Do you like to be insulted, both to your face and behind your back? Do you fantasize about someday being fired "like a dog"? When you sit in public, do people tell you that you have the resting face of Rodin's Thinker, With A Horrible Toothache, Who Has Just Received Disturbing News? Do you leap at opportunities even Chris Christie has refused?
If so, you might be just the right candidate for White House chief of staff! The position combines the job security of a redshirt with the welcoming workplace environment of a Tudor court. You will get all the fulfillment of a job well done that Sisyphus feels at the end of every day.
Do you have something sketchy in your past that would be immediately disqualifying in an ordinary job hunt? Don't worry, so does your employer! We don't care. Have you led your life in such a way that if it were fully examined, you might go to jail? That's actually a plus.
You're going to love life on this team! We work hard and play hard. Sometimes, for fun, one of us writes an op-ed describing the workplace as a living hell, and then we play "Guess Who Wrote the Anonymous Op-Ed Describing This Workplace as a Living Hell" or conduct other fun loyalty tests (not to be confused with witch hunts, which are bad!).
Responsibilities include:
• assembling, every day, a series of policy proposals and action items to be thrown away, unread;
• offering vague and horrifying support for bad policies (children separated from their families are to be put “in foster care, or something”);
• looking as if you have just received word of the destruction of the fleet during every single public appearance;
• attempting to control the flow of information, but not in such a way that Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner is ever prevented from entering a room;
• fetching golf balls;
• nodding.
Benefits include:
• If things go wrong, they will turn out to have been your responsibility.
• If things go right, they are because your boss’s gut is a genius.
• You will feel that in some small way you have helped dismantle the country!
What we’re looking for:
• The ideal candidate should possess all the organizational prowess and capacity of Mary Poppins and also strong, negative opinions about immigration.
• Must love Fox News. Must worship Fox News. Must consider Fox News a valid source of information.
• Candidate will be fluent in Twitter but reticent regarding snarky or snappish remarks about hair or grammar.
• Experience is not required, obviously. Nothing can prepare you for this.
• Hopefully you still have some trace amount of dignity that can be slowly chipped away until you exit office, a shadow of your former self. But it’s not a must, either. At this point, we will take anyone.
Not ideal:
• having any easily mockable characteristics that will make you appear vulnerable, such as the name “Reince” or a readable expression;
• expertise;
• disapproving of the Trump agenda;
• possessing even a rudimentary knowledge of history that would cause you to make disapproving faces when people said facts that were incorrect.
Job applicants will be put through a rigorous interview process that will include such questions as, "Can you start right now?" and "Great! No further questions!" after which the first applicant to interview will be installed immediately with no background check.
If you feel the urge to fight John Bolton on sight, if you are a Thomas Cromwell cosplayer in need of an additional outlet, or if this ad even kind of describes you or anyone you know, honestly, just show up at the White House and start.
Alexandra Petri | The Washington Post
Follow Alexandra Petri on Twitter, @petridishes.