After finishing the work I do to earn a living, I don’t have much energy or motivation to do anything but sleep. I’ve never worked harder in my life. But at least I don’t have to work in an office under insane rules of management. That’s a big plus in this modern world. I don’t think I could make it through an interview for an office job–or a job of any kind–without breaking out in mad laughter. I’m simply no longer fit to be part of the American working world.
Thomas Ligotti (and here.)
Is it just me or does this attitude seem just a tad immature? I can’t help but think that people who can’t work in office are simply to self-absorbed to function as part of a team. They pat themselves on the back for their lack of self-discipline and disdain for others.
Well, Shannon, humor is in the eye of the beholder. I too have wanted to burst out laughing in job interviews. Actually, Ligotti is that rarest of things, a genuine mad genius. He has panic disorder and other stuff and is doped to the gills, and after 23 years of struggling actually cannot function in an ordinary work environment. And his disdain is not really so much for “others” as for human life in its totality, a philosophic position I do not share, but in his case it has given rise to some gripping fiction.