Don't Hire Me

I am the worst possible person to ever have working in your office.

I'll ruin it for everyone. Bad. And quick.

I will come in with confidence and competence, moving shit around, shuffling papers like a Vegas blackjack dealer, putting shit in its place and making everyone take notice of how crappy they are and how great I am.

You'll forget you ever saw anyone else, that anyone ever worked there before me.

Then I'll do it. I'll soak up all your praise and excitement, you'll be thinking how wonderful everything is, how organized and perfect and dependable....you'll get comfortable. And I'll get angry. Why am I making things so easy for you? Why am I even in this shit job? Why am I going around without the recognition I deserve? THIS IS BENEATH ME! 

I will remember that I hate office work, that I hate the misogynistic structure that has me reporting to men that don't know as much as I do or to a woman who is so afraid to not be seen as a man, that she bitches down to others to respond to the bullshit in her own self serving, reflexive way.

Then I will wreak havoc.

I will remind everyone that we are getting screwed in secret meetings and lunches. I will remind myself that I am in the wrong place. The whole thing will come crashing in and I will be furious. With myself. With you. With everyone. And I will have started an incurable cancer of anger, resentment and magnifying glasses in the hands of everyone who works for you- looking closer than ever at the situation and catching your mistakes.

I will grow contemptuous and feisty and nothing will be good enough. But you will never know I did it.

If there is anything I do better than wreck an office, its stay out of the firing zone. I will rile everyone up, sure, but I won't paint my face blue and storm your office with a spear. I will do quiet, passive aggressive things, so that I can keep my job by resting on my earlier laurels, cover my desk with LOTS of shit to look busy, all while reading online articles and writing scathing blog posts. I will nod and smile while you complain of the bad attitudes.

All of this will happen because I do not belong in an office. I am a good consultant. I can come in and work for a bit and tell you what is wrong and what you could do to effect change. I can discern broken management practices, failed policies and overworked paperwork rules. Then I point it out to everyone. What usually happens is mass disgruntlement, the realization that you are being led by people who are less competent than you and the beginnings of the end of your peaceful office place.

This is not my fault, and maybe it is not yours.

But if you like the status quo, and don't want to shake it up to make things better, then don't hire me. You'll be sorry you did.