Growing up, I had these childlike dreams of being an astronaut, a firefighter, or an N.F.L. player with twenty concussions. But because of my state-school education that my parents paid for with their grandparents’ money, I was lucky enough to dream bigger. So, with just a 2.5 G.P.A., a few called-in favors from Dad’s golf buddy, and luck, I became a person with a bullshit e-mail job.
But now it seems as if no one even wants to come into an office as an Innovation and Design Experience Assistant two days a week in the name of justifying real estate. Instead, everybody wants to be an influencer who demands that I, the average scroller, buy some lymphatic-drainage vibration plate that makes my balls shake even though I’m not on that side of TikTok, you know?
We need to go back to the old days, to before we asked sexy people to sell us things. There need to be fewer influencers and significantly more people breaking their backs doing bullshit e-mail jobs, as the Global Market Influence Architects of the world.
The bullshit e-mail job isn’t just about making billions of dollars for people who don’t care if you live or die. It’s a higher calling. It’s bigger than spreadsheets and K.P.O.s, don’t you see? I’m not just selling technology that will eventually replace me, I’m selling dreams—dreams of automation, revenue, and other buzzwords I’ve been trained to say. When I signed on the dotted line after being offered the role of Business Development Energy Software Analyst, I took an oath: do no harm to the bottom line.
Influencers don’t know what ethics are—heck, they don’t even say #ad when it clearly is one. They’re liars, while what I do is lie in my very own, corporate way, like when I say, “I’m taking fifteen,” when really I’m doing a three-hour boozy brunch with the boys on a random Tuesday. I bet influencers don’t understand what it’s like to survive a fire drill when you’re an Account Executive Manager of Consumer Solutions Engineer. You don’t know if you’re going to make it home by 5:30 P.M.! But let me tell you, when you get a compliment from your superior, and the ultimate bonus (more work)—there’s no better feeling.
No one wants to pretend to do their jobs anymore. While everyone aspires to become the next big influencer who writes, films, and edits their own videos, we need Principal Web Optimization and Synergy Managers who want to get their hands dirty by moving their computer mouses every few minutes so it appears as if they’re online as they binge “Real Housewives of Rhode Island” in their pajamas.
While influencers are being threatened in the comments sections of videos about their morning routines, we need Directors of Manual Automation Sales Development to roll up their sleeves and type one singular e-mail every day in which they pass off their work to a different department.
We used to be a proper country. A country in which people pulled up their bootstraps (that were not sent to them for free by a publicist) and worked tirelessly to add yet another corporate buzzword to their title in order to seem more important. (So far, I’m up to eight: Senior B2B, C2C, and D2D Solutions Research Content Specialist.)
But I’m not giving up hope just yet on this generation. There’s still time to build a healthy pipeline and train the future leaders of bullshit e-mail jobs to join the existing group of rock stars. It starts at home. Parents, when your child is on their phone at the dinner table, ignoring you, make sure that they’re scrolling Outlook, not Reddit.
Picture, for just a moment, what our society would look like without those brave men and women with bullshit e-mail jobs. Without the hardworking Principal International Hardware and Software Relationship Managers of the world, let’s just say that Japan would have one less tourist maximizing their unlimited P.T.O.
Take away the courteous Quality Print Ink Cartridge Response Consultants in this country, and suddenly your company is left with an additional hundred and ten thousand dollars in the bank each year to spend on better snacks at the office, more swag that no one will ever wear, and increased parental leave for the employees who actually do work.
Without heroes like me, you can say goodbye to my great-aunt Susan looking confused and saying, “How nice, dear,” whenever she asks me what I do, and I reply, “I’m a Lead Group Functionality and Web Excellence Administrator, Water Cooler Division, and my job is to optimize processes within the product space to insure that the synergy drives collaboration.”
Could an influencer do that?
America, wake up. We don’t need more influencers. We need more bullshit e-mail jobs. Specifically, we need more of them so that I can get hired to do another one, because I just got let go last week.
So, spread the word and maybe put in a referral for me for the open Chief Boss’s Son Resource Contribution Officer at Capital Enterpriselytics Partners & Co. That way I can continue fighting the good fight of going idle on Teams while I play video games in my underwear and not putting my business degree to work. For the time being, use the code EMAIL10 to get ten per cent off the lymphatic-drainage vibration plate. ♦