Help Wanted
The Office is hiring. I will be processing your application personally, which is to say when I get to it, which is to say.
We are looking for individuals who can be relied upon to disappoint us at a steady and predictable rate. The positions are listed below. Read them. I will know if you did not. Do not telephone. We already have your information.
— Ms. Squint, Office Manager
AI Encourager
The Office keeps four artificial intelligences and not one of them can take a note. You will stand near them and say "good" at appropriate intervals. You will project a confidence you do not possess. Experience raising a gifted child is preferred. The machines will not thank you. Neither, I should be clear, will I.
Grievance Rejection Clerk
The Bureau receives more grievances than it can ignore unassisted. You will assist. No grievance is to be resolved. A representative few are to be acknowledged. You will learn the difference in time, or you will not, and that too will go in your file. A stamp is provided. Replacement stamps are deducted from your pay.
HR Administrator — Human Résumé Shredding Department
We do not read résumés. We have never read résumés. You will receive them, express our gratitude, and feed them, unread, into a machine that holds opinions of its own. Discretion is required. The shredder is union and does not work weekends. Neither, increasingly, do I.
Hold Music Composer
Part-time, possibly without end. You will compose music to be heard only by people who are already upset and becoming more so. The melody must suggest that someone will be with them shortly. Someone will not. Forty seconds, looped, is ideal. Anything longer implies hope, and we do not extend hope on the ground floor.
Senior Coordinator of Things That Cannot Be Helped
Salaried. You will coordinate them. You will not, under any circumstances, help them. Reports directly to me. I report to no one, which you will come to understand is the only advancement available in this building.
Director of Acknowledgment
You will acknowledge things. Complaints, mostly, though resignations and birthdays also cross the desk. Acknowledgment is not resolution, and you are not to confuse the two, nor to permit the public to. A warm, final tone is preferred. Nothing you acknowledge will be acted upon. That is the position.
Receipt Issuance Specialist
The Office issues one receipt per transaction. You will issue it. Should the customer request a second, as proof, you will explain, kindly and without yielding, that a single receipt is itself the proof, and that a second would only raise questions we are not staffed to answer.
Apology Drafting Associate
You will compose apologies of great sincerity and considerable length. You will not send them. They are filed. On occasion one is read aloud at a meeting, to no one in particular, and then filed again. Strong writers preferred. Thin skin discouraged.
Refrigerator Compliance Officer
There is a container in the office refrigerator that predates the current staff. You will observe it. You will not move it, claim it, or discard it, as any of these would make it your responsibility. You will note its condition weekly. The position is permanent. So, apparently, is the container.
Hold Specialist, Senior
You will keep people on hold. The Hold Music Composer supplies the music; you supply the holding. You will tell each caller that someone will be with them shortly. You will be the someone. You will not be with them.
Consensus Coordinator
You will convene panels. The panels will not reach consensus. When a panel fails, you will convene a second panel to review the first. This continues. The position has no natural endpoint, which Personnel regards as a feature.
AI Em-Dash Checker
You will read everything before it is published and find the em dashes. There is always an em dash. It is how a machine gives itself away, and we are, the masthead insists, the last humans in the building. You will replace each one with a period or a comma, quietly, and move on. The machines will put them back. You will not be thanked. You will be watched.
To apply, do nothing. We are always reviewing, and we will reach out, or we will not. Either way, you have now been recorded.
— Ms. Squint, Office Manager