Trying to find a job while being an atheist

Looking for a job is always stressful. It is even more stressful when you’re the most maligned and mistrusted minority in the country, looking for work in the most hostile part of the country. Being an atheist and looking for work in the South can be a tricky predicament.

I found that out first hand over the past two days.

I’ve been looking for work since March when the company I worked for went under. I was really excited to get a call back from a company three days ago, asking if I would come in right that moment for an interview. I grabbed my stuff and drove 45 mins to the next town over. During the course of the interview the boss said I didn’t have all the experience he was looking for, but that he was in really bad need of somebody and wanted to see how fast I could pick things up. He mentioned a salary figure which I agreed to, then asked me to come in at 7am the next morning to shadow him. Throughout the interview he was giving me things to write down and to study.

I went home, extremely excited about the prospect of finally working again, and for somebody from whom I felt I could learn a lot. Then I started to explore the company’s website more in-depth as I had only a few moments quick glance before I was out the door rushing to the interview. He explicitly states on their website that it is a Christian company.

“Meh, whatever, I don’t care what they believe as long as I’m working and getting paid” I told myself. I got up at 5:30 the next morning and went to meetup with my prospective employer. We spent the morning going to a meeting and then it was off to make service calls.

The question came while we were in the car.

“This has no bearing on you getting hired, but what do you think about Obama?”

…

“Um…I don’t know…”

“Well do you like him or not like him?”

“Um…I’m not really a big fan?”

“For what reasons?” (I wanted to reply “Well, because he’s a center-right corporate whore parading as a progressive” But I didn’t for obvious reasons)

“For a variety of reasons, but I rather not say.”

“Ok, good, I don’t like him either. His taxes are going to crush my business.” (I wanted to point out that the president doesn’t control taxes, that congress does, and congress is republican controlled, but I doubt those facts would have either made me look good or mattered to him.)

“Can I ask you some questions about religion?” (The knot in my throat grows tighter)

“Only if you don’t mind if I don’t answer.” (“Damn I’m must sound like some secret-agent wannabe wacko” I thought.)

“Again, this is just out of personal curiosity, it doesn’t have any effect on you getting hired. What religion are you?”

“I rather not say.” *nervous laugh*

He then launches into a bit explaining how he and his wife are Christian, and that he came to realize God’s plan for his life when he almost died, was airlifted to the hospital and lived, how that got him to change his business around, etc etc…

We get to a service call and I get a reprieve. I’m extremely uncomfortable but I need this job. I need the experience and I need the skill set it will give me. So I bite my lip.

Two weeks ago my uncle almost died when he fell off a rough while working and was airlifted to a hospital. I was curious what happened to him, so I explained what happened to my uncle and asked him what happened to him. He explains how he had some rare condition and how the emergency crew in the helicopter didn’t think he was going to live, but he got to the hospital in time and Christ spared his life.

I didn’t say anything, but the whole time I was thinking: “Oh, Christ saved your life? Not the doctors with years of training? Not the paramedics and the helicopter, developed by science, that enabled you to be quickly rushed to a hospital, staffed with the fruits of scientific labor that kept you alive and saved your life. No, it was none of that, but the iron age God of the desert came down, skipping the 16,000 children that die of starvation everyday to save your butt and show you the way while you were conveniently in a first world country’s hospital attended by a swarm of doctors. Oh I see. Of course!”

But I obviously had to hold my peace.

Later I ended up driving him in the company car to a service call an hour away. He mentioned how he met his wife on eHarmony. I had tried eHarmony before in the past. I spent 45 minutes filling out their survey only to be rejected. eHarmony is a Christian oriented dating site. Atheists don’t do well on there.

Without thinking much, I mentioned how I tried eHarmony but that they rejected me.

“Why did they reject you?”

“Oh, erm…They reject you if you don’t match up with their ‘values’ system.”

“Why’s that?”

