Productivity Aids October 11, 2007
Posted by jamie in leisureworn.trackback
So, job-hunting. The whole process is, of course, thoroughly distasteful and would ideally be unnecessary; but one thing I especially hate about it is writing the bah-zillions of self-aggrandising cover letters that one has to.
Whilst I am sporadically capable of one-off, Christmas-special flashes of staggering arrogance, I am in general a total, painful cripple as far as self-confidence goes. Thus, there is a certain psychic dissonance that arises when my average working day consists of composing between five and ten letters proclaiming just what a brilliant and motivated and team-playing and appropriately-experienced and priority-management-capable individual I am, when I know damn well that just about all I’ve been capable of in the past month has been sitting on my arse and tapping at my laptop, consuming four packs of Go Ahead! Apple And Sultana Slices at a sitting, and occasionally shouting at my parents or crying when they ask me to do the washing up.
In the last week or so, said psychic dissonance has been considerably reduced by consumption of moderate to large quantities of red wine – in other words, I discovered that it was much easier to write that kind of crap if you are pissed to high heaven and then some. The words flowed much easier, and my tendency to look back over what I had written, wince and write the whole thing over again was much reduced. A flawless plan.
Flawless until, rather obviously, I began to getting feedback on those emails which I had so merrily dispatched. As I looked rather crankily through my inbox this morning, I began to wonder if claiming “stupendous outlook skills” or “an unfathomable way with the English language” was really as charming as it had seemed at time of writing. No sooner had these doubts begun to arise than I received an email from one of my lucky, lucky potential future employers. Potential? A shoe-in! Anyway, this mail informed me that, as I was applying to work as a PA, demonstrating a tendency to forget attachments in important emails – such one to which I had forgotten to actually attach my CV – was probably not such a great idea. Furthermore, I should not worry unduly about contacting them in the future.
Perhaps not a great loss, given that their original advert had required someone with “excellent spelling and grammer”. But lesson learned, nonetheless. Sobriety whilst working FTW.
Glad to see that others find it as painful as I did. In recompense for the guilty shaudenfreude this entry aroused in me I’ll mail you the contact details of the Graduate Recruitment company. Nice entry.
x
While hardly a shining beacon of hope for us poor sods still on the JET program, this is pretty damn funny, Jaime. I enjoyed very much. I’d give you commiserations, but you don’t want those, do you? You wanna come back to Japan and visit us. I miss our slightly uncomfortable, indecipherable and hilarious friday lunches with raukura and melissa.
Heh, I *do* miss those lunches, you know. It’s comforting to know that somebody find this stuff at least mildly entertaining; and let’s face it, this last made a nice change from the sub-literary emo bollocks that seems to have prevailed of late. Would write more often, but don’t want to overuse that magnificent Facebook widget that kanchos everyone whenever I post =D I’ll gchat you sometime soon, man. My conversations are not surreal or vile enough these days.