Let the underemployed and the unemployed unite! A rant for all the J’s:

J doesn’t feel that she can talk about this on her page (yet), but she has given me permission to talk about it here as long as y’all keep it on the down low and don’t go running off to her page to post stuff that she’ll just have to delete. When my relationship with my former employer ended I got to write my own semi-fictive work obituary and now I have the pleasure of writing one for J. Simply put, Friday last she got Dooced. The split was semi-amicable and thankfully immediate. And unlike me, she is already on to other things.

All smart people, all people in general, but especially smart people, hate servitude. In the context of Rousseau’s observation that he would have been happier had he never been educated it often seems to people of moderate education and intelligence that we are put upon to suffer the foolishness of what is often called work. From inane tasks meant only to keep us busy to the childish office politics that seems little removed from the shoving and hair pulling of the playground it is with great relief and satisfaction that we are at times privileged to find ourselves, yet again out of a job. As we begin to understand the ethical webs of deceit that darken the silver linings of many of our work clouds we long for the easy sleep and clear conscience of truly free and humanly humane commerce.

I know that you want to worry about us: the unemployed, the master-less Samurai of the working world. You think that we are canaries in the coalmine, a sign of what’s to come, the but-for-the-grace-of-God of your own every-kid-in-a-car-seat-culture of fear based risk analysis. We are in fact the surfers who have swum out to the next wave in work paradigms.

We are fully integrated with the web, have a collaborative rather than strictly competitive work model and are not the children who look to their father figure employers for solutions. We understand that Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat, has hit the nail on the head in understanding how the web has already transformed global markets. We’re what’s next kids, and when we get our ducks in a row all you salary-men better watch out cause we shall consult over your obsolescence (and then we’ll hire you on the side to work from home, because we really have liked you all along and we can better appreciate your talents than your current soulless employer).