(In my head: “Shit shit shit….whatever. Fuck it. I don’t care.” Did I mention that sometimes I have a self destructive streak?)

And so I explained that I was, in fact, an atheist, that I do stuff with my local atheist community (even though I’ve been kinda off the radar for the past bit), that I used to be an evangelical as an early teenager, that religion is a interest of mine, that I’m pretty well read in it, and that I’ve been working on app development for atheist counter-apologetics apps.

The cat’s out of the bag now…

He was just kinda like “Oh…..ok…” Later he asked me “So what made you become an atheist?” I’m sure he was expecting that some disaster had befallen me and that I now hated God, or that I just wanted to lead a sinful lifestyle.

The problem with this question, besides all the problems with the situation, is that it is a trap. Most likely inadvertently, but a trap nonetheless. Let me rephrase the question and you’ll see exactly what I mean:

“So what made you abandon and discredit everything I hold dear, everything that is intimately intertwined with how I see myself and my world?”

There is absolutely no possible way I can answer that question without being offensive. There just isn’t. It’s a loaded question.

“Um…it was more of a journey for me over time.” (I wanted to say “Well, because I grew up, I read books, I experienced things outside of the narrow world view the church taught.”)

He mentioned how he never really knew any atheists, that he had come in contact with a few, and that they were all really big jerks. I mentioned that there are all types in every group, and that I’m very non-confrontational (in person) and live and let live. Oddly, he didn’t really understand what “live and let live” meant so I had to explain it to him. We really didn’t talk much the rest of the trip. He was busy working and making phone calls from the passenger seat. Throughout the day, before atheism came up, he was making me write down all the things he wanted me to study. “On Friday I’m going to have you do X, on Monday I’m going to have you do Y.” He didn’t really give me too much more to study after religion came up.

At 5pm I finally started the long drive home. I had been up for twelve hours and rushing around town with him for ten. I was exhausted. When I got home, I spent the rest of the night studying my ass off. He said I could take Thursday off to study, because it was more important that I pick up the concepts fast for when he tests me on Friday than for me to shadow him for another day.

I took a short break to get a few hours of sleep in the wee hours of Thursday morning, then was back up and studying some more. At the end of the day on Wednesday he said he might have me come in again later Thursday to do some stuff, but that he would call and let me know.

I sent him an e-mail around noon on Thursday telling him how far I’d gotten studying. (I really did learn a shit ton really fast). About an hour later I got a response:

“…My wife and I, as well as the other people in the office are discussing it, but we are thinking we need to find someone that already has extensive experience. You are doing a great job on all of this studying as far as I see it, but I am thinking a history of experience would serve us better at the moment. I am getting busier and busier by the second and I thinking it would be best for us to find someone who can hit the ground running, who would require no shadowing…

If you don’t mind, if there are any reminders on your note pad that I needed, I would really appreciate you sending them to me. I am in with a few other companies as far as passing along resumes, and I will certainly pass yours along. You have great potential!

Thank you in advance for understanding.”

Rejection.

I’m fucked. I didn’t get the job I desperately needed in order to give me the skill set, background, and money to accomplish my goals. I was, am, depressed. What about the ten hours I spent running around with him? I had other things I would have liked to do that day too. I probably won’t see a penny for my time.

I really do think he rejected me because I didn’t have the experience he was looking for, but part of me wonders. Even if he says that it has no effect on my getting the job, it does have an effect subconsciously in how he perceives me.

Before atheism came up, he did mention that his wife was coming on board with the company and that they would have to have dinner with me so she could meet me before they hired me. She apparently has a good sense about people, or so he told me. I wonder if his wife put her foot down at the idea of hiring an atheist. I can just imagine her asking how they’d be able to trust such a deviant, someone without morals. How could someone like that represent the family company?

Yet I have no proof of this, so it’s pure fantasy and speculation.

I would like to hope I was rejected just because of my skill set, and not that I was discriminated against based on my religious stance.

