chart that can more easily help you understand:

You'll notice that screaming on the inside is a mere 27%, but this is only because it's difficult to scream when you're choking on glitter. Trying to understand senseless policies is pretty much identical in all major corporate positions, so I've allotted a quarter for it. Tolerating sadomasochistic customers is a mere 10%, but that's only because I'm using very strict standards for sadomasochism. And as you can see, name tags take a whopping 37%, because, as we've all agreed, name tags are evil.

That's the point of all this. I hope someone, at some major corporation, looks at this one day and thinks to him or herself, "You know, she's right. Why are we spending an extra 400 million a year on corporate name tags, when employees much prefer lunch and beer?"

Corporate: employees like food. And beer. Give them food and beer, and cut the budget on the name tags.

Thank you.

V.