Sunday, October 4, 2020

Dear Sir or Madam,

Years ago, I created a utilitarian document titled Application Info. because job applications ask for the kind of information I can’t possibly recall in detail. Life has not been simple enough to recite my escapades from memory. The document lists places I’ve lived, schools I’ve attended, and work experiences. It tells me I’ve lived in ten different homes, moved eleven times (having returned to one address), attended nine schools, and held fourteen jobs. I’m thirty-six years old.

The unending quest for fulfilling employment necessitates such a document, and it causes me to circle the question of whether there’s something wrong with me. I dislike this mode of thought because I’ve decided that the premise– that there’s a standard of behavior that qualifies as normal– is unfounded. The human brain is too complicated a mechanism to be precisely categorized as normal and abnormal or healthy and unhealthy. We can only make guesses in these directions. A person deeply troubled by one set of circumstances adapts perfectly to another.

But most people don’t accept this. Eccentrics have always been viewed with scorn. The people who review my job history harbor this same tendency to see my past as a sign that I need to be fixed. No thirty-six-year-old should have fourteen jobs under his belt resulting in an average of 1.28 years spent at each. There’s obviously a problem there. Why should they invest in bringing someone like that onboard? And the more I move around, the worse it looks. My lily pads are running out.

I’ve never been fired, though I’ve come close once or twice. In fact, I’ve always been exemplary in attendance, punctuality, diligence, and productivity. I often get promoted shortly after starting somewhere. I’ve also never been laid off. I left every one of my jobs of my own volition.

Each experience has been different, but by the time I leave, I usually have at least three or four compelling reasons to go. Now, as I step back, I look for a common theme so I can break the habit. Why can’t I tolerate a job for any longer than my maximum stint of four years?

Am I just restless? Is it that I can’t tolerate doing the same rote tasks over and over? That may play a role, but I don’t think it’s the lead actor. Having never earned a degree, I think the largest factor is how many doors have been closed to me from the beginning. I floundered from the outset of my working life because– due to events too complex to explain here– I never got a ticket to ride the train reserved for smart people. I’ve had to run alongside it waving my hands in the hope that some sympathetic passenger at a window seat will call for a stop to let me on. Even then I only get menial assignments. I don’t get to use my gifts because society has adopted a tiered work structure that requires tokens to signify certain levels of knowledge in order to do work that seldom makes use of that knowledge. Meeting arbitrary requirements is more important than the abilities they’re supposed to confirm. I’m like a pitcher who can regularly throw an accurate fastball a hundred miles per hour, yet they tell me I can’t play in the major leagues because I never spent time in the minors. This would strike me as an arrogant claim had I not gone through hell over the last eighteen years just to regain some of the confidence I had when I graduated high school. I have climbed out of the inferno and can again admit that I have worth.

But it doesn’t help me to express all that. It does no good to write cover letters explaining it because it draws attention to my lacking degree, makes me look like a supercilious ass, and paints me as someone who complains about the status quo– something no one feels they can alter. It also amounts to asking someone to make an exception to a rule that’s so firmly embedded in the modern American psyche that doing so would take an immoral guise. To ask that an employer look at me as an intelligent autodidact with an education every bit as impressive as that symbolized by a bachelor’s degree is, in virtually every opinion, a request to be snuck in the back door. It’s cheating. It’s against the rules to treat me as a person– a life form with a unique story, special charisms, and developed insight. Hiring turns people into Scantron machines that only review credentials on paper. So I rarely get the chance to interview.

Lacking formal education is only part of the story, though. I suffer the additional curse of having a philosophical mind, which has to be the worst possible kind for a person with access only to entry-level jobs. Mine is the ceaselessly logical mode of operation that annoys people. If I had a dime for every time someone looked at me and said, “You think too much” or “You’re overthinking,” I wouldn’t need a job at all. That, of course, irritates me ineffably. While in school I had been among the sharpest students, at work I’m surrounded by those who regard intelligence as a nuisance. I invariably end up disgusted at the discrepancy between the depth of my thoughts and the cursory considerations of everyone around me.

I always seem to care more, too. It floors me how sloppy people are with their livelihood, how willing they are to accept mediocrity and collect a paycheck. I have to coach myself to care less, which is depressing for a passionate person with high ideals. How can I respect myself if I ease up on my efforts in order to blend in? It gets to a point where I’m so ashamed of what I belong to that I become desperate to escape.

It might seem the obvious solution is to finish school, but because I’ll be paying off the college loans I already have until I’m at least forty-nine, I can’t see plunging even deeper into debt only to get a degree that has an excellent chance of doing nothing to solve my problem. Philosophy is one of those majors that does nothing for you unless you go all the way to a graduate degree. There’s no way I have the time or the money for that.

Or the patience. That’s another factor that holds me back. I’ve always found myself in the Epicurean camp regarding time management. I readily admit what I don’t know, so I believe in seizing today. I believe in the urgency of now. I don’t like to plan far into the future because I have no assurance that I’ll live to see whatever I dream up, or that the conditions necessary to make it possible will continue. Yet I engage with a society that routinely takes the future for granted. Planning is all we do. Planning is how we get ahead. I left college largely because I couldn’t take all the projecting into the future. I wanted to live my life now.

I’ll never forget an interview I had once for a position as a service advisor at a body shop. The hiring manager and I got waylaid by a spirited chat about various philosophical and religious topics (which happens to me a lot), and he asked, “If that’s what you’re all about, why are you applying here?” I felt like saying, “As opposed to all the philosophy jobs out there?” But I didn’t want to make an ass of the guy. I stammered some response about my interest in cars to avoid morosely declaring that there’s no point in pursuing what I truly love. I didn’t get the job.

Everything I’ve ever done has required settling for something that could never make me happy. Whenever an interview goes well enough to result in a job offer, the phrasing always throws me: “Do you want the job?” My honest answer is no. It has always been no. I’ve never been able to consider a role that could even slightly budge me from no. Yet I have to eat. I have to contribute to my marriage. So I lie. I lie to the company making the offer and I lie to myself, hoisting myself off the mat once again with the manufactured encouragement that “Maybe I can learn to like it. Maybe this time will be different.” Every day is a new opportunity, right?

So how about this: instead of being disappointed by the included resume because you expect to find things that aren’t there, why not let yourself be pleasantly surprised by what is? Why not read between the lines to imagine what it’s like to be me? Not the piece of paper, the person. Put yourself in my shoes and experience the struggle to overcome my challenges. Think about the valuable lessons that are only taught outside of school, what it’s like to learn the hard way about humility and fortitude and perseverance and patience by getting repeatedly knocked down. Or about the toughness it takes to keep reinventing myself, to achieve goals no matter what my circumstances or how well I fit a role. Think about the conviction required for someone like me to soldier on when everyone undervalues him. Or think about what Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.^[1]

What do you think might happen if you shut down the Scantron for once and actually thought about that? About what it is you’re doing when you screen candidates through the college requirement? That maybe there’s a dangerous assumption beneath it all, that for one reason or another not every person of value comes with academia’s seal of approval? That there’s something incredibly precious about a person who pushes through failure, whose motivation isn’t to simply jump through hoops to satisfy others but to accomplish something that meets internal standards, to achieve not for mere survival or personal comfort but to bring about something truly worthwhile?

Isn’t that rarer and far more valuable?

Sincerely,

Eugene Franklin

efpreference@gmail.com

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1 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Self-Reliance and Other Essays. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1993. Digital.