First, I Googled myself today, and was distraught: there are 65,900 entries featuring "Jason Avant", which at first was a huge relief because I figure that 65,899 of them are about Not Me. Then I go to the second page, figuring that after the first page I'd have to go through 6589 Google pages to get to Me, but no, there I am, right on page 2. Fuck!
You'd think that I would be excited to be so far up the chain, but no, I'm not, and here's why. See, I was going to do a post about my latest contracting gig. I make it a point to keep the work stuff down to a minimum, because it's a)boring and b)in the course of my work, when I'm looking at a potential candidate to fill one of the jobs that I'm working the first thing I do is Google them and check out their bona fides. So I assume that any hiring manager who would look to bring me on board would do the same, and I took some comfort in knowing that I shared the same name as an NFL player and thus would remain somewhat buried in the Google catacombs.
Anyway, I will tell you about my current work dilemma, because it's somewhat thought-provoking, and I'm pretty sure that I wasn't Googled by my current employers. See, I'm now working for a defense contractor, which is sorta like rain on your wedding day. One good aspect of being a contract recruiter is that you can stay above the office politics and life-swallowing "work culture" that Regular Full Timers deal with; you're a bit of a mercenary - go in, hire a bunch of people, get paid for it, on to the next job. Whatever qualms I had about feeding the beast that is The Military-Industrial Complex (those of you who think that Eisenhower was overreaching - well, I encourage you to do a Google search on one "Dick Cheney") were squelched by more practical matters - there's a recession on, and my kids gotta eat.
Which was all well and good, but I do have some scruples, and I was pretty mortified when I read through my company's org chart and found out that this guy is a senior VP. (Well, at least they got rid of this guy.)
Blood money. I tell myself that the company does make stuff that saves American lives, I tell myself that without this job we'd be unable to pay rent or buy groceries or diapers, but the sooner I'm done with this one, the better.