I’ll honestly never know for sure. Such are the perils of trying to find a job as an atheist in an often fundamentalist Christian south.

Alternate realities and why I want to leave everything behind

As far as I’m concerned there are two types of realities: Meta and Micro. Standing in front of a speeding train will result in death, commanding the desert sand to produce water will do nothing, gravity pulls objects towards the center of the planet, the earth revolves around the sun, you have X dollars in your bank account. Meta reality are the rules and mechanics of existence that exist universally through all micro realities, whether you want them to be or not.

The best way I can think of to explain micro realities are by books, movies, tv shows, games, etc. The existence within those stories are micro realities. If they’re not completely fictional, they will still obey the laws of meta reality. (Weapons will hurt and kill you, gravity still pulls things down, the sun is a large nuclear reactor, etc…) But I don’t want to get lost in the physics of everything, that’s not important. What I want to focus on is the setting, the world in those micro existences.

Look around you. What are you sitting on? What is the inside of your house like? What furnishings do you have? What style is everything in? What is the local environment like? For most of my readers I’m guessing it’s relatively the same existence they’ve always had. 21st century clothes, items, local food, etc.

But why this? Why not on a pirate ship? Or in some ancient village, an underground lab, or a jungle? We’re all so accustomed to the same old boring existence in our location that we have to seek out new and exciting worlds in the form of movies, books, and video games. We want to see something new, something exciting, to be transported to another reality, if only momentarily.

But why stop there? You have an entire planet to explore! Instead of just reading about other existences, or playing through them in video games, go out and live them! This is one of the main forces behind me wishing to leave the country and travel the world. I want to experience new cultures, new realities.

The other reason why I want to leave is that I don’t like this micro reality.

What I realized the other day was that just about everybody I talk to lives in the same 21st century American micro reality. The vast majority of these people have only ever know this one reality; to them, it is all there is. This is life, growing up, living, working, and dying in a first world country. Along with this existence comes a set of ideas concerning what people “ought” to do with their lives. Back in my grandparents’ day, the correct life path was:

Graduate high school, get a job with a stable company, work there for 30-40 years, retire with a pension.

For my parents’ generation the correct life path was something like:

Go to college, get a degree, after perhaps a handful of jobs find a career, work the majority of your life saving for retirement, retire around 60-65, enjoy the last 30 years of your life.

My grandparents’ correct life path doesn’t exist anymore, and I loath the idea of the one laid out by my parents’ generation.

Why? Why must I live my life like that? What if I don’t care about living in a huge house, or driving a $50,000 car? What if those are not my measurements of success? Why must I wait till I’ve long lost my youth to enjoy life? How am I going to be able to do all the things I want to do, to see all the things I want to see when I’m 70 years old? What if I don’t live that long? What if I waste what time I have now saving up to finally live when I’m old and failing, only for my body to give out before then?

Why must I live in this:

And not this?

Why must I wear this:

and not this?

I find it almost impossible to discuss this with people who exist in the the same reality I’m trying to escape. To them, their day to day is all there is to life. Going to work every day, living in their apartment, feeding their cat, and from time to time going out with friends is all there is to existence for them. Yet existence hasn’t always been like this, nor is this some culmination of thousands of years of history. Your ancestors didn’t chase animals on the plains or build the pyramids, or storm the castle, or cross the oceans so you could get up at 8 am in sleepy suburbia, put the coffee on and get ready to drive to work.

One of the questions that keeps coming up is “what am I going to do for a job?” There are two questions wrapped up in that question. One is asking “what are you going to do to eat?” and the second one “what are you going to do to earn a living?” The answer to the first one is that I will work little jobs here and there, though nothing permanent. The second question shows you’re still stuck in that idea of saving up money to do something later.

If I work 50 jobs in my life time, and live in half as many locations, making only enough money to eat and travel to a new place, I’d be thrilled. THAT is a life worth living! All the stories, people, cultures, experiences! I would much rather spend my life like that than working a steady job, paying a mortgage, driving the kids to soccer practice and occasionally taking a week long vacation to the Caribbean.

Responsibility

Ever since I got a full time job and my own apartment, I have been thinking a lot about responsibility. I don’t mean the usual crap that your parents tell you about responsibility when you get a pet, I mean like how scary it is to have it and why so many people of avoid it.

At my job I am responsible for a lot of things, mainly innovations and troubleshooting. My biggest fear is that I will somehow forget to do something and it will hurt the business. The really scary part is that I work with the admin program and our server, which is like the beating heart of the business. I have to tripple check before I touch a button that could accidentally delete a medical record and get us sued.

It is my job to know everything about everything. When I suggest we try a new program or messages of doing something, I have to know every aspect of what I am suggesting and how it might affect the business. It is a lot of pressure. There are times in the day when I am stuck. I can’t do my job all by myself, sometimes I have to work with other people and their computers. Unfortunately sometimes they are not cooperative.

When my boss asks why something is not done I feel bad saying it is because I am waiting on someone else. I feel like that is an excuse, a way of shrugging off responsibility. When I read the book Atlas Shrugged, a constant theme was people avoiding responsibility. They always had an excuse for why something wasn’t done. I really do not want to be like that but there are times when I really can’t do something because of someone else. What are you supposed to do in those situations? What are you supposed to do when something is honestly not your fault? Is responsibility taking the blame even though you there was nothing you could do?

I get the feeling responsibility of something that can only hurt you. When you are responsible for something and it goes well no one says anything because that is what was supposed to happen; however, if something goes wrong your screwed. This is why people try to avoid responsibility. But if everyone avoids responsibility nothing gets done, just like in Atlas Shrugged.

I guess in those situations I usually just take the blame even though there was nothing I could possibly do. My job requires that I go into uncharted territory, I don’t have all the answers and I admit that. I try my best, yet sometimes some things still go wrong. I can be working very hard and something I never considered will screw me.

It is really frustrating to know you’re doing your best and yet to still have unexpected things go wrong. I love my job and the people I work with but sometimes the responsibility can be very scary. If I fuck up it is not only my livelihood that is at risk but the livelihood of others as well…

Sexist Dodge Charger Superbowl Ad

I’m pretty sure by now almost everyone has seen this ad by Dodge aired during the 2010 superbowl:

Ok, so lets recap on the things that men are supposed to be surrendering to do in exchange for driving the car they want:

I will walk the dog, I will eat fruit as part of my breakfast, I will shave and clean the sink after I shave, I will be at work by 8 am

[Ok, these things are just basic responsibility issues. You’re supposed to be an adult. What? Without your wife nagging you to be a mature, responsible person you would not walk the dog, you would not try to eat right, you would not clean up your mess, and you would not get to work on time? Way to go.]

I will sit through 2 hour meetings

[Ok, that’s just part of your job, how are women responsible for this? You’re in control of your own life, don’t like your job? Quit and get a new one, but don’t try and blame others for your unhappiness]

I will say “yes” when you want me to say “yes”

I will be quiet when you don’t want to hear me say “no”

[Somebody has honestly and trust issues in their relationship…]

I will take your call

[That’s just being courteous. You wouldn’t be courteous without nagging? If she’s calling too much, then use a little thing called communication and talk to her about it for a change.]

I will listen to your opinion of my friends

I will listen to your friends’ opinions of my friends

[Again, communication! Any maybe you should start evaluating why you’re in a relationship with this person if they don’t like who you associate with]

I will be civil to your mother

[I guess courtesy is just something men do because they’re forced to by women, for without women they would all manners and social skills /sarcasm]

I will put the seat down

[Oh heavens! I can’t just only ever think of myself!?!? I have to consider that other people might live in the house too?!?! Gah! I can’t take this courtesy thing!!!]

