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The shortest job I ever held lasted only two weeks. I took the job because the ad in the paper claimed that it was an all-outdoor hands-on position working with troubled youth in the wilderness. It appeared to be a job that I could not pass up. The only trouble was that I was to be working a set shift, which was no less than 7 days in length, after which I would have a week vacation.

Thanks to the advent of the Internet, applying to this job was simple. I just filled out a couple of pages of online forms and waited, not really expecting much because due to the advent of the Internet, much of what we submit gets transmitted using the latest cutting edge technology only to be lost when the recipient prints out the information and then loses the pages somewhere in their unorganized cubicle.

A few days later a large envelope arrived in my mailbox. It was marked urgent on the front and on the backside it had a hand-scribbled return address to some place in Colorado I'd never heard of. Curious, I opened the envelope to see what was inside. Although I had applied to a job in New York, the place that took my application was located in Colorado. It seemed like an unusual arrangement to have the hiring people located somewhere halfway across the country from the actual job site.

Instead of an interview, I was given what is called an on-site skills evaluation. In common terms, it means that you are to be watched closely while you are working and during a specific period of time, your skills are monitored and you are paid according to what they think you are worth. They also have the right to terminate your position at any time during this period. To be perfectly honest, I think the idea is inferior to a traditional interview because you are not told specifically up front about pay, benefits, etc., but I digress.

My first day on the job, I was directed to a big red cabin out in the middle of nowhere somewhere in the Adirondack Mountains just off a main highway. There I met Dave who was to be my immediate supervisor and the person whom I had to report to every morning at 8:00 AM. Dave was a tall slender man who owned two identical sweaters; one blue, the other gray, and he always wore one of them. He drove a tiny gray car and was popular with the ladies. No life to speak of, he immersed himself in work and worked long hours, many of the overtime paid off-the-books. He explained how the company was run and gave me a brief tour.

The cabin was home to several people, each with

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