If there is a more fucking draining activity in the world than applying for jobs, I’m not sure I want to know what it is.

All the time, I’m told “just blitz it, apply for loads.” Throw enough shit at the wall and some of it will stick. But every single fucking company I apply to requires some sort of verbal blowjob from its candidates. You can’t just throw a C.V. in and forget about it; “what kind of shitty fucking attitude do you have?” No, you’ve got to get down on your knees and suck that dick. The recruiter unzips his fly, whips out his cock and says, “if you do a really good job I might even pay you next time.”

It’s not even that, it’s if you do this well this time we’ll invite you to a test centre to do it for even fucking longer, unpaid. Yet of course, every graduate from here to wherever-this-miserable-economic-raincloud-ends is lining up to do it. “Why do I want to work for your company? I don’t. I wanna have some shitty job on a fucking backwater newspaper someplace where the booze is cheap and I can drink myself into a coma.”

That’s another thing, why the hell is any answer other than “for the fucking money of course” accepted in response to that question. “What makes me passionate about the prospect of being a manager at your supermarket? Well now let me see…” Then I’m supposed to reel off some list of carefully researched reasons why I think that supermarket is the fucking tits. I’ve got to exaggerate every mouse-fart of success they’ve ever had until it’s as monumental as the destruction of the Death Star. They know, of course, that even among anoraks, it would take a very, very special fucking anorak to give two fucks about their battery recycling program and the presence of five percent more chicken in a frozen chicken steak, but they ask anyway. I’ve got to paint the picture in their minds of a well-rounded, happy, healthy, outgoing individual who just so happens to have an insane obsession with their shitty fucking supermarket. I’m fucking Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, babbling on about K-Mart whilst beating my head against a door.

Why, by the beard of Odin, does this company need it? Why, with their millions in profits and their thousands of employees, do they come looking to me for approval? I have fuck all that they want; no money, no prospects, not even any fucking aspirations anymore. All I have is that last vestige of my former self in an ever dwindling inventory of happiness – my pride; but they want that too. “Come, young one, tell us why with our miserable wages and our terrible ethical record, you slaver at the thought of submitting to our yoke.”

That done, you’re told, “good, I hope you enjoyed that thoroughly demeaning process, now go and repeat it a hundred times.” Then you look up and see a string of dudes, all beating their half-awake dicks still wet with the saliva of the last applicant and they’re all waiting for their turn. “Do you like telecoms? Of course you do, you dirty fucking whore” says the nice man from the phone company, thrusting deep into your well-worn mouth pussy.

Needless to say, this is all before you get to the personality tests, which are about as accurate an indicator of a person’s worth as their number in the fucking phonebook.

“Below are four statements, please state which is most like you and which is least like you.

I harbour a deep seated hatred for ethnic minorities.

I like setting fires in the workplace.

I murdered my last employer.

I see dead people.”

Congratulations, you deeply racist pyromaniac you, you’re through to the interview stages; it’s a tough fucking ride for Hayley Joel Osment though. You might as well say, “hey, are you a cunt or an asshole?”

Still, you might get lucky and have that list with options ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Obviously, so as to not seem the most sanctimonious prick who ever lived you’ll need to admit some faults, but don’t even think about doing it half-heartedly. The ideal employee does not fuck around; when he’s shit, he stands up and with all the air in his lungs declares: “I’m fucking shit” before ticking the strongly agree box next to, “I lack basic numerical skills”.

Then, beyond all of this, there is the simple fucking discourtesy of never calling you back. For every miserable hour of every sunless day that you spend filling in personality tests and dishing out compliments to major companies, you’ll be lucky if you get one fucking email telling you that “there’s too much competition in the burger flipping business nowadays – we can’t all flip burgers – so we will be discontinuing your application.” In the digital fucking age, most employers can’t find the time to fart an automated email in your general direction. You special fucking snowflake you, how’s your self-worth doing?