Saturday, October 9, 2010

huh?

I had to answer yes/no to the following question on a job application form. I split it up to parse, since I couldn't figure out what the answer was.

Are you or an immediate family member (spouse, child, parent, brother or sister) currently or ever have been employed by a U.S. Federal, State, Local or Foreign Government (either as a civilian or in the military), or in a Reserve or Guard component of the Armed Services, or in any other position that may either: (1) prevent you from being employed by [us] or (2) place restrictions on what work assignments [we] may give you, if hired, due to U.S. Federal, State, Local or Foreign Government "revolving door" or conflict of interest laws?

... huh?

Are you - ok, that's me, good so far

or an immediate family member (spouse, child, parent, brother or sister) - that's a lot of people

currently or ever - if they care if I've ever done it, why mention 'current'?

have been employed by a U.S. Federal, State, Local or Foreign Government, - that's a lot of work

(either as a civilian or in the military) - is there any other possible category?

or in a Reserve or Guard component of the Armed Services, - didn't they just already include the military?

or in any other position - so basically, in any job anywhere with anyone by anyone genetically related to me or with whom I've genetically created some of these others

that may either:

(1) prevent you from being employed by [us] - god, I hope not

or (2) place restrictions on what work assignments [we] may give you,
If I haven't seen the job description (which we all know is NOT the one posted to get me to apply), how can I possibly answer this?

if hired, due to U.S. Federal, State, Local or Foreign Government "revolving door" - is this the "don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out" door?

or conflict of interest laws?
-- right now I'm thinking that the entire government system within the USA is in conflict with my interests.

... huh?

You know a lawyer spent an entire month trying to come up with this. I'm more accustomed to simply being asked "have you ever been convicted of a felony?"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, a lawyer trying very hard to cover all the bases and include anything someone not as intelligent as you might ask. I find some of the USAJobs postings difficult to comprehend sometimes because of their government-speak wording. It'll take me an hour to break it down, just to figure out they could have just said, "no phone calls, please."