The Great 2008 JobHunt Continues

So I'm thinking, should I treat my life, or at least the job hunting part of it, like a reality TV show? There definitely seems to be a lot of opportunities on craigslist for reality show contestants, like: "Did you just go through a bad breakup? Open audition! Tell us your story!" It used to be when you broke up with someone, all your friends got sick of hearing about it. But now you can go on TV and get paid? I don't know.

I'm not only looking on craigslist. I'm also contacting the human resources departments of enormous institutions such as universities, the US Government, Starbucks, and the Post Office. But do I really want to work at the Post Office, or should I just read Bukowski's “Post Office” again?

What I would really like is if someone said, “Randy, you sure have a lot of books. We would like to pay you to read your books!” It's not likely to happen, but that got me to thinking, what jobs can you read at? Night Watchman, maybe? That got me to looking at the security jobs on craigslist, which there are always a lot of, though it always makes me suspicious when they sound TOO good. "We are hiring 25 people, high pay, no experience required, etc." What is the catch? Do they make you pay for training? Do have to buy your own uniform?

One security guard job said that they would train you for free, in a 47 hour course, to carry a firearm. They said 40 hours is at the range, learning how to load and shoot the weapon, and then there is 7 hours on when to, and when not to, use the weapon. This was shocking to me. Well, hopefully one would NEVER have to use the weapon, but still. When you see a person working as a security guard, carrying a gun, it concerns me a little that they were given all of 7 hours of training on when they should use it or not. Not to mention that with any kind of education, if you don't constantly relearn what you’ve learned you will forget it. What country are we living in anyway? Oh... right.