Let me open this by saying I do like The Offspring's album Americana, but there's one song that makes me feel so uneasy that I cringe when the band even gets mentioned. "Why Don't You Get a Job" was one of the lesser known singles off of the album, and I guess it being so does me a lot of good.
Why does this song upset me so? Because when Dexter sings it, it sounds like he's talking to me. It's true, I'm twenty and haven't had a job ever. My Mom really wants me to get one, yeah, and why shouldn't I? My sister had a job when she was twenty, her second, in fact. Quite a lot of people my age have jobs too. It's an act of growing up and accepting responsibility, except with cash. Being a gamer and a musicy guy, there's almost always something I'd be interested in buying.
Of course, when have I been a "normal kid" with, y'know "common sense?" Okay, I can't really use that as an excuse. There are a lot of little things I'd like to say, but they'd all just be excuses with very little actual value, or they wouldn't capture my full rationale. My reasoning is still fairly simple however. Bad advertising. Really, employment has some of the worst advertising anything can get, which is really ironic since getting a job isn't as simple as just buying something. As far as money goes, it's the exact opposite.
It'd be a neat challenge to try and find someone who's employed or who's been employed and doesn't have a facebook status, tweet, or blog post about how much they dislike their job on whatever day. That's because it's all over the place. People bemoaning work, complaining there's no time for other things or that they're being treated unfairly or with a lack of competence. There wouldn't be parodies about the poor judgment of bosses and co-workers if they didn't happen. Stories about incompetence or perceived incompetence in the workplace sometimes seem to take center stage in one's life, and become the most commonly told.
When you live with employed people, you get to see just how much their job wears them out. Coming home with all the huffing and puffing and head shaking. Days seem to range from the mundane to the truly trying. Part of it always seems to be the changing nature of the workplace. There's all these rules and regulations that, if they weren't in place, life would be much easier. This is especially true in jobs that deal with people...people that you have to be nice to. Nice, but not honest.
Retail has a reputation for being brutal, which is kind of ironic since it's often the go-to source for entry-level jobs. Yet this is where you have to reason with people who would refute it. Everyone's heard a story or even been in one themselves in which a customer is simply wrong on so many levels to a degree that they're impeding productivity and frustrating everyone within a ten foot radius. The employee can't really do anything with that person to convince them peacefully that they were right. These sorts of things are what make jobs so trying.
Let me level with you for a second. I can't drive to school without shaking my head at some of the decisions the common people around me make. I want to shake my head at the speed demons, traffic weavers, and chronic texters...I want to smack the ass-sniffers, shoulder runners, and blinker ignorers. All of these people shop, and in that situation their behaviors must be the same but different. I can't imagine those with such blatant regards for simple laws would be inclined to be more polite inside a store. Huh, that really sounds like the makings of a good Psychology study.
Still, the point is, I'm not sure I could handle incompetence. I mean, I can barely talk to people as it is, let alone people I might clash with. I'm fairly avoidant of situations that would involve a confrontation, meaning I avoid a pretty large number of people. Why? Well, in the last blog post I talked about how much I don't agree with a dislike button, clearly I'm not about to actively get into a disagreement with someone. Me trying to deal with a rowdy person trying to deal with someone who just won't accept their coupon doesn't work the way they think it does? It's gonna mess with me. Maybe not outwardly, maybe not in such away that it manifests on the internet, but yeah, it will. Stupid little things that no one thinks twice about stay in my head for more time than they're worth. A full day on the job would be an overload.
And while we're on the topic of me, let me just say that with all the percentage of people who say their jobs are a total drag and sap up all their free time forever, is it any wonder I'm wary about getting a job? Let's face it, at this point I'm not likely to get a job that's particularly fulfilling or life-changing for someone else, either. So honestly, other than getting out of my house, the only other incentive is money, which, despite wanting things from time to time, I honestly don't consume much of. So what I end up getting is a big ol' time sink that gets me some money to spend in the time I'm not actually working or college-ing. Not to mention I could certainly see myself complaining a lot more about doing something I hate than doing nothing.
I'm not saying the sentiment won't change. There are larger, more expensive endeavors that I have in my line of sight for the future. If I had the money from a job, I'd be taking them wherever I could. I'd be able to get better equipment for making LPs and other computer-related products. The thing is, I'm just not sure the costs outweight the benefits at this point. Some day, that may not be the case. In fact if things keep going as they are, that day is on its way. I know that at some point, employment will be damn near a necessity, and that eventually that change will come. This is yet another reason I need to solidify creative endeavors like this blog and my Lets Plays into my life. No matter the form, I simply cannot allow these types of things to leave my life, lest I come to accept a "normal" existence.
And one more point, one that I find more interesting than "I don't want a job." I have a pretty big inferiority complex about people my age who have jobs. I believe that this is one of the underlying reasons I've lost a bunch of friends since high school ended almost two years ago. My best friends that have gotten jobs are the same ones I no longer talk to. Something about coming up with something to say in reply to "I've mostly been working, what have you been doing?" just makes me squirm. For whatever reason I think jobs make people look more mature and farther along in life than just what I'm doing. Surely, these people must look at me and say "Tch, he doesn't know anything about my life, he doesn't even work!" In response I hear "Well with the way you talk about it, can you blame me?" in my head, but I couldn't say it even so, since I feel like that would be somehow rude or offensive. In some cases, it's the truth.
It's a fallacy to look at a friend who has two jobs right now and think that they're doing so much more than I am, meanwhile part of my rationale for not getting employed is that entry-level jobs are generally not fulfilling or helpful to people at large. This type of fallacy is rampant in my brain, particularly on this subject, and it's part of what shuts me off from people who have jobs. Working doesn't actually change who people are, despite bringing out the worst in them and taking up their time. Part of me fears too, that they might even be a little jealous when I say I'm free for anything anytime, since there's no doubt they'd like just a little bit of that. So on one end they might look down on me for being a bum, and on the other they admire me because I'm free. See how this is kind of a vicious cycle? The real ringer is that there really is no good logic to it.
I've lost friends to both jobs and myself, and am honestly at a point where I don't have all that much to lose by getting a job myself. I still resist, however, because that which those friends have moved onto is not necessarily better, and the evidence of that is everywhere. At this point, doing as they do will not bring them back. It can only empower me to talk to them again, at most. But if that's what ultimately happens, do I really want to talk to them about jobs? If it's the case that we get onto the topic for some time, then it certainly appears that we're letting our jobs define us. If that is the case, what are we? I'd much prefer to be true to myself and who I want to be than to allow something I perceive as menial to define who I am at any point.
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