I applied for a job last night with the following text in an email. The job was offered by Six Foot Chipmunk to do community organizing for the film Inequality for All.
Hi Steph,
I am so close to being your perfect candidate for this position, except that I don’t really want it. Wait. That may be the wrong way to start this email. Let me start over.
Hi Steph,
I’m so close to being the perfect candidate for this position. Since I am an overachiever in three of the six Minimum Qualifications and I’m a huge fan of Robert Reich, I have an even better idea to offer you. I would be so willing to help you with your digital presence online for this effort.
If you look at my ABOUT page and my Resume, you’ll see I’m way over-qualified to accomplish this and even more. In fact, believe it or not (and it will be even more difficult to believe while reading this email) I get paid a ridiculous amount of money as a writer. This is due to some weird crack in the cosmic order, I’m sure, but nevertheless, it behooves me to exploit that sh*t until I retire, which may be a very long time according to Professor Reich.
If you’ve gotten this far without hitting Delete, I can only add that I’m sincerely interested in helping get the word out about the film and would work for minimum wage to do it. Not the real minimum wage, because no one can live on that. I mean the wage that you offered in the job listing. Only for writing instead of community organizing, which, as you by now realize, would be a disaster to have me doing.
If this sounds at all fun to you and didn’t give you a headache, I look forward to hearing from you.
Most sincerely,
Brian
It’s true that I really don’t want the job they were offering because I’m now the World’s First Certified Me-Lancer. But I’d had a couple of beers and at the time it seemed like a really good idea to just ask for the job I wanted. And I figured that a company named Six Foot Chipmunk would understand and not judge.
Here was Steph’s reply:
Brian,
Thanks for the early morning chuckle.
Alas, we only have the funds to hire community organizers.
I hope you’ll turn out a huge group for our opening night in Seattle on 9/27! I think we’ll be at the Harvard Exit.
Cheers,
Steph
[sigh]
