As I come to the end of a decently long stretch of unemployment, I have had time to reflect on the many lessons this experience has taught me. Deep, reverberating life-lessons such as:
You can only enjoy so many long walks.
You can only digest so much chocolate
You can only watch so much Oprah1
In fact, the most surprising part of doing basically nothing, is how very boring it all is.
So although I am now returning to the glamorous world of coffee breaks and regular pay, I don’t want to move on without leaving something behind for those less fortunate than myself. Something to encourage, something to inspire, but most of all, something to separate the downtrodden masses from their freshly issued unemployment checks.
That is why I am introducing my latest entrepreneurial enterprise:
Employment Quest – Jobless Fun Center.
Unlike most entertainment complexes that are designed for children and their gainfully employed paternal money dispensers, Employment Quest will feature attractions geared more towards the career-deprived individual. Exciting diversions such as:
- Bumper Cards – In this attraction, a crowd of job-seekers is staged at one side of the room; at the other end is a wealthy business tycoon, offering a single dream job. Between them is an array of obstacles and impediments such as nets, cannons, and steroid-crazed professional wrestlers. The first one to reach the businessman is rewarded with employment and a waiting team of emergency medical technicians.
- Resume Range – Potential employees line up along a low counter and hurl their resumes toward a collection of various sized funnels on the far wall. The smaller funnels deliver resumes to attractive and generous corporate recruiters looking for the next Vice President of Champaign and Bubble-Bath Evaluation. Larger funnels lead to less desirable jobs such as Pepper Spray Test Subject and Elephant Proctologic Technician.
- Guess Your Wait - Veteran carnival workers visually size up employment-hunters and estimates how long each individual has been unemployed. Evaluations are based on subjective measurements of each player’s self-respect, desperation, and ramen noodle intake. No prizes are awarded, but those receiving an inaccurate guess, off by more than two days, are allowed to pummel the carnie with a rabid porcupine2
- Sweating Zoo – Job-seekers enter a small, humid, dimly lit room where corporate wolves, sharks, and other alpha types hit them with their most intimidating interview questions and an occasional frozen ham. Success is determined on the basis of overall perspiration levels and blood stains. Winner receives the satisfaction of survival, losers are relocated to a third world country, given jobs in fast food, and taught just enough of the local language to say, “Would you like locusts with that?”
The Employment Quest concept is definitely a winner3 and I am currently lining up investors to back this new venture with funding, advertising, and lots of executive brownies. So if you are a multinational corporate conglomerate and you have a few billion dollars set aside for unknown market domination, then this is the opportunity for you. Contact me at my new marketing organization, Ominous Business Tactics, and soon we could be reaping the rewards of widespread unemployment together.
This post is only needs an opportunity to prove itself over at humor-blogs.com.
- The legal limit for Brain Oprah Content is .067 minutes per day, anything above that is considered to be intellectually impaired. «
- The positive therapeutic effects of this attraction on unemployment stress levels are the subject of an article in this month’s edition of Psychological Trauma Today.
Note: We have immediate openings for three full-time wait guessers. See the OC HR department for further details. « - The true, unbeatable beauty of this concept is that although unemployment levels rise and fall like any other market, a few “insider layoffs” by investor companies is all it would take to put Employment Quest back on the road to profitability in the case of any unfortunate surges of employment. «
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What a great idea! I’d also like to suggest (for the really desperate) a Welfare/Foodstamps/Medicaid triathlon, or the Couch Potato 500. You could even make this bigger, and have an Unemployedlympics (I think I’d be a shoe-in for the gold medal in the “Worrying About the Future” event). Michigan would be the host state, of course, since it has the highest unemployment rate in the country.
Funny post!
Ok, America, listen up…those of you traveling 6000 miles an hour across the Bush superhighway of economic doom, take exit 4.7 to the Jobless Fun Center!
What a great investment opportunity for corporate billionaires to once again show us how they could really give a sh*t about those who make them their billions.
I smell a reality show…
Funny!*
* Is Oprah’s time allotment affected at all by the guest? Just wondering.
I totally agree that long walks are highly overrated. And do you need a digital paper shredder for your venture? I’m game.
Time would be better spent taping Oprah and cutting out all the coomercials. Then more time for other couch potato activities!
I see you have yet to discover the world of MMORPG’s.
The cool thing about MMPORG’s is that it’s more important to be witty than it is to have fast thumbs. He/she with the best comeback always wins.
I already went through the Sweating Zoo, but instead of a third world country fast food joint, I landed in a Home Depot in an obscure little town in Maine. I feel cheated. I’d rather push fried locust than work there. I am getting out of there ASAP. I mean, the people are nice……… but I just don’t look good in orange. I think I’ll try the Resume Range next. I’ve already been a pepper spray test subject, but I’ll give that other one a whirl.
Virtual goat. Hilarious! Perhaps I can borrow the pooper scooper guy for my cat box. He wouldn’t mind, would he?
Oh, and mayhaps you could explain the bit about the mayo enema?
Heh, I’ve been trying for coming up on 40 years, and I’ve not yet found my chocolate limitations. I’ll keep working on that though.
But the commercials are the most intelligent part of the show.
Actually, the whole show is a commercial for her cause of the week as far as I can tell.
I tuned in for the first time in years and saw her singing the praises of Vera Wang and her new line of Siberian Gulag inspired clothing.
(sigh)
Thanks,
I like the triathlon idea, but the couch thing is brilliant. We could race wheeled couches like some people do with hospital beds.
My couch would have to be plaid, and I have the perfect team to race it.
Yes, I think we could increase the safe exposure time if had people like the Freakomics guys or Dave Berry, but she always seems to hold out for the Dr. Phils of the world.
Inconceivable.
Of course, why didn’t I think of that. It would be a lot less messy than the virtual goat we have disposing papers now. And I could promote the pooper-scooper guy to Official Legal Council.
Of course he would still be shoveling crap.
I am so far out of the loop that I had to google it.
No, I don’t play many games these days. Every time I get the itch my kids soundly defeat me in whatever I am playing.
My ego has shut me down for its own protection.
I don’t know, now that I have made him an attorney he seems reluctant to go anywhere he might get his expensive shoes dirty.
And he’d probably bill you by the hour.
Sorry kellypea, that is a closely guarded secret that should have never been mentioned around here or anywhere else. However, if you must know than Dr. T holds a special demonstration every third Tuesday of the month. I hear he is looking for a test subject.
A good magician never gives away his secrets. But I’m not a magician, just stubborn.
It was not a failing on the part of chocolate, it was just that my limited physical body could keep up with it.