As you may have noticed, there was a career fair a few weeks ago. Realizing a grand opportunity when I see one, I went. After a few seconds in the Bryan Center, I got that familiar sinking feeling. I was in the elevator again, too lazy to take the stairs to the Armadillo Grill. After some "steak" fajitas and three bottles of Miller High Life, it was time to scope the job market.
Contrary to college students, corporate losers seem to take their work seriously. That must be what happens to pre-meds when they finally get done with school and realize that being a doctor sucks. I must admit, though, that because of the nice suits everybody was wearing, I felt a little underdressed in my beer-stained hoody and pink hot pants. Then I happened upon the Microsoft table. Their representatives were wearing T-shirts, which kind of turned me on.
I decided to check it out.
Me: Hi, my name is THE SECOND GUNMAN. I'm a PPS major and I write a lame humor column for an extremely liberal newspaper. If I were traded on the NYSE, my symbol would be TSG.
Microsoft guy in T-shirt: We be MSFT on the NYSE. Que es PPS?
TSG: Public policy is mostly writing memos. Are you interested in hiring me?
MSFT: No, we only hire computer science majors because they have useful skills. You should shoot your academic adviser for letting you waste so much of your parents' money. Go home.
I hastily walked away from the bitter realization that PPS is worthless. There may be cool promotional pens, but the real world is a frightening place. A quick walk around showed me that most jobs are in the mysterious field of investment banking. I asked myself, "What the hell is investment banking?" This called for a reconnaissance mission. Switch to stealth mode. When one of the Goldman Sachs guys was busy talking to some shaggy-haired kid in a pastel polo shirt and Birkenstocks, I yoinked his cell phone from the table and copied down the number before replacing it.
A few minutes later, I called the number: "This is Johnson, from payroll. The market went down again today. You've been let go. Just stay at Duke and try to have a good time on the weekend." The poor guy fell for it like a drunk. He took off down the Bryan Center walkway, pulling at his hair. I followed on my scooter for a few seconds, only to see him plummet to his death, just outside the Hideaway. If these "have fun on the weekend" or "Hideaway" metaphors are beyond you, I hope you are enjoying your freshman year, you worthless runt.
True to form, an Abercrombie-clad blonde glared at the dead man as she bitched into her StarTac about how the maintenance staff never cleans anything up around here. Feeling guilty and overwhelmed by the chain of events, I vomited on her. It was soothing. Men in safari hats were on hand soon thereafter to ticket the man $200 for dying in a fire lane.
After that little incident, I dismissed "future broker suicide statistic" as a viable career option. I went back to the Bryan Center, where I happened upon a firm called Schwarz, Schwarz, Futters and Butt: Ninja Consulting. At first I thought it was a hoax, but they were all wearing suits and they had real nunchakus. When I saw the nunchakus, I knew these guys were for real, and that's where I wanted to work. I gave them my e-mail address and asked for a job on the spot.
They told me that with a public policy degree I had no actual skills and would fit perfectly into the consulting world. You see, they need people who can think outside the box. That's something I'm really great at. For example, when I got my computer, I immediately threw the box away. Boom! Right there, thinking outside the box. And I didn't even need nunchakus to do it. I could tell the guys were impressed, because they kept asking me to show my complex problem solving ability. I was about to do the thing where you rub your tummy and pat your head (thank goodness for PPS 212 - Advanced Worthlessness), but an official looking guy in a suit came up and asked the members of Schwartz, Schwartz, Futters and Butt to disperse, since they were disrupting the career fair. I grabbed the nunchakus and attacked the man, but I was quickly subdued.
When I woke up, it was Parents' Weekend. This was convenient in that I couldn't think of any more stuff to write about career fair, but I still have a little space left. Cut me some slack; it's 5 on Friday afternoon. I need to get to engineering kegs before the free booze is gone.
So when I woke up, it was Parent's Weekend. The whole campus had been transformed. The campus was clean, professors were smiling, the food was tasty, there was inflatable stuff to entertain drunk kids on the quad, Subway was open, the wolf cartoon was funny.... Okay, so I went a little far. There's only so much administration can do to make this place look good. It's time we all realized that "Survival of the Fittest" will never be funny.
THE SECOND GUNMAN's parents called, but he was out blowing his boyfriend.
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