Hi. I’m here for the job. I’m sorry I’m late, but I missed the last bus from the halfway house because some of the other inmates started throwing food around at breakfast. By the time the guards released us from lockdown and found all the hidden knives, I had to steal a car to get here on time. I read in the newspaper ad that you’re looking for a mature, sharp-dressed, post-graduate educated CPA with extensive computer experience. Well, I don’t have any of those skills but I’m a fast learner. Just ask my cellmate. Besides, this place is only five minutes from the penitentiary, so I’d probably qualify for…
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Those Good Old Time Diseases Why nobody gets Dry Bellyache or Bucket Fever these days
I was a first-grader at Van Nuys Elementary School the first time I came into contact with the medical system and its old time diseases. As a healthy child, the only thing that slowed me down was the occasional off-color weenie on “Hot Dog Friday.” None of the hair-netted ladies behind the steam table thought for a minute that I could have something as serious as Ptomaine Poisoning and wouldn’t have been able to recognize it even if I had. Instead, one of them took off her apron and marched me downstairs to the nurse’s office where she laid me down on an old army cot that smelled of other…
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15 Questions Your Ghostwriter Should Be Asking You And other tips for finding the right person to write your book
What do a Labrador Retriever, a poor Southern tobacco farmer, and a World War II survivor[1] have in common? If you guessed nothing, you’d be wrong. In fact, each was the basis of a best-selling book. Two of them even went on to become Hollywood box office smashes. The world we live in is a fascinating place, filled with thousands of entertaining stories. Some, like those of World War II survivors, will soon be gone—lost forever. Wouldn’t you like to make sure that your story isn’t? If so, you need to write a book! “Sure,” you say. “It’s easy for you to say. You’ve written books and know how to…
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I’m 70 Years Old, Unemployed and a Complete Success Success usually has little to do with how much money you make
“Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.” — Zig Ziglar I’ll never forget the beginning of Jack Nicholson’s award-winning film, “About Schmidt.” It opened with a hideous shot of Warren Schmidt cramming his belongings into a box on his final day of work. After a lifetime as a life insurance actuary, Schmidt was finally packing it in. My mouth dropped to the floor. An entire life spent as an insurance actuary? What a depressing thought. The…
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What’s Gone Wrong with Our Hiring Practices And what we can do to fix them
Two years ago, I decided to make a bold move: I attempted to switch from the competitive world of freelance writing to an in-house writing position. Who knows? Maybe the Atlantic or the New Yorker were looking for another polished writer to wow their readers. After years of beating the bushes and competing with other cutthroat freelancers who undercut each other’s fees, I thought it would be a refreshing change to show up at 8:00 in the morning, put in my 8 hours, then collect a check every other Friday. The results weren’t pretty. The History of Looking for Work Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past…