Is this the way it's going to be?

I can accept that most people, most of the time, have to go to work. Honestly, that's fine with me. I even plan on doing it myself sooner or later. But no one has to like it. Sure, sure, it's better to like what you do than to dislike it. And it's probably healthier for you to work for some cause you believe in than it is to support something you'd oppose on the weekend. But interviewing people to try to uncover real passion - unless you're hiring for the Peace Corps - just seems like exploiting the job shortage. For all our talk of respecting people who love love love their job, don't you make fun of the guy who can only talk about work? People , we don't really want this.

A programmer friend just went on a job interview. After he had met with all the engineers, the CFO came out. "The engineers tell me they think you can do the work," he said. "No, no, they know you can do the work. But they don't think you want it." After listening to my friend try to convince him that he wanted the job - and how much does it affect the CFO if the new programmer is a little bored, anyway? - he sent him away with an assignment: Prove you want it. The guy went home and wrote the code to finish the project the team had said they really wanted to do. He's still waiting. To sum up, free work that goes beyond what the current employees are able to manage may not be enough.

Another guy is looking for law jobs after a long involuntary sabbatical. At a recent interview for a contract position - that's temp work, essentially - they said, "Well, you haven't worked divorce before, but you'll pick that up quickly. What we really want to know is, Why do you want this job?"

Believe me, if I were hiring someone for something, I'd want to know what they were doing there. But asking this of an employee to whom you don't plan to pay any benefits or offer any job security seems a little much. They want work, he wants to continue paying his rent. Is that so wrong?

And don't even get me started about the magazine that asked me if I really was comfortable starting in an entry level position. "I'm changing careers," I said. "I expected to work in entry level jobs when I started." "Well," they said. "We're sure you can do the work, and we like your writing samples, but...it just seems beneath you." No, watching MacGyver every day is beneath me.

Of course, it could be that all employers have just gotten exceedingly polite and don't want to tell any of us how underqualified we are. I'd prefer not to explore that.

Still moving in

Will it ever end? For weeks we had been keeping a particularly huge bookshelf of the unpainted pine variety on its side in the sunroom, under the impression that it would not fit when placed in a standing sort of way. I tried to tip it up vertical-like, and it wouldn't go. Pythagoras, hypoteneuse, etc. But when measuring it for a posting on craigslist, we discovered - gasp - that it was lower than the ceiling. It is now full of books.

Our book collection seems, like many of our friends, to have been made more fecund by our trip to Spain. I cannot fathom how we acquired, read, and then decided to keep, box, and move all these damn books. Books should be mailed to you every Sunday like the newspaper, and then recycled. In the course of deciding, for what must be the 100th time in the Dan and Leah era, which books would go to the Salvation Army, I went on a little trip down a literary memory lane. I am not a good unpacker.

Nearly all the books I had to buy about teaching for one class or another have now been purged from the collection. I found a couple that were written - not all that well, I might add - by the professors. The price tag on one read $18.00. It takes a lot of gall, I think, to charge eighteen bucks for your own book about observing teachers in Syracuse and then force people to buy it if they want to do well in a required course.

Also, there's the subject of Anne Lamott. You think this web page is a little navel-gazey? At least I spare you the holistic teachings and explicit lecturing. If Anne Lamott didn't exist, there would be nothing at all for Anne Lamott to write about. I mean...you know what I mean. I did not buy these books, nor did I finish them, but 30 pages of a few different ones is enough for this review. Leah has made better choices. Yet Anne Lamott stays on the shelf, because, like in cards, it is better to have many books that match than lots of different books. In this sense, you can only judge a book by its cover, at least inasmuch as that's where the author's name is. So Hemingway stays, Richard Ford stays, Lamott stays, E.B. White stays, but Chinua Achebe goes. Russell Banks stays, Melissa Banks goes. Ursula Hegi and Ursula Duba stay, next to each other, because, I mean, Ursula. Raymond Carver stays. Jon Krakauer stays (how did that happen?). Rigoberta Menchu goes, that liar.

All of this is to say that I prefer unpacking to looking for more jobs.

Today I received what has, sadly, been the closest thing to an offer of employment since I got back: a cold call. A guy who mispronounced my name and had no idea what work I had done in my life asked me a few vague questions ("Have you ever supervised?"), then tried to schedule an interview for tomorrow at 10:15 in Framingham. He was sketchy on the details of the, uh, job for which I would be interviewing.

When I refused to say whether 9:30 or 10:15 would be better for me until he told me what the job in question was, he sighed and said, "It's called American Income."

"The company?"

"Yes. Now, 10:15 is good?"

"But what does it do?"

"What does what do?"

"The company."

"Insurance. We make available low-cost insurance extensions to union members across America." Everyone uses the phrase 'across America' in normal conversation. It's never part of a script. Never.

"And what would I do?"

"You would be on the management team. Training salespeople."

"The management team? You're aware that I don't have any experience or interest in insurance or sales?"

"Can we schedule the interview now, sir?"

I will admit that it was hard to turn down an interview. In fact, though I am embarassed to admit it, I said, "10:15 is fine." I don't know why. I called back later and cancelled.