Avoid This Job

Notable Quotables

Dear Everyone, 

Who told you you could use quotation marks for emphasis? 

No, seriously, this is not a rhetorical question: WHO WAS IT, and how did this nightmare begin? Who or what is responsible, so that we might blame and/or maim them? Is it your parents? Educators? The Internet? Is it the same person(s) who told you to repeatedly spell-slaughter the word "whoa" by writing "woah"? I KNEW IT.

Look: both mistakes are so excruciating, it is mystifying how anyone could make them even once, let alone fill the tubes of the Internet with this nonsense. Simply looking at the word "woah" immediately causes tear-ducts to fill with blood, unborn babies to spontaneously abort themselves and a plague of locusts to fall upon the land. Hyperbole? NOT AT ALL. 

Although other sites can offer an in-depth exploration of the rampant misuse of quotation marks, we thought it best to briefly review the basics here. Quotation marks are not used for emphasis. That is not why they exist, nor is it a neat thing they do on the side. There are lots and lots and lots and LOTS of different ways to express something emphatically. Quotation marks are not one of them. 

That said: here is today's "job" to avoid!

Got it. You want some...thing that is LIKE a girl to live with you for an unspecified price and the exchange of menial labor? Awesome. You also have a random capitalization fetish? Got it. It seems impossible that this could get any creepier!

Oh.

Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh

It got creepier. 

But, to be fair... times are tough. I mean, sure, nobody wants to move in with a random stranger who uses the word "girl" even more repetitively than late-eighties NKOTB, but it's rough out there. It can be hard to find a place to crash. At least this is a way to get your own space, your own bed, and-- oh, I'm sorry, what's that?

I get to sleep on a SOFA.

In your BEDROOM. 

I mean, I do get access to the dinning room.... but come on, that's the noisiest room in the house!

It certainly sounds like you have a great life. Is anything missing?

Oh! IS "ll" that's missing l'il ol' me??? ME, the stranger reading this on craigslist?? How flattering and not at all weird or inappropriate! 

Two truly wonderful things about that paragraph: 

1) The deferential respect for how your future couch-sleeping-slave's sexual orientation might "turn out." 

2) The apparently sincere use of the word "sparkle"

So... there are a lot of questions that remain deeply, uncomfortably unanswered. I assume you will wrap up all the loose ends with your closing remarks?

Precisely my final question! Thanks! 

Read the full post here for more "fun". And hey: girls, "girls" and everyone else: AVOID THIS JOB. 

(thanks to the two different ATJ readers who submitted this "job" post, Herbelem and Anonymous. You guys are "awesome", and we "salute" you.)

 

Modern Times

There's a lot to love about this modern age: refrigerators, antibiotics, indoor plumbing, the joys of basic cable, Quarter Pounders with Cheese... I mean, sure, we're all undoubtedly hurtling towards some sort of massive, man-made apocalypse, careening into the black maw of human extinction... but we've sure made our ride nice n' comfy! 

And one of the comfiest aspects of our society? Even average joes can pay someone to do just about anything they don't want to do themselves. We pay people to mow our lawns, watch our kids, deliver bags of pre-cooked food directly to our doorstep... There's basically no job too personal/big/small/gross to be outsourced. Or is there...?

 

1) Is it possible you could have written this ad without using the phrase "pubic hair" in almost every sentence (and TWICE in the subject line?) We got it. We can't un-get it. It is pressed into our brain, like a male sex symbol is apparently pressed into the silken locks around your genital area.

No, Thank You

Thanks to our anonymous submitter for today's most unfortunate job posting!

Ok!

Sounds good!

Sure thing!

WHAT THE F&*%?! No. Absolutely not. GROSS. No. What would I wear??!  How big are these "crawl spaces"?! No. Wait, do they bite? IS THERE A CHANCE I WILL GET BITTEN?! Ugh. Ugh. No.

Alrighty! Like... what kind of errands, though? "Pick up my dry-cleaning, then eradicate the killer bee swarm in my backyard. And while you're back there, if you could just crush any snakes you see, we'd be much obliged. Just kinda give their skull a good stomp, 'til you hear the crunch. Watch the fangs. Oh! And we need toilet paper. Thanks."

Point being: you obviously have a tendency to bury the lead. 

When Every Room Is The Ladies Room

So you've settled in, you've got your cup of coffee, and you're once again browsing through the job listings... man, it's all the same, right? Like, job after job, they all just blend in to one another...it's like, you can barely keep your eyes open, it's so dull---

OH MY GOD YOU STARTLED ME, JOB POST SUBJECT LINE!! With your bizarre message, obviously, but also with your ALL CAPS and your terrifyingly urgent punctuation!!!?!!!

Now, to answer your question... No. I am not. Thank goodness. It sounds both unsanitary and dehydrating.

Bed, Bath and Beyond

This post was singlehandedly responsible for the creation of a new AvoidThisJob category, entitled simply: "Ew."

• Why "today?" What is the rush? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE THE RUSH ON THIS?

Put Them All In One Basket

What. Is. Going. On.