How to Lie Your Way Into the (Needlessly Competitive) Workforce
Everyone needs a way to make money. Though I’ve found that between my facial piercings, my huge arm tattoo of a centipede, and my online presence where I do what could best be described as “bodily fluid comedy,” I am difficult to employ. In theory, businesses wouldn’t feel comfortable with me representing them. But I still find work.
How do I do it? By crafting such intricate lies about my work experience that I seem like a heaven-sent prospective employee to the person hiring me. Instead, I’m more of a con man who will be practically comatose when he needs to demonstrate the skills necessary for this job. But onboarding is such an extensive process that most employers will be willing to ignore these employee shortcomings. “They’ll learn soon,” they think. And maybe I will! But all that matters is that I am hitched along for the long haul. And with the country’s return to the normalcy of a needlessly competitive job market, it’s more important than ever to err on the side of embellishment if you want to get hired.
Before you actually go through this whole process, it’s important to ask yourself why you’re lying your way into the workforce. Identifying the reason can help you narrow down the jobs you should be looking into. Do you want a job that will keep you on your feet all day to get some toned calves and/or buttcheeks? Look into a food service position. Do you want a job that’s highly social so people have to talk to you? That’s like being invited to a party all hours of the day. Look into a job in retail. Do you just want to make money? If you lie well enough, this shouldn’t be a problem for you much longer.
Action Item: Make a Hit List
Make a list of jobs hiring in your sector of choice. Look for stores with pieces of printer paper in the window that have been aged by sun exposure. That is a sign of a desperately understaffed store. Make a note to visit them later.
Faking your Backstory
The next step is to tweak your resume. This is the thing that could make or break your chances at the all-important job interview, so you need to add enough to make yourself seem impressive enough and equipped with the skills that would fit the position you’re applying for. It’s important to keep it up to date with any new skills or work experience you gain, though not all of it has to be technically true.
Start at the section showing your past work experience. No previous jobs in the sector you’re applying for? Just add some. It just needs to be believable. For example, people think very highly of aerospace technology, but if you’re applying for a cashiering job, it wouldn’t make sense to say that you were an astronaut previously. But saying that you sold rocket parts to the aerospace programs of other countries would tell your future employer that you know how to take inventory, handle a cash drawer, and deal with all kinds of customers.
Next check out your special skills. However many you have, add more. I’ve been able to find some pretty high paying tech gigs by adding random three letter acronyms to my resume since those seem to indicate some knowledge that’s now deeply important in the digital landscape. I have no idea what “SEO” is, but I do know that it means something important to people looking to hire techies. Add a little bit of “proficient in CRO, DTI, and IBS” and when asked what they mean, just say that it’s very important to incorporate if you want to boost organic site traffic. Nobody else will have it under their special skills. They’ll think you’re a rare genius.
Are your references impressive? Probably not. Again, it’s very easy to lie about who the hiring team is going to be calling when they just have a phone number to do it. I like to put my friends down since I know they’ll lie for me, and I just pump up their titles a little bit. Again, make it believable. If you list the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama as a reference and then a white girl in her twenties picks up the phone, you’ll be found out. However, if you have any female friends who can do a Swedish accent, you should use them as a passable Greta Thunberg.
Action Item: Bulk Your Resume
Go through your resume and add 5 things to it that weren’t there before. Challenge yourself by lying about 4 of them. Remember that this is your opportunity to be the person you’ve always wanted, so think bigger than “proficient in Microsoft Excel.” Think along the lines of “I run a side hustle as Beyonce’s doula.”
Inside the Actor’s Studio: Service Associate Interview
The interview is really going to be your time to let your acting skills shine. There’s not much to this part except any time your interviewer asks if you can do something, say that it’s actually one of your favorite things in the world to do and make a mental note to look up a YouTube tutorial when you get home.
When they ask you further questions, just remember that you are playing the role of the ideal job applicant. When they ask if you’re available on weekends, you are. You can just suffer an injury every Friday to take you out of the weekend schedule once you get hired. Pace yourself in terms of severity, though. If they ever get pushy about making you come in anyway, just remember you have ten fingers that, should one be severed, can get you out of anything.
When they ask if you have location flexibility for a store miles away, you do. Sneak a cot into the supply closet and sleep there between closing and opening shifts. When they ask what the small misdemeanor that came up during a background check is, say you didn’t know how that unprescribed doggie Xanax got into your urine sample after you had to got drug tested for swerving through a traffic stop.
Action Item: Nothing Clever to Say for this One. Just Lie.
Practice nodding convincingly in the mirror. Once you have that down, take the lies that you added to your resume and prepare some statements about them. An example question you could run into might be something like: “How do you build customer loyalty?” A correct answer that shows your dedication to the position could be something like “Probably have sex with them.”
Your Sudden Disappearance
If you’ve followed my tips and covered your tracks well, you’ve probably seduced a job with the character you’ve intricately crafted. Now it’s time to start planning for when you want to quit.
Why do it so soon? There are a lot of reasons that you would want to quit your new job. These could include, but are not limited to: it takes up too much of your time, your boss is mean, your boss is nice to the point of it being creepy, you have to do too many tasks at work, you don’t do enough tasks at work, it turns out that you actually hate the job you crafted a romantic idea of in your mind… Whatever the reason, it is totally okay to quit once you realize that you can’t handle the job you lied your way into.
The best way to determine when to quit your job is by setting milestones for yourself. Pick something that would be outside of your normal budget and work just long enough until you can afford it. Then leave the next day. I do this with concert tickets all the time. Make it something that you can easily get, though. Don’t put your goal at the price of a car, set your expectations at something like a sensible moped, maybe?
When you quit, it’s best to wipe yourself completely off the grid. If you can give them a fake name at any point, do it because it will be much easier to make yourself disappear from public record. Send a vague email that doesn’t directly claim any danger, but also leaves room for some ominous possibilities. Maybe a hitman has been on your tail and is finally closing in, maybe you’re about to film a new season of Big Brother, maybe you just plan on getting in the car and never stopping.
If you give them a sense of dread for your safety, that feeling will overtake their anger at your sudden quitting. They won’t be inclined to forewarn other businesses of the serial job dater that’s targeting desperate stores, and you can move up a rung on the corporate ladder.
I’ve held three separate jobs in the past two months. I wouldn’t have gotten them without following these steps exactly in order to create an intricate web of lies I could trap my employers in. I got my money without any of the “required” skills that should have served as a warning for me not to apply. Now, lie your way into a job you treat like a revolving door because at the end of the day, employers can’t be that picky about who they’re going to pay minimum wage to just wash dishes.
Happy hunting!
