In reading your Craigslist advertisement (I've copied it below) for the position of Customer Service/Admin/Website Support/Receptionist/Shipping Specialist/Courier/Data Entry Professional/Thick-Skinned Literary Master with Superior Business Correspondence and Inter-/Intrapersonal Skills at your Mesa location, I found myself wondering how best to reply.
Thing is, I was so excited by your ad...I started to cry. My Grandma, with whom I've lived for the last two and a half years due to the brutal effects of the current economic breakdown and pending total social collapse - which has left me completely bereft and destitute - bolted into the garage to see what was the matter. (Gran's garage is where I sleep at present, as her unit senior living facility has only one bedroom, and since I cannot afford a bed anyway, it works out okay, 'cause I just sleep on Dad's old creeper...he always kept the wheels well-oiled, or rather he did before he exited to the next life after a massive heart attack...old Doc Warren never said it outright, but he implied it may've been brought on by the stress of having been released from his employ in two-thousand-ought-six after 32 years of faithful service; corporate downsizing, the company called it, 'cept as it turned out, his former employer ended up moving Dad's old department to China and giving his job (well, a job whose description matched Dad's old position to a "T", anyway) to a 14 year-old hill-kid from the Nan mountain range who had learned the bulk of his English from an incomplete set of scratchy Berlitz records left behind the village privy by a tourist and erstwhile do-gooder sometime in the mid-1970s.)
"Grammyma!" I exclaimed, "Just look at this ad! I've found the perfect job! The requirements encompass every single thing I've ever done at ANY job over the last 27 years! And, while I'm exercising all the skills I've ever learned, they'll pay me the princely sum of $11.50 per hour to start (or is it $10.50 with a potential increase after 90 days?) Heck, I don't care. I'm still all aglow! AND...brace yourself, Grandma...I'll get to give up one Saturday a month, too!"
"That's wonderful, honey," Gran said, "But...why are you crying?"
Wiping crystalline snot from my upper lip, I replied, "Well, Grandma, you know how I've always had a predilection for pain?"
"Yes..."
"...and, I've always been obsessed with bondage, humiliation and discipline, and how I've desperately longed to be a slave-driven minion?"
"Of course, honey. Like father, like son! Why, I remember it like it was yesterday, you were just a little tyke, we were late for church and your poor Mother was frantic! just frantic! looking everywhere for you, and what do you know? There you were, back of the shed, using that frayed old toaster cord as a flagrum, rhythmically attacking the soles of your tiny feet..."
"Well, anyway, this...this amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I found on Craigslist will allow me not only to exercise every last one of my skills and experience every minute of every eight to twelve hours of every day I'm there...but...get this, Gran: They're demanding that I sign a contract wherein I virtually give over my very body, heart and soul, for ONE...WHOLE...YEAR! I mean, gee, do you think they might let me wear my ball-gag and zippered mask to the office? If I'm very, very good, I mean?"
"Well, perhaps, dear...but doesn't this whole thing smack of indentured servitude? And, while indentured slaves were part of the social landscape of the 1600's, and even after the Revolution, didn't they eventually go out of vogue in favor of the full-fledged enslavement of Africans unlucky enough to have survived that rough passage to the Americas, packed against their will into the bowels of the filthy slaveships like so many dusky sardines? And, as best I can recall, wasn't slavery itself abolished by writ of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution?"
"Well, I don't know all that much about the, ah, const...cotit...caaaah...umm...coxstahoobie?..,"
"It's called the 'Constitution of the United States,' dear."
"...yeah, that thing, whatever..."
"...well, anyway, sweetheart, Grammy's pretty sure that most states in this once-great country of ours are still Employment At-Will states, aren't they? Even this denizen of conservative clout, the land of the Eternal Fox News Watcher, the State of Arizona? And, doesn't that mean that, in the absence of a mutually agreed-upon, signed and witnessed legal document (let's call it a "contract," for the sake of brevity) employers generally may fire employees for any reasons, no reasons and even unfair reasons, so long as they are not illegal reasons, and, employees also have the right to quit a job for any or no reason at any time? Of course, if you want to sign a contract for one year, for and $11.50 per hour (or was that $10.50? I have to agree, that ad is somewhat confusing...). Anyway, honey," she said, smoothing out her housecoat, "you're a grown man, and it's up to you. Times are tough, no doubt about it, but if it were me, I guess I wouldn't sign my life away like that for anything other than to defend my kith, kin and country in a time of real war against real enemies..."
"...whaaaaaaa????"
"That's okay dear. Maybe the family should have gone the home-school route and foregone that silly public education, hmm?"
"Yeah. Hey, maybe they've got a dungeon in the basement, huh?"
"Yes, honey. That sounds very nice."
Sincerely,
Clyde Lee Demure
P.S. to Potential Employer: Best wishes finding your Ideal Employee!
