The company doesn’t want to waste your time as much as you don’t want to waste yours. The question is to make sure they can afford you. Every position is budgeted.
Be honest. Don’t be honest.
“If they want to make sure they can afford me, why don’t they tell us how much they’re paying?”
Two weeks after the grand national election and the whole media is a shitshow I can’t avoid. Mom blasts news channels on the daily. Rice scarcity and skyrocketing prices. Rigged election. Statistically impossible political party vote.
The price you pay for trying to be a smart, objective and educated citizen. The fang of depressing reality sinking deep into your skin.
Makes you wonder what’s real and what’s not. I’d like to coin the phrase gaslighted by the country but even I know how bad and un-catchy that is.
You think you’ve seen it, read it, known it from the history books. You’d think people would learn, but that’s just giving them too much credit. Politically stanced punk rock songs from the 90s suddenly sound relatable again, but that’s just because charts only play the blandest, most sanitized version of music nowadays.
What’s a radio? The youngsters would ask.
I’m turning 30 next year.
The job market isn’t like what it was in 1960. Hell, not even the 1990.
You thought you could get by just well after entering one of the most prestigious universities in the country. Diligent studies. Excellent grades. Organizational experience.
Turns out companies don’t need ‘smart’ people who have the capability to question stuff. They need ready-to-work wrench turners who don’t really ask things. Or loudmouth extroverts with the knowledge of the game, who claim to be anything but.
Be honest. Don’t be honest.
It’s no longer up to you anymore. Not your grades. Not your efforts. And certainly, not you. We may need you, but not that you, you know?
Makes you wonder what you can do by yourself, really.
Explain, they would demand.
Why you’re interested in this job. What your goal is for the next three, five, ten years. What your greatest weaknesses are. Why you have that hobby or this hobby. If you’re single and planning to marry.
Nobody asks about your favorite equation anymore. Or why some beaches have pink sands.
When you were 10 and you played with LEGO instead of investing in Apple Inc. stocks. The meme reads. I double-tap to “like” the post, then I scroll down to see my friend and her husband in the middle of the glittering Gulf country.
I feel the razorblades calling me once again. Perhaps chemical ingestion would be better, since your hand can be such a coward at the last moment.
Fitter, happier, more productive.
When are they calling my name?
Regular exercise at the gym, three times a week.
The meds act as contraception for my writing ideas, in exchange for ten hours of daily peaceful slumber. Thirty minutes five times of workout each week. Salads for breakfast, every morning.
Sometimes I wonder why I resigned from my previous job. The joyous nine hours of being in a windowless cubicle with thirteen other people. Writing reports. Monthly income. I constantly wished for earthquakes, a sudden heart attack, or alien invasion.
Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries.
I suddenly have the urge to punch the man sitting across my waiting sofa. They had never diagnosed me with aggression. Emotional issue, maybe, but never violence. If you acted up during your psychiatry queue, would they bring in the police or would they understand?
What’s your expected salary? They’d ask.
I wish it was acceptable to answer my baseline requirement is IDR 600K total for two weeks’ worth of sanity. What’s the use in prolonging the inevitable when the world is ending anyway? Lime green-and-white Equitacs for the morning, white half dose of Noztrenia in the evening.
I play a little game called “how many days since the birth of a new routine schedule will it be actually implemented?”. How many days, indeed, even I lost track.
