MELLIPOP AND THE JOB AD

Ok, so even Seek.com.au has given up on the hopes of me finding work in Sydney. Either that, or the prick of a thing has a very nasty sense of humour.

Having done the online search for work again today and finding nothing worth applying for, I thought I’d have a little bit of lighthearted fun on Seek. As much as you can ever have fun on Seek.com.au, if you’re a sad, unemployable bastard like me.

So anyway, I’m on the home page, the point at which I enter my search criteria.

So I choose Sydney as a location, and opt for “any area”, “any classification” and “any sub-classification”. Though the pedant in me did ponder briefly the absurdity of still having the option of a “sub-classification” if you don’t actually specify a “classification” to begin with.

N’ermind.

So basically, I’m open to all comers, as long as they are based in Sydney. To prove to Seek.com.au my willingness to do absolutely anything - no matter how abysmal - I type one small yet meaningful phrase into the “keywords” field.

WORST JOB EVER.

Game on. I was challenging the fucker to hit me with it’s worst job. Ever. In Sydney.

I got one hit.

“Foremen - Here is your chance to get somewhere warm for winter!”
Its getting cold down south so why not look at moving to Brisbane and make the most of our beutiful one day perfect the next weather!!!???!!!

You know what really shits me about all this. Not just that Seek.com.au is brazenly telling me to give up and get the fuck out of Dodge, but that the gainfully employed person (or persons) who :

a) wrote the job advert
b) proofread the job advert
c) approved the job advert
d) posted the job advert

….did not even notice that the word “beautiful” was spelt incorrectly. So not only did I suffer the indignity of it being suggested to me that I actually leave the state in search of gainful employment - after specifying that said employment must be in Sydney as the ONLY criteria I required - but that the persons advising me to do so can not even spell at a third grade level. Nor do they have even a tenuous grasp on basic grammar. Sure the weather is great up in Brisbane, but to have no rain and NO COMMAs. Sorry guys, I need fucking commas.

Oh, it gets better. Grammatical atrocities aside, the bright-eyed young recruitment copywriter has really plumbed the depths of his or her creative core to deliver an engaging yet authentic account of life on-site. I mean, I've never worked in construction, but it made me really want to. Surely there must be a frustrated artist lurking in the soul of every recruitment officer.

We all know that the worst thing about being on site in winter is that first drop of cold water that runs down the back of your shirt! Or how about waking up in the dark and dragging yourself off to site only to get there and bang your frozen hands!

Yeah....that fucking sucks, man. There’s nothing worse than banging your frozen hands after waking up in the dark. Brisbane sounds better already.

Just in case you hadn’t already rushed off to pack your suitcases, the bright-eyed recruitment copywriter brings out his or her biggest literary guns yet:

The jobs are big and the jobs are interesting.

I also like the way they bold the word “jobs” twice in the one sentence. Just in case you’d forgotten why you were on Seek.com.au to start with. Well, with writing like this, you could be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled across some hidden treasure trove of previously unpublished late 19th century literature. It’s almost Dickensian, really.

Morons.