Cover Letter
To Whomever the Fuck it May/May Not Concern,
My name is Samantha and I’m applying for this job. Why? Because I want to be able to afford my seaweed crisps from Trader Joes again. I don’t necessarily like them, but they look good in my pantry next to my roommate’s jar of almond butter, which we both agree tastes worse than peanut butter but is a necessary social sacrifice. It’s a statement and people like us more for it, I think.
Let’s cut the shit. I don’t know how to use Excel even though it’s on my resume, so don’t ask me to ever. I can probably add some spice to the office by brainstorming better happy hour bars than the Irish pub you likely frequent somewhere between 14th and 23rd street and Lexington every Thursday. I can also minimize the company’s carbon footprint by eating the leftover stale bagels at the end of the day on Bagel Monday. I don’t know why you consistently order more than you know you need.
My previous job experience shows that I have no relevant skills applicable to this job, and also, that despite your request that I have 87 years of relevant career work before applying for this entry level job, I have literally none, because I just fucking graduated.
Ok so a little bit about myself: I went to a school that cost more per semester than your yearly salary will ever amount to, because if you were the one asked to read cover letters today, you’re probably not that good at your job. I studied something that taught me how to deconstruct the meanings of big words that don’t ever come up in everyday conversations, like neoliberal. The best part is that by the end of the course, our teacher dropped the bomb that she didn’t know what these words meant either, because nothing has an answer, and words are just ideas (you can put that on the company’s monthly office trivia, if you hire me).
I also became very skilled at faking family members deaths to get extensions on papers, which is actually harder than you think, and requires strategic and imaginative detail about how they died (cancer is cliche), how far away the funeral is (extra time for out-of-state), and how close you were (everybody knows cousins don’t really count). This would come in handy when I have to explain to you why I haven’t finished a certain task by the time you told me to finish it. Oh, and I was once considered a hero amongst my classmates when I, despite the fact that I had to spit out my still-sweet gum to do so, volunteered to read aloud when I noticed the kid who read slow and stammered, raise his hand to do it, and put us all through inconceivable hell as a result. You know the type.
Moreover, I am mildly trustworthy, and will only pretend to be sick in the most imperative situations, such as when I don’t want to come into work. My biggest strength is coming up with funny Venmo payment names (everybody knows the maple leaf emoji is weed—it’s just not funny anymore), such as “I’m here for a good Thai, not a long Thai,” when Jeff from accounting orders Thai for everyone during our annual off-site. This is invaluable.
Finally, you wrote on the job posting that you’re looking for a self-starter, a collaborator, and someone who can multitask. I’ve put all those things under the “special skills” section on my resume, so they must be true.
Excited to never hear back from you and rot away as my self-esteem disintegrates into a slowly incrementing, but painful bout of back-to-back-to-back-to-back seasonal depression between this winter and next winter as I increasingly regret not studying computer science in this ever digitizing world,
Samantha
