A Job! A Job! My kingdom for a JOB!

And the search continues. 'Tis a strange and daunting world out there and one with which I am loath to interact. Not that there are not wondrous and venerable people to be found out there. On the contrary. There is a plethora of fantastic, witty, honest and interesting sorts out there. It's just unfortunate that none of these people employ people.

I blame HR. Human Resources. Which to me sounds like a ministry department in a highly developed cannibalistic society. In the good old days (oh my god! I'm a grumpy old man at the age of thirty one!) people were employed by the boss, or failing that, the boss's right hand man (and when I say "man" I also mean "woman", I just didn't say right hand "person" because it sounds stupid. Sue me.).

But today, in our faced paced world where idiocy is at your fingertips and mind numbing bureaucracy is only a short email away, the boss has done away with hiring and firing altogether. Instead giving the task to other employees, even giving them there own little department. Human Resources. A whole department dedicated to the noble pursuit of hiring like minded sycophants and masochists and weeding away the talented and even competent.

The main problem is that, essentially, you're giving ultimate power to, intrinsically, the powerless. In most cases these very young women of Human Resources (yes, that's a generalization. But one based on fact.) know what the company does but not how it does it, know the "essential criteria" that must be exhibited by a potential employee but lack any of these skills themselves, can hire someone with a pay package quadruple their own but be hard pressed to have a say in the colour of the office kettle. Yet here they are, Gods amongst mortals. And if you think that it's the heads of the different departments who have the final say on a hiring (or for that matter a firing) then think again. From my short stints in various large offices I came to fear the girls in HR, as everyone did. You see, they can hold back information, diddle with your file, and if you really piss them off, they can start a rumour. I was once witness to the near collapse of a large institution's subsidiary office all because a HR lady thought her stapler had been stolen (it ended up being found in the office fridge. Ain't they always?).

So be careful out there, Kids, because it ain't the boss that can make your life a living hell any more. It's worse.

It's middle management.