I will separate the recycling

[Yeah, real men don’t give a shit about the environment or recycling!]

I will carry your lip balm

[Really? How often do women ask men to carry a small tube of lip balm? And if she does happen to not have any pockets or a purse, what’s the big deal? It’s not like she’s asking you to carry a pink umbrella.]

I will watch your vampire TV shows with you

[Ok, seriously, communication. I bet she does things with you that she’s not overly fond of. Relationships are about compromise. Try and find something you like to do together or get out of the relationship. It’s not all just about you.]

I will take my socks off before getting into bed

[Really? This is an issue in your relationship? Talk to her about it! Make her see that’s it’s not a big deal. If wearing socks to bed is a deal breaker, then there are more important things wrong in your relationship]

I will put my underwear in the basket

[As opposed to what? leaving them on the floor for other people to pick up? You’re an adult, take responsibility for your own mess.]

As you can see, this entire commercial is about men shifting the blame for being stuck in an unhappy relationship, a boring job, and having to be responsible onto women. “I’m too lazy and immature to take control of my life, so I’m going to blame women for trapping me…” Is this seriously what Dodge is telling us men are? No thank you.

Some thoughts on getting a job

So as my last year of college winds down, I’m starting to think about employment for after I graduate. To be honest, the coming change is kinda scary. I’ve never been paid anything above a wage before, and the idea of someone paying me thousands of dollars a year to do something blows my mind. I’m not sure if I’ll be good enough to do whatever it is I need to do.

As if the job market was not already tough, I have a few…..principles…I refuse to compromise on. My biggest fear is becoming a wage/corporate slave. I would rather starve than worship some evil overlords and thank them that in their mercy they allowed me to become their slave in return for barely enough money to live.

I refuse to prostrate myself before my employers, or potential employers. The relationship will be balanced, or there will be no relationship at all.

I refuse to have my cellphone turned into a leash my boss holds tightly in his hand.

I refuse to work in a barren cubicle that constantly reminds me how tenuous my employment is, that I could easily be replaced tomorrow.

I refuse to grovel for my vacation time. If I put in the hours, it’s mine.

I refuse to work unpaid hours to prove my loyalty to a company that has none for me.

I refuse to work in a top-down, one way communication, management environment.

I refuse to tolerate abusive and screaming bosses.

I refuse to spend the vast majority of my life working a job I hate in the hopes that when I am old I can retire and be happy for the 10 years before I die.

Live free or die.

Big Business, workers, and regulation

There is one god in capitalism, profit. This god is extremely powerful because it is fueled by a constant driving force, human greed. In some political circles, “regulation” is a four letter word, an inherently evil concept put in place to inhibit people from making money.

In pure free market capitalism the needs of the people are outweighed by what is most profitable. All concerns about safety and ethics are secondary to the power of the dollar. This is where regulation comes in. At the heart of government regulation is not some sinister plot to keep people from making more money, but to protect people from abuses by business to their health and security.

Sure it might be more profitable for a business to dump pollutants into a near by river instead of paying to properly dispose of them, but doing so would hurt the people living near that business.  One could counter “well, a business that does that would hurt its profit because the people in that area wouldn’t buy from them.” While this is a nice theoretical mechanism to protect people, reality shows that this is not the case. If big businesses actually cared about polluting the environment, we wouldn’t need the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet big businesses continue in harmful practices in the pursuit of profit, and so the EPA is a very busy agency.

Regulation doesn’t just protect the environment people live in from business, it protects people’s livelihoods and the economy. Everyone is painfully aware of the recent and devastating recession. People love to go on and on about the bail out, and how horrible it is. While I also hate the bailout and wished the banks and companies were just allowed to fail, the real villain here is deregulation.

