The Best Cover Letter in the World
OR
What I really wish I could say to potential employers
1.) Data entry is boring, mindless, robotic work. I don’t like it. Nobody likes it. It’s not character building. It doesn’t require creativity or ingenuity or, really, all that much concentration. However, until (or while) somebody writes a computer program that negates such menial work, you need Me. Someone willing to do what other people in the company have been promoted not to do. I will most likely be bored and I certainly won’t find life fulfillment from data entry, but I will finish assignments faster than you can produce new work. And I will do them well. It is a commonly known fact that within 1-2 weeks on a job, an intelligent temp learns to pace his/herself to make the work fill an entire eight hour work day. But we wouldn’t, if we just had more fucking work to do…
The thing you need to learn, as an employer, is this: Enjoying the work is not a pre-requisite for getting it done efficiently and thoroughly. Anyone who tells you that they really, really like data entry is bullshitting you
Which brings me to point #2…
2.) What you’re really looking for when you advertise the need for a team player is someone who won’t get caught up in office gossip, someone who will smile (with actual kindness) at the surly but bright members of the office, and someone who actually knows their way around both a PC and a Mac (I have worked with older temps who don’t). You want them to show up on time every day - sans a hangover - and make the office a more pleasant place. You don’t want them to spend half the day on facebook and the other half of the day texting their significant other. You might even want them to show some initiative and help their superiors out with other projects. Hence the word team.
3.) What you really mean when you ask me what my biggest strengths and weaknesses are: You want me to articulately sell myself, list a strength as a weakness (i.e., I’m so anal retentive, I just have to fix the world in one, maybe one and a half days), and say something, really anything, other than that I’m a hard-worker who’s punctual, detail-oriented, creative and well-mannered. You want me to be these things, but in order to win you over, I must say that I’m an alien from Kalamazoo with psychokinetic powers that will allow everyone at the office to transport to and from work without a stressful two-hour commute, but I’ve also got kind of a gastro-intestinal problem as a side-effect of said powers. Or, errr, well, it sure feels like this is the case in some interviews.
4.) What I wish I could say: I want a job! Yes, that’s it. I want to be able to afford to pay my bills, go to concerts, enjoy weekend brunches with friends and hey, maybe even get some health insurance. Yes, in a year or more I might be looking for something better or more challenging. Or I might change my mind about my career altogether. Turnover is a part of a functioning business; asking me to lie or wanting me to pretend that I want growth within your company is a fool’s errand. In such entry level positions, it is reasonable to expect a year’s commitment, but I am not vying for a project manager’s position with ten years under my belt and a thirst for a higher salary. I am just trying to be your office assistant. No more. No less.
5.) FYI Gen. X’ers (and some baby boomers for that matter), we are aware. We know, really, we know that ALL you want to do is to wipe that self-entitled Gen. Y/Millennial (really anyone born after 1980). grin off our faces. The arrogance and entitlement of my generation is astounding. We grew up with parents that told us we were God’s gift to the world (baby geniuses and all). We weren’t told “no” very often and we certainly didn’t get spanked. Instead we got cell phones and the internet and Nintendo. So you’re surprised at the level of entitlement and the accompanying lack of work ethic. We grew up with computers and we’ve come of age in the era of instant gratification. Yes, we’re arrogant bastards - I’ll admit that much, but try, if you can, to see it from our perspective. For just one minute.
We go through eighteen years of schooling, put ourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, just to get an undergrad degree. In English or Philosophy or whatever we manage to grasp onto as we’re bombarded with the imperative to “Find a career or perish.” You, Gen X’ers did not pay in four years what most kids pay in one semester these days. Those of us that managed to grab our degree in the past five years emerged onto the job scene to the worst recession since the great depression.
Guess what? It’s your fault. It’s your short-sightedness and greediness and, yes, sense of entitlement that led to this situation. So now, we’re told a bachelor’s degree just isn’t enough. That we need more experience (Where? How?) or that we should just go to grad school and throw another fifty grand into the debt pot. Who was it that was supposed to be teaching us money management again? Oh right, you. What’s another fifty grand when we’ll be paying off the interest for the next forty years anyways? All, by the way, to do a job (like, for instance, at a library I once worked at) where many of the older workers didn’t even go to college. They just needed a high school education and good customer service skills. We, the idiots that we are, need a master’s degree to work at a library. That’s insane.
But honestly, my point is this: Stop with the finger pointing. Just as most of you older workers didn’t directly cause the recession, not all of us twenty-somethings are lazy entitled rich kids. Look beyond the written page and see potential. I think, once upon a time, people must have been hired in such a manner…
Give me, with all my unfettered potential, a chance. That’s all I’m asking. With my generic, boring cover letter and cv.
But this cover letter; this is what I wish I could really send you.