The American Job Market – As seen through the words of Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding.

I’m channeling my inner Bill “The Sports Guy” Simmons today and writing about something and comparing it to the movie Shawshank Redemption. However, trust me – unlike Mr. Guy, this will be the only time I write such an essay.

I don’t care about most things. Nothing current events wise anyway. My views on many “problems” this country faces is mostly pure disdain and apathy. Mainly because I think the Power of One has been squeezed of its true meaning and a speech or a point of view will only take you so far without a little thing called money. If Gilbert made his little speech at the end of the Adams college homecoming pep rally today, Stan Gable would have just dropped a wad of cash on the crowd and said “fuck this nerd, I’m buying the beer.” I also think most of our problems as a nation have to do with the people creating problems. Protestors are the dumbest people on the planet. Anyone sitting in their living room making clever rally signs and thinking of equally clever chants and phrases to shout, swim not in my gene pool. And besides, dollars to doorbells says that 90% of those cause heads are hypocritical to the very cause they climb on their soap boxes for – but I digress.

One issue I have been entrenched in my entire life is the Job Market in this country. Finding a good job is never easy and millions of people get up every morning and loathe their commute, despise their coworkers, are nauseated by their customers, and are infuriated by their job altogether. I can speak for these poor saps. Well perhaps not me, but someone who all of us drones can relate to. Good ol’ Red. Red… A man who knows how to get things. He’ll show us the way.

There is a reason that Shawshank’s main character is Andy. It’s because he’s interesting. He rises from the ashes and beats the system. He follows the rules of prison, takes his lumps, swims through shit, and ends up sanding his own boat on some tropical beach somewhere. He’s the American Dream. He’s “The Power of One.” And he’s more fucking fictional than Tinkerbell. We are asked as moviegoers to relate to Andy. Life got you down? Dig your way out. System fucking you over? Fuck the system right back. Be a snowflake. Bullshit.

Attention : You are all Sheep

The real person you should relate to is Red. Poor, miserable Red.

Red is a cog in the wheel; nothing but a number. Shit we barely know Red’s real name. He’s a slave to the system because of a slew of poor decisions he made at a young age. This is your life. Drink it in.

“These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized.”

When you first start your career, it can have that “new job smell” when in reality, it’s denial trying to shield you from the truth – you’ll eventually hate this. You’ll hate the walls. You’ll complain, call in sick, and take personal days quicker than you can accumulate them. But then after a while, that cunt of a mistress “Responsibility” comes creeping in. Now you start to get used to the walls. The routine. The stale coffee. The mindless chatter. Meeting after meeting after desk after computer screen after cubicle after mindless fucking bullshit. By this time you and responsibility are going steady. You’ve given her your pin and just bought a malt with two straws. You now depend on the walls. If you left the confines of the walls, you’ll probably be carving “Brooks was here” somewhere before you take a little throat dangle.

Brooks' Bio - Came to Shawshank in Aught Five. Made Librarian in 1912. Hung himself because he missed a bird.

“There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I got to live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit.”

Job interviews are parole hearings. During the first two hearings, Red was very jubilant and anxious to prove to the parole board that he was completely ready to be a free man. “Yes sir… Fully rehabilitated” This is what your first few interviews are like. Half lies, gussied up resumes, and spunky personality. Best fake foot forward. You practically beg for sweet release of your current situation because you’re sick of the walls, the routine. Time off for good behavior please… call the governor… something… help me.

Reality, however, is this third time he goes in for a parole hearing… This completely sums up my job hunt analogy. When the job hunt has you so deflated and defeated that you have nothing left to lose. Give me the job, or don’t…Whatever, just don’t blow smoke up my ass. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” – Definitely not where I saw myself five years ago. So I assume that history will repeat itself. Whose fault is that? Mine… at 18. Sure I wish I could change the past. Who doesn’t? But it’s not happening so either give me the job or leave me alone. Stamp your form, Sonny. Don’t string me along with bullshit. (By the way “Stamp your form, Sonny” is my new heading on my resume.)

"However we will keep your resume on file for any future job postings"

“One day, when I have a long gray beard and two or three marbles rollin' around upstairs, they'll let me out.”

This is what retirement must feel like, if one will be able to afford to retire. Sure when all your creative wells are dried up, your spirit is broken, and you are no longer a useful member of the machine that’s when they’ll let you out. They’ll throw an office party that no one wants to go to and give you a gold watch and expect you to LIVE IT UP! Meanwhile it will take you an hour to get from the living room to the kitchen and you will have cataracts the size of golf balls. You'll send postcards to your winter clothes in the summer time. “Wish you were here!” You will call game show offices and complain they mispronounced Notre Dame. These will be your golden years. When in reality, you’re just too old to give a shit anymore. That and you’re bat shit crazy.

"Jesus Andy, you smell like shit"

So what’s the solution? How the fuck do I know? Break out? Be like Andy and swim through shit? That’s one in a million really. Blind, stinking, luck. Most of us are too lazy to do anything like that. So fuck it. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll have a friend like Andy. One who hits the lottery or no matter what they do, just seem to step in shit and ends up rich for no good reason. A friend who will leave a wad of cash for you in a tin box underneath a tree. A friend who invites you to a beach somewhere in Mexico so you can help him sand his boat. I hope for such a friend. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams… I hope.

- Mike