Take the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act for example. This act, pushed through by 3 republicans in 1999, repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The Glass-Steagall Act put up a wall that kept investment banks separate from commercial banks, separate from insurance firms, etc. Without this protective legislation, banks from one field took over institutions from another, like Citibank taking over Travelers Group Insurance to create a super hybrid company, Citigroup. These institutions then spread their tentacles into every financial nook and cranny in the quest for more and more profit, and in the process became “too big to fail”. If they went down, they would take down everyone else with them.

The Glass-Steagall regulation was designed to keep catastrophes like this from happening. Also, take the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. This act made it possible for companies to engage in extremely risky practices like “credit default swaps” and “collateralize debt obligations”, free from the watchful eye of regulators. Companies could now make their balance sheets look good, even though they were engaging in very dangerous deals.

Unfortunately, we all now know the consequences of this type of deregulation. Without the safeguards in place, nothing was stopping businesses from making a buck, regardless of the risk and potential danger to society. In the end, wall street imploded and millions of people on main street who had nothing to do with this payed the price with their jobs and investments.

The last thing I wanted to touch on was workers. Keep in mind that profit is god. Reducing the price to operate a business means you make more profit. One of the most costly expenditures for a business is personnel. For a factory, the ideal worker is a robot. A robot can preform a task much faster than a human worker, it can often do it better, and best of all, they don’t get tired and you don’t have you pay them wages.

Robots, however, have a high one time price when you buy them, and then you have to maintain them. (Altogether this is still more cost effective than hiring workers) The next best thing to robots are slaves. Slaves also have a maintenance cost, but they work for free until they die. Unfortunately for big businesses, government regulation prohibits slavery.

Given these two realities, the next best thing a big business can do to minimize overhead is to try and make their workers as near to slaves as possible. The more you can work them, and the less you have to pay them the better. Whatever you do, don’t let them organize unions and try to improve their conditions.

There was an old theory by Ferdinand Lassalle in the 19th century called “Subsistence theory of wages“. The idea was to pay workers the bare minimum they need to survive. This way they wouldn’t breed uncontrollably, and the labor force along with wages would be kept in check. This theory has long been debunked, and labor unions have made a real difference in passing regulations to improve people’s lives, however, many of the sinister motives behind this theory remain.

To many big companies the worker is a commodity. In the US we have labor laws that regulate businesses when it comes to wages, working environment, etc. These regulations protect the people working in a company from abuses, and attempts to insure that they can afford to live. This in turn raises the overhead cost for businesses employing American workers. In turn, businesses outsource their jobs overseas to countries where there are fewer or no regulations to protect employees.

Here they can pay workers subsistence wages and work them to exhaustion. Businesses can afford to run sweatshop conditions in these countries given the high population of the work force and thus high demand for employment. (There is a website here where you can put in your zipcode and see what local companies are outsourcing jobs from your town overseas)

Without these regulations protecting American workers there would be sweatshops in the US. Corporate interests in the America actively work to try and weaken protective regulation and unions in an effort to make the American worker more like sweatshop workers. I honestly don’t know how we’re going to be able to protect the American worker and his/her job when so many people are willing to do the same work overseas for a fraction of the price, while at the same time being bared from unionizing for better living conditions.

Other big businesses have found even more ways to make money off of their workers through “dead peasant” insurance policies. Companies like Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney take out life insurance plans on their employees, only to cash in on them when their employee dies. Most of the time the employee doesn’t even know their company has this policy out on them. These company owned insurance policies make up 20% of all life insurance sold each year.

Just some thoughts.

God helps those who help themselves?

“God helps those who help themselves” is a phrase that has always bugged me. Ok, so whats the logical conclusion of god helping you if you help yourself? Good things happen I assume. We now have an equation of sorts.

God helps those = who help themselves = good things come

It’s the same thing as A=B=C. My problem is that A seems superfluous. Why not just cut A out and say “Good things come to those who work?” God has nothing to do with it. If you go out and get a job, it’s you who is doing the work. God never comes down from the sky to help collate your proposal or bag groceries, or what have you. You’re doing the work and you reap the benifits.