I Want What Snooki's Got

by Roberta Durra


Snooki’s working and I’m not. This is a fact, and it bugs me. It bugs me like an itchy scalp, or the theme music on Dancing With The Stars.  I have nothing personal against Snooki. I’ve never watched Jersey Shore. I don’t know Jersey Shore from Pauley Shore, or Dinah Shore, for that matter. I just want what Snooki’s got… a job.

 

Every morning, with new hope and renewed enthusiasm I meticulously scour each offering on Craigslist willing my next job to jump off the page, as the lights dim and a choir of angels surround me singing “Robeeeerrrrttttaaaa. You start Monday!  But as a formality, please send resume and cover letter – no attachments!”

I agonize over the requirements in each ad detailing the employer’s every want and need. They don’t ask for much…

 “We are looking for the current administrative champion of the world, a conqueror of frenzy, a thick-skinned warrior of rolling calls, ivy-league graduate maxima cum laude, discrete with confidential info, as not to break under water-boarding, adept and accomplished with the initiative to develop and implement a measure of complexity and agent-based modeling with fellow workers with pattern formations including nonlinear dynamics and algorithms and vehemently PASSIONATE about BOTH social media and booking restaurant reservations.”

It’s like they KNOW me! 

“You must be willing to work 23 hours a day and available by Blackberry that extra hour. Principled, well read, a vision of perfect loveliness, able to compose magnificent letters for highest level humans on planet earth, willing to travel when the employer calls from tarmac to say the plane leaves in 5, wonderful sense of humor, exquisite table manners, able to converse with politicians, actors, activists, scientists and cleaning crew. Fluent Mandarin preferred but not necessary.”

 

$8.00 an hour. Contract work. No benefits.

Snooki received $32,000 for her college speech at Rutgers. When asked what her advice was for Rutgers students, she said: “Study hard, but party harder.” 

Snooki, do you need a party planner?  I’m available.