Last week I had a kerfuffle with a stranger on the Internet. It was hardly anything worth reporting but it encapsulates a much bigger issue that bugs me enough that I can’t think of anyone better to share with than y’all, my interweb kitten pals.

I was perusing through the job listings on Craigslist as I am wont to do, like 10 times a day. I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE THINKING: Why are you looking on Craigslist for jobs, aren’t the only people on that whack site crazy serial killers, like Buffalo Bill from “Silence of the Lambs” plotting to lure you into a dark lair to murder you and make a meat dress from your starved hanging flesh? Probably. Every so often I find a job that I think I would like and yes, I will send a resume and witty cover letter and I will inevitably hear the sound of interweb crickets. I often wonder if my applications are going straight into a SPAM box but then every once in awhile I will get a response. A couple of times even, I had interviews and thought everything went swimmingly well and would be perfect for the job(s) but then never heard from the prospective employers again. I can only assume they called me to check out the size of my ass to see how my hide would fit into their designs. Still crazy that I didn’t get hired because I have enough flesh to last for weeks in a hole in the basement. Trust.

I found a job title that caught my eye: STUDIO MANAGER IN LESLIEVILLE. Pretty generic, so I clicked on the description of requirements which was all check: Must have computer skills blah blah, social media, blogging, Facebook, blah blah, MUST HAVE RELIABLE CAR…$11 an hour, hours from noon til 5, MUST BE AVAILABLE FOR “OVERTIME” WHEN ASKED.

First of all, before we comb through the true crime of this ad, I really hate it when job listing don’t actually list the company’s name because then when you are writing your witty and personalized cover letter, you have nothing to research so you can throw in some inside knowledge. We are only going to have to assume that Buffalo Bill of Craigslist was placing the ad, and his “studio” is where he makes his meat dresses. Except Buffalo Bill is most probably female which I will explain later, so we will now refer to her as “Buffalo Billie” from now on. If you know it’s Buffalo Billie’s human meat dressmaking studio, you can write a little personal nugget: “And I loved your last year’s winter collection of wrap dresses made from the hide of Italian men, so luxurious!”

So I read the ad, even though it’s the kind of job I would want whatever it was, I let it go and kept scrolling on because part-time/minimum wage is not really going to work out long term for moi. Why would Buffalo Billie not just put “Internship” on the listing like everyone else? That way you know they are looking for university graduates desperate enough to work for shite pay, or no pay at all, or a hilarious “stipend” that you carry to the bank at the end of a term that can maybe cover your metropass, a can of Arizona Ice Tea and a lottery ticket at the corner store.

But whatevs, so what? Buffalo Billie can pay whatever she wants, it’s her business. Besides a lot of people have two jobs. They can work for Buffalo Billie in the day from 12 to 5 and then trot over to their servers job at night. BUT! Then I thought, how can you have a second job when Buffalo Billie wants you to work over-time at her whim? I did my maths in my head and calculated that at $11 an hour, which is basically minimum wage, and 5 hours a day, you are making $55 per day, $275 a week, a little over $1100 a month! AND she wants you to own your own car so you can fetch her some twine at Staples to topstitch her latest collection of Chinese Cheongsams made from the flesh of…well, you know. SHE WANTS YOU TO OWN YOUR OWN CAR AND WORK FOR MINIMUM WAGE! IS THIS CRAZY OR WHAT? Unless you won your car on “The Price is Right” and live in your mother’s basement, I fail to see how this is even possible.

Well, I let all that sink in and before I knew it, I had a bee buzzing in my bonnet, and when that happens, my fingers turn to scorpions and I will lay wrath where wrath is due.

You know I am a salty bitch and swear (in writing) like a longshoreman and I am unapologetic about it. The smartest people in the world (Louis CK and my friend Lorraine) will lay an “F” bomb here and there and it sounds highly intellectual. I’m just telling you this now because, I answered Buffalo Billie’s ad like this: