A collection of bitterly hilarious job application letters.
Applying for a job is stupid. It is a demeaning, humiliating exercise in learning to grovel in front of faceless strangers. Everyone who has ever sent a job application letter has felt the urge, the temptation to say what they really think. To say something completely insane, or to be brutally honest. With 2007’s Overqualified, Joey Comeau acted on those urges and delivered a book collecting his cover letters. “It’s sad and fragmented and, in places, funny,” the L.A. Times said. But even after the dozens of insane, hilarious, and sometimes strangely sad job application letters, he still didn’t get the job. So he’s at it again. A person needs to work, you know? But he’s had to step things up a bit. Were the letters not insane enough? Was he not sad or stupid enough? Did he not threaten to bite as many CEOs as he should have? There’s only one way to find out: OVERQUALIFIEDER.
A collection of bitterly hilarious job application letters.
Applying for a job is stupid. It is a demeaning, humiliating exercise in learning to grovel in front of faceless strangers. Everyone who has ever sent a job application letter has felt the urge, the temptation to say what they really think. To say something completely insane, or to be brutally honest. With 2007’s Overqualified, Joey Comeau acted on those urges and delivered a book collecting his cover letters. “It’s sad and fragmented and, in places, funny,” the L.A. Times said. But even after the dozens of insane, hilarious, and sometimes strangely sad job application letters, he still didn’t get the job. So he’s at it again. A person needs to work, you know? But he’s had to step things up a bit. Were the letters not insane enough? Was he not sad or stupid enough? Did he not threaten to bite as many CEOs as he should have? There’s only one way to find out: OVERQUALIFIEDER.
eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
A collection of bitterly hilarious job application letters.
Applying for a job is stupid. It is a demeaning, humiliating exercise in learning to grovel in front of faceless strangers. Everyone who has ever sent a job application letter has felt the urge, the temptation to say what they really think. To say something completely insane, or to be brutally honest. With 2007’s Overqualified, Joey Comeau acted on those urges and delivered a book collecting his cover letters. “It’s sad and fragmented and, in places, funny,” the L.A. Times said. But even after the dozens of insane, hilarious, and sometimes strangely sad job application letters, he still didn’t get the job. So he’s at it again. A person needs to work, you know? But he’s had to step things up a bit. Were the letters not insane enough? Was he not sad or stupid enough? Did he not threaten to bite as many CEOs as he should have? There’s only one way to find out: OVERQUALIFIEDER.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781770908192 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ECW Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 120 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Overqualifieder.
By Joey Comeau, Crissy Calhoun
ECW PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Joey ComeauAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77090-819-2
CHAPTER 1
For Adrian.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking the time to read this, my second collection of cover letters. But before you start, I wanted to make something clear. This is a different book from the first. This volume is a collection of more funny letters, and not an experimental novel in the way the first sometimes was. There is no hidden narrative in these pages. No story of a doomed romance, no struggles with the death of a loved one. Though every letter is signed with my name, you'll find a different sort of crazy person at the heart of each.
Also worth noting: every one of these letters was actually sent to a company, and not one of them ever replied. It breaks my heart.
I hope you like the book.
Joey Comeau
Dear Disney,
I am writing to apply for a position as anything with your company. I don't care if you have me parking cars. Yesterday was my three-month anniversary of looking for work, and my dad says that I can't find a job because I'm not a gay, crippled immigrant, so you can understand why it'd be nice to move out.
Joey Comeau
Dear Radiotech,
Thank you for taking the time to consider me for the position of Radiographer with your company. The first time I ever saw an X-ray machine, I was coming through airport security, with my dad. I must have been eight years old at the time, and the customs official put my teddy bear through the machine just like my mom said he would.
He took my whole family into this little room, and I was terrified. But my dad wasn't. My dad kept smiling the whole time, and his voice was real quiet. He stood between the security guard and us, and he said, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," and the official laughed nervously and patted the gun on his hip.
"Oh yeah?" he said, and my dad just nodded, real slow.
"The easy way," my dad said, "is I knife you."
Later on, when I was in my first year of university, I lived with a friend named Alex. When I found myself once again covering Alex's rent money, my mom told me, "Never lend money to a friend, because you lose both the money and the friend." My father told her to mind her own business. He said, "Let him make his own mistakes, Karen."
After three months of covering his rent, I was out of money and desperate. Week after week, Alex kept telling me that he'd pay me when he had "the money to spare," and I didn't know what to do. So I called my father, and he told me exactly what had to be done. Step by step. His voice was quiet and calm.
I woke up early the next morning and went into Alex's room, where he was sleeping. I carefully set a phonebook, open halfway, on his stomach and then I took a hammer to him.
Waiting for the taxi to take us to the hospital, I told him, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," and Alex just stared at me, clutching his stomach, tears on his face. "The easy way," I told him, "is I knife you. The hard way is you start giving me straight answers about my money, and we can work on rebuilding the trust that is essential to our friendship."
At the hospital, I watched as the technicians X-rayed him, looking for internal damage. I thought, "This is a cushy job. All you have to do is push a button and keep your goddamned mouth shut."
I decided that I wanted to be a Radiographer.
Joey Comeau
Dear NSCC,
I am sending you my resume in the hopes that you will hire me for the position of Research Assistant with the Nova Scotia Community College. I have extensive experience working with GIS software, and I would like to take a minute to better outline my qualifications.
Last night, I was in bed with a boy (whose name escapes me just now), and afterward he said, "When did you know you were gay? Thirteen? Fourteen?"
I smiled as wide as I could, and I told him, "Oh, I wasn't gay when I was a kid."
"Oh no?" he said, with that knowing grin. He ran his fingers over the tattoo that runs across my torso, "GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS 4 LIFE."
"Nope," I said. "I turned gay when I was twenty-one years old, on February 15th." I gave him a playful kiss on the cheek. "It was cold and grey, and I was on my way home from the movies. I had just gone to see a showing of Fight Club, and I remember thinking that there had been too many shirtless men. A car came out of nowhere, and I didn't have time to jump out of the way. Later, the doctors said that it was unlikely the accident had caused my homosexuality. But I knew better."
"What?" he said.
"I was hit by a car," I told him. "And now I'm gay."
Sorry for the trip down memory lane, NSCC, I know it's not standard for a cover letter, but I think it is important to explain myself. You see, it's like that with GIS, too. A second, similar accident happened to me about two years ago: a bus stopped too quickly, causing me to lose my balance and hit my head, leaving me with the desire to devote my life to geographic information programming.
I've done nothing but study GIS and sleep with men since the accidents. I've never been one to question the hand I'm dealt.
I look forward to hearing from you about this position.
Joey Comeau
Dear Northwood Care,
I am writing to apply for the position of Marketing Director at Northwood Care. You want someone who can meet your subscriber and revenue growth needs. I believe I could help you surpass them. I'm including my resume, which details the extensive experience I have working in marketing, as well as my experience with the elderly and the physically challenged.
But allow me to propose something. Your company cares for the elderly and the infirm. In order to understand how you can increase the number of your subscribers, I think it is valuable to examine the reasons that people choose to place themselves or their loved ones in your care.
When people are no longer able to take care of themselves, or when their loved ones are no longer able to take care of them, it is sometimes best for them to seek professional care. But what if there were other pressures that led people to seek your services? What if you yourself were to introduce new market pressures, creating need where before there had been none?
Imagine, if you will, an elderly woman with an adequate retirement fund. This woman has no family, but she takes good care of herself and is in good health; she has no need for your services. Your old marketing strategists would have looked on her as being outside of your potential subscriber base, and that is a mistake.
What if that woman were to fall out of the back of a speeding car and break her hip irrevocably? If this woman lived in your small town, she would have several options for care. She may choose you, she may not. It's a free country. But what if someone had whispered a suggestion to her before she accidentally fell from that car? What if she felt she would be somehow safer at your home for the infirm and the physically challenged? Somehow less likely to find herself physically challenged again?
I hope that you will contact me about this position. I feel that we could make great things happen together, and we could help a large number of people find the care and, more importantly, the security they need.
Yours, Joey Comeau
Dear Frito-Lay potato chip company,
I don't know if an email cover letter can properly express the admiration I feel for men and women who have become rich off potato chips. Thank you. Seriously, THANK YOU, for taking the time to review my resume. I realize that the last time I applied for a job with your company, I accidentally included an instant messenger transcript that reflected poorly on my character, but I have fixed the copy-and-paste bug that led to that particular CHRIS SAYS: also, i thought that a great new trend to start would be to yell something insane every time i orgasm with a girl..... like, "HERE COMES THE CRAZY JUICE." Wait. I told you that one, didn't I?
JOEY SAYS: You did. I mentioned it in bed this evening, actually.
CHRIS SAYS: What about the one where I yell "I HATE MY DAD" when I come.
JOEY SAYS: I love you, man.
Which is exactly the sort of experience and underlying motivation that makes for a valuable employee, I think you'll agree. CHRIS SAYS: or you could just yell "GIVE IT BACK. GIVE IT BACK."
JOEY SAYS: haha. Or "CAN YOU HEAR THAT MUSIC? IS THAT YOUR BEEF PEACH SINGING TO ME?" copy-and-paste problems are JOEY SAYS: or "MY COLONISTS! MY COLONISTS ARE COLONIZING YOUR BEEF PEACH!" Technical know-how and potato chip enthusiasm. And that said, I look forward to hearing from you regarding this position.
Yours, JOEY SAYS: "BEEEEEEEF PEACH" Comeau
Dear Alpin,
I am writing to apply for a position as Inside Account Executive, though perhaps I should wait until I'm less upset to send this email. I'm not a "racist." I respect people of all races equally, or I'm trying to. It takes time to check and make sure.
You can't just say "every race is equal" without doing any research. That's not SCIENTIFIC. What if the Chinese really were all monsters? Just because something isn't polite to say, that doesn't make it automatically false. Don't get me wrong, I had a Chinese girlfriend last year, so this is obviously just an example. I'm certain now that they're perfectly nice people.
The Arabs, too. After I went out on a few dates with the TA from my Semitic Languages seminar while at university, I no longer doubted that Arabs were indeed an equal people. In fact, if I had to compare, I would say that she was a little more equal than some of the white girls I've dated. She had a sense of adventure, anyway.
You can see why I'm so upset over this. I am many things — efficient, energetic, charismatic — all of which would make me an asset to your company. I would excel as an Inside Account Executive with your firm, and it tears me apart that she thinks I'm a racist.
So now I'm a racist. Why? Because she found my checklist? I'm a scientist, is all that is. Should I just go around saying, "all races are equal" without having checked for myself? So, I keep a checklist of the different races of women I've been with. Every scientist keeps notes.
And I can't just trust the books other people have written, can I? You can't believe everything you read. People can just make up any old thing and write it down. Hands-on experience is the only knowledge that you can really trust these days.
She asked me why I hadn't put a check mark in the box next to Indian Women. (She's Indian, is why she asked.)
"Well, I haven't had enough time to decide," I told her. THAT's why she called me a racist.
In any case, I have included my resume for your review, and I think you'll find that I have a lot to offer your company. And, judging by the list of surnames I found for some of your lady executives, your company has a lot to offer me as well.
Yours, Joey Comeau
Dear Spherion Recruiting,
I am writing to apply for the position of Warehouse Assistant because "Warehouse Assistant" sounds so innocuous, so unassuming. I am writing to apply for the position of Warehouse Assistant because this morning was the first time I ever thought seriously about killing myself, and if I'm going to do it, I want to do it right. I'm not going to do this half-assed. I have a plan.
I want the newspaper listing of my death to start off with "Joey Comeau, a hard-working family man, who, in addition to his office job, worked weekends as a Warehouse Assistant in the suburbs to make ends meet, killed himself today." I'll leave a note for the police, with a list of names, some of them underlined in red. At the top of the list it will say, "I couldn't keep quiet any longer. The public is in danger." When they investigate, they'll find that these are people from my past, but they won't remember me.
After time, the police will realize that these men and women all work for companies that have at one time used the warehouse I'm working in. This second connection will be the clincher. When they can find nothing there, they'll look deeper; they'll start finding connections of their own, connections that are nothing more than coincidence. The human brain is a pattern-recognition machine.
If suicide is all I have left, it has to be something more than just spectacular or horrifying. This morning, staring at myself in the mirror, I almost decided to just write a normal, honest letter. But no, my suicide has to be everything my life should have been. My suicide has to be a mystery, a quest, a story worth reading.
It has to be my legacy.
When they talk to my wife, she'll say I've been distant for the past few years. She'll say that our money is gone, and she doesn't know what I did with it. And these will just be clues. These will just be infuriating pieces to a puzzle that will hang over everyone's head. My children will grow up in a world with a sense of the hidden, of the wondrous. In five years, when my son turns sixteen, a law firm halfway across the world will mail him a letter.
As each of my children reaches sixteen, they'll get a letter in the mail.
"I did what I did," it will say, "for you, for my God, and for my country. Please forgive me."
I took a picture of myself in a suit, and the letter will have a copy of that picture attached to it with a paperclip. I look very serious in that photograph.
Their father was more than just a screw-up. He was SOMETHING.
This is all I have left. Please help me. Please hire me to work in your warehouse. I have no trouble working machinery, lifting boxes, filling out forms. I am a dedicated worker.
Joey Comeau
Dear MoneyMart,
You posted seeking a Cash Applications Manager. Good. You can't lump cash under the umbrella term "money." Cash is a creature with its own needs, with its own inclinations and territories. Cash is a pervert, with desires that aren't easy to understand. You need someone with experience living outside the world of plastic. You need someone who can successfully guide your company under the radars of government taxation.
You're gonna get a lot of applications from people with business degrees. I should mention that I did not graduate high school. Three weeks before graduation, I was all set to head to business school. We had a party, and after everyone left, I was in the shower drunk and fell. I fell from the tub sideways, gashed the left side of my face, and lay there in silence. I could feel the hot water on the bottoms of my feet, which jutted into the tub. When I got up to face the mirror, I thought, "That's going to scar," and then I thought, "Good."
The cut ran down through my eye and gave me a dangerous look. Fuck this life tied to names and plastic money. I decided then and there, facing that mirror, to become a grifter, a shark, a con man. I would live under the radar, off the grid, outside of the movie euphemism for the interconnected computer systems that track and manage everyone in terms of credit, worth, and funds. The man in the mirror was a rogue agent now. He was a cowboy. I tried to squint like Clint Eastwood. It hurt.
I took my mother's purse and used her credit cards to get as much cash from a bank machine as I could. I left home, money strapped to my body in little hidden packets, and hopped a boxcar heading south. Nobody knows where I am or who I am. I can go into a delicatessen and buy a sandwich, eat in silence, and leave without a trace. Did I buy a drink with that sandwich? You'll never know.
I have a few questions before we meet regarding this position. Firstly, I assume that you can pay in cash? If not, would it be alright if I had you make the cheques payable to my mother? I can mail them to her, and she'll mail the cash back to me. It's inconvenient, but ultimately the cost is worth the freedom!
Yours, Joey Comeau
Dear RIAA,
Thank you for taking the time to review my resume. It outlines the fifteen years of law enforcement experience at my disposal, and my many awards and honours accrued in that time. You do good work at the Recording Industry Association of America, but if you'll pardon my frankness, you are a joke to the very pirates you should be terrorizing.
I can teach you how to deal with those punks who thumb their noses at you. Just last month, a young man in an anti-WTO t-shirt was attacked in my neighbourhood. He was badly hurt, with a broken nose and something horribly wrong with his eye.
But when I offered to help him, the little bastard said, "Fuck off, pig. Shouldn't you be somewhere else, intimidating the men and women of this neighbourhood? Abusing your power so you can feel like a BIG MAN?" He sounded like the guys down at the station. They have the same problem you do, RIAA: they're not willing to go far enough. Only this kid wasn't trying to guide me toward the light like my pussy co-workers. He was just being disrespectful. "You're nothing but a government-subsidized playground bully," he said. "All police are."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Overqualifieder. by Joey Comeau, Crissy Calhoun. Copyright © 2015 Joey Comeau. Excerpted by permission of ECW PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.