I was wasting my time yesterday

And yours. Here's an article, arrived at via Doonesbury's Honest Voices®, which says what I was burbling on about far better.

I had a job interview yesterday which introduced me to an odd sensation. Typically I hear people preach about the wondrous job they're about to offer you with a growing cynicism. Experience, I suppose. This time I became more enthusiastic as the time rolled by.

In the world of trucking, the most common advert for recruiting is this sort of thing. I'd like you to consider the phrase "More miles, more time home".

Hmmm. If I'm already running a full legal (or slightly extra-legal) day, then how many more miles could I get? And how the heck am I supposed to get more miles in if I'm spending more time at home?

But truckers do fall for it. We're generally suckers for emotional argumentation and for a good sales pitch. One scientist was studying the role of truckers in disease epidemics. Here are some of the conclusions. In an issue of "Discover" magazine, which was covering the difficulty of getting funding from a Republican congress for such research, Dr. Valdez said that homosexual "truck chasers" often reported being asked "You're married, aren't you?" before engaging in sex. Such is the power of belief among the bretheren of the road.

Likewise, truckers as a group believe that the grass is greener (and perhaps contains more THC) on the other side of the fence. Turnaround in Canadian trucking averages about 3 months, but that's because if one driver stays 1 year and three more leave after 3 weeks, the average is about 3.5 months.

So we move on, always looking for the brass ring, the better deal. We don't ask for much, we just want to do this job from the comfort of our living rooms. Failing that, we want "more paid miles and more time home".

But during the interviews we start hearing the same old lines:
"Oh once in a while you get a quick turnaround that means you gotta run hard."
Translation:Your kids will forget what you look like and your logbooks will spontaneously combust"

"You get much more time home with us."
Up to four hours per day, every day!

"We pay more miles than anyone else, because we use 'PC Miler' to calculate the distances."
Oh--you mean the same software my last company and everybody else uses? Does your version have a greater 'generosity' setting?

Truck companies typically pay by calculating the number of miles between two given cities. But most programs calculate from city-limit to city-limit rather than between city centres. If you have to run straight across Dallas-Fort-Worth at rush hour, that's about three unpaid hours.

So by the time you've signed up and collected your bonus you realize that this is just another trucking job.

Well whatever this is, it ain't no trucking job. I'm not going to link to it. Not even going to think about it, and I'm gonna cross my fingers and my toes.

Because I really like the sound of this job. Wish me luck!