There I was stuck in dead end job #2 during the Decade of Dispair. An opportunity had presented itself in the help wanted section of the local fish rag that seemed to be up my alley but I was wary. After all, I had jumped from the frying pan and into the fire so many times in a row there was little of me left except for a charbroiled piece of gristle. Life is a cruel teacher and I had learned the lessons well: You may be up to your nose in shit but the next job could be worse. Much worse.

So yeah, you might say I was wary.

The one encouraging sign was the fact that the ad actually contained the word “ethics.” That caught my eye. Was that the tiniest glimmer of hope I saw there on the distant horizon? No. It turns out that cheater liars don’t have any compunction about using the word “ethics” in a deceitful way. Duh!

I skillfully and cleverly googled the scanty factual info contained in the ad and quickly had the name of the business, the address, the owner’s name, and his Facebook page and that of his wife’s. I studied it carefully, asking myself: “Is this guy an asshole? A giant douchebag? Or someone I could actually work for?” I devoured everything I could find but there were no easy answers.

I found the company website and studied it. If hired, no doubt I’d be hitching my wagon to that horse. It was a hideous piece of garbage and looked like it had been designed by a small child. I checked the source and saw it was made in Microsoft Frontpage and was probably 10 years old. Ugh. It did have some personality, most likely pompous (this was a small business after all) and I tried to get a read on how that might translate into working for them. No dice.

I studied his Facebook profile picture. It was hard to read this particular book by the cover. Asshole or nice guy? It could have gone anyway. No help there. Now that I know him, though, I estimate the picture is at least 10 years old. There’s another picture of him that I’ve seen since. He loads it on the office computers as the login avatar. If I had seen that version I would have run for the hills. He was wise to keep it far from his Facebook.
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