I just read a story about a man who delivered donuts to corporate offices under false pretenses in order to secure job interviews with big tech companies. This stunt, while creative, says more about the hiring people than it does about that individual job seeker. Hiring people have become the new lords and job seekers have become vassals—or even serfs.
These days, every middling milquetoast master expects you to bend over backwards for him (or her—assuming we’re talking about an actual human being here, which is debatable). If you don’t, the corporate cuss will just find someone who will. He’ll extend the search for months just to break your spirit, reposting the same job ad infinitum. He doesn’t care about your dignity because he doesn’t know what dignity means: He kissed every pale corporate ass he could find to get where he’s at, after all, so why shouldn’t he expect you to do the same?
The worst consequence of corporate ass-kissing culture is that almost everyone—jobless or otherwise—self-censors because they’re worried that the wrong person will get a whiff of their actual (human) personality or opinions. The parental adage to “always be yourself” has morphed into “always be what the boss wants you to be”—even if that boss isn’t even paying you. The is a new development. I grew up in the 90s, and no one ever told me I should modulate my words and behavior because some future employer could be watching or listening. It wasn’t a thing back then.
It’s a big thing now because of the goddam internet, which has managed to transform all my dreams into nightmares in less than three decades. If you’re old enough, you might recall that the internet used to be fun, even during those frustrating days of dialup and dual phone lines. Back then it was a new frontier of unlimited possibilities—and the only real villains were asshole gamer-types and pedophiles.
By now, that frontier has been settled and colonized, and we’ve added a band of brainless mouth-breathing brutes on one end and a society of simple soulless stiffs on the other who, thanks to AI, can’t even bother to use their own words to “brand” themselves. It’s not enough I have to deal with those clowns whenever I log on—I can’t even fucking be myself anymore? I took for granted that, as a (white) American, I would always have that privilege. What the fuck happened to Western culture?
Nietzsche was right about God being dead. We’ve replaced God with something far less interesting: Blind and empty conformity. Posing as a delivery man so that you can deliver donuts to strangers, who probably don’t need the extra calories, for the chance of getting a job is just a creative form of bootlicking. I don’t blame the man for doing it if he couldn’t land an interview otherwise—but bootlicking is what it is. It’s nothing anyone should be proud of or accept as normal.
But we do accept it. And we accept that we can’t be ourselves anymore or that dignity is unimportant to achieving status, wealth, stability, relevance, etc. “Authenticity” has become a buzzword that means pretending to be authentic—I hear it all the time at networking events and want to puke.
We fail to question the implications of selling out for the sake of a job. A job should work for us as much as we work for it—if not more so. But this is very often not the case. I’ve never seen a single poll or study showing that the majority of people enjoy the work they do, and the situation has gotten much worse in the age of layoffs.
We hate working a 9-to-5 job, but we’ll do almost anything to get one. It’s deeply fucking sad, and I don’t see nearly enough people crying about it. We act as if life is, to quote the movie Little Miss Sunshine, “one fucking beauty contest after another.” I never signed up for any fucking beauty contest. I was raised to think that, as a human fucking being, my life had value. But now I’m getting the impression that it doesn’t: not in America, not on the internet, not in 2025 at least. No life has any value to those corporate fuckwads.
As usual, I have no solution other than socialism—and too many Americans either hate it or don’t understand it (usually both)—so instead I’ll just offer some words of encouragement that are reminiscent of Tyler Durden’s words from Fight Club: you are not your (empty) bank account, you are not your (threadbare) khakis, you are not the contents of your resume, you ARE a lonely and unique snowflake!
Make sure every glorified goddam gatekeeper and belligerent bastard (or bitch) of a boss knows it.
Previously Published on substack
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