Searching for a job is a terrible endeavor.  It really is.  It’s thankless and exhausting and depressing, and seemingly endless.  Occasionally, however, you do come across some job postings that you just have to laugh at, or scratch your head, or both.  Here’s my new favorite.  I don’t even remember what kind of job it was for, but it really sounded awful.  Whoever wrote the ad broke the job description down in such a pedantic and funny way that I just had to copy it here before moving on and continuing the search.

Here we go.  The grammatical and formatting errors are theirs.  Stick with it; I promise you’ll get a kick out of it.  You know I would never steer you wrong.

 

TYPE OF PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:

Clarity of vision at 20 inches or less.

DEPTH PERCEPTION:  Three-dimensional vision.  Ability to judge distance and space relationships so as to see objects where and as they actually are.  This factor is important when depth perception is required for successful job performance and/or for reasons of safety to oneself and others.

CROUCHING:
Bending the body downward and forward by bending leg and spine.

CRAWLING:
Moving about on hands and knees or hands and feet.

REACHING:
Extending hand(s) and arm(s) in any direction.

HANDLING:
Seizing, holding, grasping, turning, or otherwise working with hands.  Fingers are involved only to the extent that they are an extension of the hand.

FINGERING:
Picking, pinching, or otherwise working with fingers primarily (rather than with whole hand or arm as in handling).

TALKING:
Expressing or exchanging ideas by means of the spoken word.  Talking is important for those activities in which workers must impart oral information to clients or to the public, and in those activities in which they must convey detailed or important spoken instructions to other workers accurately, loudly, or quickly.

HEARING:
Perceiving the nature of sounds. Hearing is important for those activities which require ability to receive detailed information through oral communication, and to make fine discriminations in sound, such as when making fine adjustments on running engines.

 

B. WORK EXPERIENCE:

Up to 3 months.

 

WORKING CONDITIONS AND ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS:

May be exposed to dust, heat, and humidity to the degree of being disagreeable

May be exposed to electrical current while maintaining material handling equipment batteries.

 

There were plenty of other sections that were equally bizarre and poorly written, but not nearly as funny, so I spared you from them.  You’re welcome.

I love the descriptions of body movements.  I’ve never seen anything like that, and I used to work for the U.S. Government.  You want to talk about hyper-vigilance to regulations and ergonomic issues, as well as the litigious micro-managing of guidelines for employees, they took the cake.  But they never went so far as to describe handling as, “Fingers are involved only to the extent that they are an extension of the hand,”  or depth perception as, “Ability to judge distance and space relationships so as to see objects where and as they actually are.”  Hearing and talking are my other favorites.

They then specify that you must have “up to three months” experience.  I have no idea what that is in reference to, and I’m guessing that they don’t either.  (What if people have MORE than three months of experience?  Are they considered overqualified, and therefore unemployable?)  Be that as it may, after somehow deciphering all the nonsense and deciding this sounds like a good place to work, you find out that you may be exposed to dust, heat and humidity to the degree of being disagreeable, AND you may be exposed to electrical current.

I think I’ll pass on that particular job, thank you very much, but at least reading about it brought a smile to my face, and a brief respite from the drudgery.