Adventures in Job Listings, part I

In the right mindset, there is nothing funnier than corporate double-speak.  In the wrong mindset, it comes across as some sort of nightmarish 1984-style attempt to seize control of reality itself through the careful manipulation of language, but for now, let's stick with the silly option, since I'd prefer to be able to sleep at night, and assume you feel the same.

Quick: what do Burger King, Joann Fabrics, Pizza Hut, and Tractor Supply Company all have in common?
Answer: They are all hiring "team members."

Not "cashiers," or "clerks," or "minimum-wage workers in polyester shirts who spend all eight hours at a time on their feet dealing with obnoxious customers and dreaming of a day that they might afford health insurance in the event they should accidentally slip in a puddle of their own frustrated tears."  Team members.  As if working at Pizza Hut was just one giant game of capture the flag, as if shifts are spent trading high-fives with your teammates and playing pranks on the enemy, which I guess in this case would be Domino's?  (Although anyone who's ever eaten at a Pizza Hut knows that the real enemy is hygiene. *rimshot*)

Wendy's, on the other hand, is currently hoping to hire the deliciously piratical-sounding "crew members."  Given that most of us will never take to the seas or be employed by the captain of a spaceship, this may be our only chance to ever be part of a crew.  This is the best and also only reason I've ever heard of to work at a Wendy's.

In the end, however, the real prize in the game of "call a thing what it is not" goes to Subway, and its actual job title of "sandwich artist."  I don't even know what to say about this, except that I worked at a Subway competitor for a while, and I can safely report that neither I nor any of my co-workers saw ourselves as artists. I made some ugly sandwiches in my day--and not ugly in the "good art should be challenging" sense.  I wasn't reproducing Guernica in mayo and shreds of lettuce, I was just slapping lunchmeat onto bread as fast as I could, because anything more meditative would've earned a yelling from the manager.

In a way, I suppose the job listing was a success.  It does leave me awfully tempted to apply to a Subway.  When the bell by the door chimed, in I would walk, dressed in my best black turtleneck and beret,  paintbrush and a palette of mustards in hand.  When asked to demonstrate my sandwich-making technique, I would adopt a face of supreme concentration, then hand the supervisor a stapler wrapped in bacon and parking tickets, explaining that I was going through a surrealist period.  As management escorted me to the door, I would start shouting that the sandwich art scene had completely sold out.  "You call yourself artists?" I'd yell.  "You're sandwich hacks!  Sandwich hacks, all of you!  Move that pickle slice half an inch to the left, can't you see it's asymmetric?"

At which point I would likely become the first person in history to receive a lifelong ban from Subway for "artistic differences."  Never let it be said I don't have ambition.