Nothing Billions Of Dollars In Tax Cuts For The Shockingly Wealthy Won't Fix
My wife has a really good job. Just this year they gave out raises there for the first time in nearly five years. We were quite excited.

Then on Tuesday her company announced that they missed their revenue expectation this quarter by 25%. Woo! I was worried there for a second. Things seemed to be going way too well. The other shoe had to drop some time.

They haven't announced layoffs... yet. But they are requiring everyone to take 8 days of vacation between now and the end of the year. Luckily my wife has that many days in reserve. We're still trying to figure out what happens to the people who don't.

This part may make some of you ill. Turn away now if you're emotionally diabetic and can't process icky sweetness. I'm very proud of my wife. I've known her since we were 15, so I know everything its taken for her to get where she is. She has a degree in electrical engineering and does all kinds of fancy stuff I'm completely unqualified to even begin to explain. I have a strong suspicion it has something to do with computers, but that's about as far as I've been able to understand it so far.

She works in a field where for every female there are 10 males; 10 pasty, scrawny, socially-retarded males who break into flop-sweat in the presence of a female. I don't think it's an accident that she's not married to another engineer. Everyone knows humanities majors tend to be smokin' hot and dynamite in the sack, so I'd say she made the right choice. Of course I have only myself to use as an example, so I'm extrapolating off an infintessimally small sample, but that's never stopped me before.

The reason I know she's really good at her job (even though I also know she is getting paid less than men with comparable or even less experience) is that they have had somewhere between 6 and 10 rounds of layoffs in the time she's been there. That works out to one round every 4-6 months and she's survived them all.

So this latest confusion and anxiety is just part of a sadly regular cycle. Her best friend's fiancé just got laid off from another company. He's a mechanical engineer.

Hey, I thought going to college and getting a degree was supposed to guarantee a lifetime of financial stability and professional fulfillment? I'm feeling seriously baited-and-switched and I don't even have a job.

For kids out there reading this, then, don't go to college. It's expensive, it's boring and you'll probably get an STD somewhere along the way. Learn a trade like refrigerator or air conditioning repair. Everyone needs refrigerators and central forced air heating and cooling. Or maybe become truck driver or rodeo clown; something essential to the operation of a modern society.

Ooh, hey, you know what profession never lacks for work? Prostitution. They don't call it "the world's oldest profession" for nothing. It's recession proof. There are lots of media-driven gender stereotypes about it, but you don't have to be a woman for that one either. A guy can make a fair bit of cash at it as well, depending on what he's willing to put up his tail-pipe.

I mean hell, there's no startup cost, no equipment to purchase. You don't even have to be good at it, you just have to be at it. And so what, hey, if you need a couple extra bucks, you let a guy pee on you every once in a while. Big deal. That's worth $80 in my book any day. Plus any STDs you get you can probably write off as work-related.

It's too late for my wife and I. We already fell for the college scam. So what can I do to help? you're asking yourself. Vote for John Kerry. Sure it won't have any bearing on my wife's job, but if they do lay off more people, at least we'll have something to cheer us up if he beats that other guy. So what if voting for the more qualified... excuse me, the Democratic candidate violates all of your personal convictions (you know who you are). Think of my well-being for once, you selfish bastards.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 8.0


Pops

- posted by Pops @ 9:01 AM