by Jeff Tompkins

Created on: April 21, 2008

I have been trying to identify the most ludicrous occupation in the world and I think I may have located it. I do not mean to imply that I researched every occupation in the world. That endeavor would qualify as the winner, and the process would be moot. Unless I got a huge government grant for the study, which, now that I think about it, might actually be possible. That is, if there's any government grant money left after studying the mating habits of giraffes and the grooming techniques of the yak. But I digress.

My study took place over the course of many years and consisted of observing jobs in personsometimes my own, when I was actually paying attention to what I was doing, which was rarely necessary in most of my jobsand some observed on a third-party basis, such as watching others perform their jobs on TV.

One of my first jobs was through a "temp service," which is code for a company hiring you without having to give you benefits. The job was about thirty minutes from home and while the time spent in the car would be an annoyance, the travel cost wasn't a hindrance because this was back when you could afford a full tank of gas without having to sell a major bodily organ. When I arrived at the job I was told that I would be organizing a warehouse, which didn't sound good, and wasn't, because it involved operating a forklift. The people at the temp service had, for some reason, failed to ask me if I knew how to operate a forklift, which I didn't. I don't think I had even been near a forklift, save for some instances of trivial vandalism when I was much younger. So long ago, in fact, that the statute of limitations has long expired, which is why I am free to mention it here.

Anyway, I listened intently to the warehouse manager's instructions and thirty minutes later, when everything had been explained to me, when I was ready to get into the forklift and get to work, when the manager went to another part of the building to do something, I promptly located the nearest door, slipped out, and went home.

I'm not saying that my job (or what was supposed to be my job) was stupid. I'm saying the occupation of temp service job placement is. How else could you explain the fact that they subjected me to roughly two hours worth of personality tests and computer proficiency tests for a forklift job? Now, I am not an expert in job placement, but it seems to me that if you are hiring someone to drive a forklift, the test should be: Can this person drive a forklift?

There are

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>