How do you determine if a guy living in his mother’s basement and whining about how he can’t find a job is a malingering work shirker or if he really can’t find a job?
Put him to the test. Sic the Slacker Detector on him.
1) If he is between the ages of 18 and 35 ask him if he has ever tried to enlist in the Army, Air Force, Navy or Marines. If the answer is no, he is a slacker. There may be reasons why he can’t get in, but if he has never even tried, you know you are dealing with a slacker.
2) If the candidate has been rejected by the US military then ask if he has either tried to correct the reason why he was rejected or asked for a waiver. If he has not then he is a slacker.
If a high school diploma is required and your friend doesn’t have one then he should be actively working on getting his GED. If he isn’t he is definitely a slacker. If he has a medical condition then he should be checking out a prosthetic or trying to get a waiver. If he has problems with a criminal record he should be trying to get that bad boy expunged, sealed or waived.
3) Is he camping out in his own filth with the Occupy Wall Street crowd? If so, he is a slacker. OWS is slacker central. When one of your main protesting points is that you don’t want to pay your student loans or that the programs that take care of sick, old people should be sacrificed so that you don’t have to work two jobs, well you are just a pathetic slacker.
4) Can your friend tell you in 25 words or less about any online job board? If not, he is a slacker. One of the main ways to get work in this century is via the internet. If you haven’t even tried, you are a slacker.
5) Ask your friend about Dice, Monster, Indeed, and Juju. If he can’t readily identify at least one of those names as an internet job search engine, your friend is a slacker.
6) Ask your friend, who claims that he has been out of work for months and would take any legitimate, legal and lawful job offered to him if he has applied for jobs as a salesman or a manager. These are amongst the most prevalent job types in America. If your friend has not applied for them he is a slacker.
7) If your friend claims that he has applied for salesmen and manager jobs lately, then check his work. Do a job search for entry-level or trainee managers and salesmen jobs in your friend’s area. Add up the number of open trainee or entry-level salesmen and manager jobs in your friend’s area, and if the number is more than say, five, your friend is a slacker. He may be liar as well. Jobs which do not require any experience would, by definition, take almost anyone, even your lazy friend. Unless he showed up for the interview in a clown suit or raggedy jeans he should have been able to land at least one of those entry-level jobs. If he tried. Oh yeah, your friend would need to bathe regularly and use deodorant. I understand that if he spent any time with the OWS crowd, these may be challenging concepts. After all, OWS thinks the world is their toilet.
8) Ask your friend where he lived when his months long job search began. If he still lives in the same place, your friend is a slacker. If there are no jobs where you live, then you must move to a place where there are jobs.
9) Ask your friend what his field of expertise is and ask him if he has applied for jobs outside his field of expertise. If your friend has been searching without success for a job in a specific field for six months or more and if he has not then tried another field, such as sales or management, he is a slacker.
10) If your friend has failed to do all of steps one through nine then he might be looking for sympathy but he is not really looking for work.
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Slacker Jobs!
Are you looking for a Job? Really? Where are all the job Seekers?
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A Slacker Detector