As my lovely job search continues, I notice a growing trend in the hiring process starting to provide unbridled pessimism for millions of hopeful applicants:

The computer survey.

“We don’t take letters or resumes,” the manager of a large company informed me. “Go to our website and follow explicit directions.”

Yay.

“Does this include a long list of questions to expose my personality and work ethics?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered, a thin smile quickly becoming thinner.

“Can I take it every day for a long time, seeing as recent surveys show how most people answer surveys differently at different times, depending on moods, hour of day, and things like caffeine intake?”

“I’m sorry,” she said nervously. “Maybe you don’t want to apply.”

I informed her that there was no turning back now, and after several minutes of actually taking their survey and projectile vomiting, I decided that it was time to devise my own little survey for potential employers, just in case things change and people hire again.

So here is my Official Employer Survey, with three seconds allowed for each answer, and a super secret password that makes fun of all your small pets and loved ones. It may take quite awhile, so be sure there’s nothing to distract you in the room/house/cell block, and find a good number two pencil, strictly for nostalgic reasons. All questions are yes, no, or endless streams of profanity.

1) You always lie and promise employees an annual raise, just to test their pain threshold and economic standing.

2) You enjoy a “special parking space” for your high end luxury car, but encourage everyone else to use public transportation or ride a bike, to help save the environment.

3) You like to set a firm example by chewing employees out in front of everybody, using the “outdoor voice.”

4) You like to move employees from offices to cubicles without any warning, just to see how they react, and to keep people “on their toes.”

5) You love to tell employees that “we’re all a big family,” at company parties where actual families are never invited.

6) If employees behave badly at the party mentioned above, you like to take pictures and collect witnesses.

7) You often love to take advantage of young, attractive members of the opposite sex who work for you, and will do anything to climb a very shaky career ladder.

8) Anything.

9) You like to watch “The Office” for creative ideas.

10) You like to watch “The Third Reich” for creative ideas.

11) If you ever spot an employee outside of work, you desperately try to avoid contact.

12) If you’re talking to an employee and the phone rings, you always make the employee wait until you’re done talking, even if it takes more than fifteen minutes.

13) Or an hour.

14) Or days.

15) You firmly deny treating employees like children, but often give “time-outs” and reward good behavior with little gold stars (their annual review!).

16) You never answer e-mails, and the receptionist screens every incoming call. Especially internal.

17) Your office door is always open.

18) Your office door is always partially open.

19) Your office door is always closed.

20) Your office is across town.

21) You keep a hotel room under another name.

After a long night out in another city, you’ve just realized that a huge presentation has been left behind in a motel “of ill repute.” The important meeting is in three hours, and a motel clerk is holding the goods at his desk almost an hour away. You decide to:

A) Raid the petty cash drawer and call an expensive courier service.

B) Raid the petty cash drawer and call that number scribbled on a cocktail napkin, offering your “date” a chance to make “more cash with less effort.”

C) Find Jesus and race across town to get the goods, then find Eddy on the way back and call in sick from a small lounge, where nobody knows your name.

D) Wing it. You’re that good.

E) Wing it. You’re that bad.

F) Take it out on your employees and blame all of the “little people” who actually put that presentation together.

G) Use the “Go Back” machine and do everything differently, starting at birth.

– This concludes the very first third of the first half of the Official Employer Survey. In all seriousness, most of these circumstances were taken from actual experiences.