This past week has seen an entire shutdown of my county's educational system. Perhaps some more snowplows are in the budget for next year, no? Or at least a policy of dumping snow on the most troubling of students, now that would get passed by any right minded school board I know.
So what did I do with all this free time? Usual stuff of course, including dipping into the classics, which finds me reading The Jungle by our good buddy, Upton Sinclair. Interesting work of believable fiction that takes place in a pre-depression Chicago meat packing factory. If you love savoring Big Macs and Slim Jims, then please don't read this novel and continue to devour your carnivorous delights. Really, that stuff is so goood for you.
Anyhow, I was reading said novel when our phone rang with what I thought was a solicitation. Turns out it was a headhunter of a local Glen Burnie company that was recruiting teachers to train, educate, and instruct staff members on how to be stronger workers. Now I was rather skeptical of their idea, but I thought why not go and check out these chums? So I planned a Friday interview with their fearless leader who said she had found my resume on Monster.com.
My first impression upon waltzing into their tiny lobby was one of complete capitalistic disgust. Loud inspirational type music blarred from the back conference room, and in addition they had no idea who I was. Some ultra skanky male gel pimp type shook my hand which I immediately wanted to check for herpes. I thought of just leaving at this point, but decided to have a little bit of fun and check these skunks out. After waiting about ten minutes, I am called back to their conference room where about five employees and six other applicant saps stand around talking. I engaged in one very brief, very dubious conversation with a person who kept saying "cool". I had the distinct impression that no matter what I said her response would have been much the same. I'm from New Jersey. Cool. What is your job here? Cool. I can't move half my face. Cool. Arg!
So after this thorougly non-engaging conversation, our head prefect Nadia gives a ten minute speech about how this company is looking for people to sell health care products. Now that was odd. Didn't hear a thing about that in our phone conversation. Didn't hear word one about skin cream or other crap from any of the other employee zombie types. Huh. Nadia even included flow charts about how Nike Shoes cost $125 because there are so many middle-men, and other top secret corporate issues. But work for us she said, all that fluff is removed, leaving us to pay 50 cents to each employee for every dollar they earn. And so on and so on. My favorite lines she had were "Save the envirnonment in your wallet by working for us! That's just crazy!" and "Even after you quit your job with us you will be getting paid for two or more years if you recruit enough people to join our sales force. That's just crazy!" Gee, if I worked here my bosses would be named Cool and That's Just Crazy! Where is their good pal Christ Saves?
At this point I was well past my "let's see what kind of fun this is threshold" and had landed squarely on "capitalism sucks again". So I stood up, shook her hand (She spoke Russian too, did I mention that? Not only that, but as somebody in her group told me, she was from Moscow, which is in the very east of Russia.) and walked out of my first pyramid scheme encounter. Now isn't that just cool and crazy? My only question is, who has it worse: those immigrants in The Jungle, or the seven people who didn't walk out with me in the meeting?
