Funny, my last job as the Buyer for a chain of bike shops was much the same straight talk. I told the owner, “Look, I’ve already worked in a high end shop, and I have owned my own business twice. I spend all money like it is my own regardless of the amount. If I make a purchase, regardless of the amount of money involved, I’m mentally spending my own money and thinking in terms of paying back your loan. I have real independent ethics and self awareness. I hold myself to the standard of employees I wish I had been able to find for my own business. I expect freedom, flexibility, respect, and autonomy, but I offer a conservatively consistent and reliable person that will always defer to you when I am unsure about an investment or a sum of money I cannot backup with my own finances.”

I find that people who fail to understand that kind of directness, and honesty without all of the insane courtship rituals that now underpin the hiring process are terrible to work for in the first place. I’d rather die than do the debasing mockery of a HR department or some circlejerk clown show of an interview like whores in a brothel. These things are valueless. Look at any large company and you’ll find a range of skills and aptitudes that do not reflect some great filter of value begotten by HR inventing a reason for its own existence as a malignant tumor growth out of the role of an accountant managing payroll in a back office.

When I was asked why in hell I worked for such garbage pay, I told people straight, I can’t run a business with fluctuating income and keep up with paying child services payments. I need rock solid consistency to rebuild my life from the ashes they create for the profit of their agents that are paid on commission. They couldn’t take a bike from me like how they wrecked my commercial driver’s license and business.

I always kinda implied the obvious that I work to survive. Anyone that feels the need to say otherwise would be a prime reason I would walk away. Only a useless clown like a malignant HR tumor would ever question a thing like this. As a business owner twice – of course my employees work for their own survival. And of fucking course I have an ethical and moral responsibility implied by that relationship. If I feel the need to say otherwise, I’m a worthless piece of shit you should never work for and anyone that says such a thing while working for another person is the responsibility of that higher up and absolutely reflective of their moral and ethical depravity. No one should ever put up with such a malignant cancer of a person at any level. They are blatantly telling you “This is a terrible place to work because it produced or failed to filter out me.”