I read other peoples' resumes for a living.

I'm freelancing for a guy who's freelancing for one of the big temp agencies, converting their resume files to computer data. We scan the resumes, convert the scans to text files, proofread and save. This double translation from text to visual image to text can produce interesting mistakes, especially if fancy typefaces or smudge from poor faxing is involved. "Human relations" came back as "muffin relations"; "the Dean's Honor List" as "the Dean's Horror List." A man who once managed the valving department now "massaged" it. Another stated his Objective: "To gain a position in a company where I can achieve..." etc. The computer restated it as "a position in a company whore."

The resumes are pretentious—or pathetic—or sometimes both. Pretentious is the "Objective" stated across the top (company whores or no); self-improvement quotes from some Chinese philosopher; the long-winded list of every task done at every job or of every scientific paper ever contributed to. Pathetic—as in pathos—is degrees from vo-tech community colleges and job descriptions like "Customer Service Specialist, Hardees: filled customer orders, handled complaints, serviced equipment." Translation: they worked long exhausting hours in a humiliating uniform, burned by fryers and abused by jerks when the food wasn't in their mouths ten seconds after they ordered it; all for the princely sum of minimum wage. So they study on How To Write a Successful Resume, in a tattered library book or a night-school class taught by a onetime Dale Carnegie graduate, and are told that Successful Resumes begin with one's Objective. Some go further, with a Summary—self-directed, goal-oriented individual, able to see the `big picture.'" Height, weight, eye and hair colors are offered; the wife's name and the marriage date. Interests/Activities are detailed: "camping...weight lifting...Cub Scout leader...deacon...taking care of two wonderful children, Kimberly and Sherri." In resumes the peculiarly American trait of bullshitting salesmanship reaches an inevitable extreme. These people are trying to sell themselves; and the more irrelevant personal stuff they spill, the more "human touch" heartstrings they try to play, an edge of desperation shows that makes my skin start to crawl.

(The creeps come because I'm a private person, leery of spilling his own beans without good reason and safe company. I loathe bullshit, and emotional manipulation and any situation where I put myself in someone's power and have to supplicate them for things—like a job. The gilding in my own resume makes me wince. I have never had a "good" job interview—I always felt like Oliver Twist asking Newt Gingrinch for more gruel. Thus it's ironic that this job didn't come via my resume. I got it—indirectly—through breaking the sodomy law in the bathroom of a gay bar. The guy I work with was one of my partners in so-called "crime"; we dated a few times afterward, and he asked if I'd like to work with him. Once up to speed on the job, I ended the sex, not liking to mix work and play.)

I work at his house, where he has a full computer setup. He sleeps by day, working evenings at his other job and nights on our project. Between us we can process a couple hundred resumes each day. For each completed page we turn in, the temp agency pays him 88 cents. This is regardless of how long the page took to scan and proof—five minutes or an hour—and regardless of time lost rebooting the computers when they lock up, or the hour he had to spend at the dentist's getting a tooth fixed, or the week I had strep throat and should've stayed in bed but didn't. Benefits, of course, are nonexistent. It's piecework: the same system many sweatshops work on.

The people who have entrusted their resumes to the agency may not fare much better. Temps don't have to be given benefits like health insurance or vacations. They're easily replaced: if one rocks the boat—say, by making pointed remarks about unionizing—just terminate him and hire another. Laying off real employees and replacing them with temps can also make the profit margin look pretty at stockholders' meetings. In the hands of clever spin-doctors, it could even give the illusion of a noble company keeping American jobs for Americans, instead of shuffling off to Mexico. Meanwhile, the temps make less than they would as full-timers, and don't know when or how long their next job will be; yet the rent and car payments and student loans continue on schedule. Irregular pay and regular bills don't sound like fun to me. How many of these people are my parents' age and going temp because their "lifetime" career was shot out from under them due to some suits-n-ties on faraway Wall Street playing financial Twister?

…

The temp agency is in a yupscale west Raleigh office building, designed in what I call "Postmodern Lite": pretty to attract fashionable tenants, but "architectural" enough to not get frowned upon by diehard Modernists at NC State's Design School just down the road. The parking lot is filled with BMW's and Jeep Cherokees, personalized plates like FORGEAHD or DONEDEAL or LIVE2WIN. There is a personalized doormat; carpeted and paneled elevators; and potted plants—real, not plastic—in the lobbies, beneath innocuous abstract paintings.One day in the elevator, an aging preppy remarks to me that "it's a beautiful day—a great day for golf." I cringe. An image comes to mind, of Hootie and the Blowfish thwacking their way round a Pinehurst course; and I wonder if golf balls can be rigged to lethally explode on contact.

Martin K Smith

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