Daily Gut: On Your First Job Out of College

So, despite high unemployment, a crappy economy, and double-digit inflation affecting the cost of therapeutic massage, recent college grads aren’t sweating it. Nope, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (losers), 41 percent of job seekers this year turned down employment offers – which is like 41 out of a 100.

Yep, instead of joining the work force, grads are turning their Ipods up, and flip flops homeward, to sponge off mom and dad, because, according to the Times, “the work offered doesn’t match their self-assessed market value.”

Meaning, they’re special, so their jobs must be special. I mean, you can’t have a precious one-of-a-kind snowflake working in the mailroom! Snowflakes can’t open packages! Snowflakes can’t make coffee! Snowflakes are there to be appreciated, as snowflakes!

And so the job becomes another spoke in the wheel of self-fulfillment, something to accentuate the belly button ring and Asian lettered tattoo on your pelvis (which reads “stupid white person”).

You could say this is the ultimate consequence of self-love buoyed by a safety net. It’s not the kid who’s doing this, but the parents who indulge them. Kick ’em out, they’ll find work.

But to me, by not accepting work, they’re missing out on a key part of life: having a job you hate. A rotten first job teaches you to love the better jobs that come later. Plus, they can be fun! A rotten job means you can invent new ways to pass time, i.e. drinking rum in the bathroom. And the best part: you won’t care, because the job doesn’t matter. You won’t have sleepless nights – just boring afternoons. In a real sense, taking the job you don’t want creates a freedom other people envy.

And also, it’ll get you out of the house. Which you owe your parents.

And if you disagree with me, you’re worse than Helen Thomas.

Tonight, we have John Gibson, the lovely Brooke Goldstein, the hilarious Joe Devito.

And Sharlto Copley (the star of “District 9,” and the new “A-Team”!)