how to get a job

One of the most unsettling parts of trying to worm your way into the job market for the first time is this: you sit down, pen in hand, to fill out a job application, and you put down your name and address and et cetera, et cetera, and then you reach the "previous work experience" section. For those of you who haven't applied for a job before, this section takes up, like, 75% of the entire thing. If you're trying to break into that whole arcane community of people with "jobs"... well, leaving a big swath of the application untouched is, quite frankly, nerve-wracking.

I guess it goes back to an old idiom, as so many things do: Need work experience to get a job; need a job to get work experience. High-five, paradoxical capitalistic logic. High-five.

Anyway, it wasn't so bad in some instances. For a couple of days, I burned through applications like my car's V-8 engine burns through gas. I attacked battalions of restaurants, stores--whatever I passed that looked promising, really--and stopped in to pick up an application. The problem is, you usually don't get to talk to anyone, and if you can't show off your ability to not-be-an-asshole, then you've got nothing, since on paper almost everyone is going to look better than you. Plus, more and more places are transitioning to an online system of application, which is bad for us noobies, because it means that you basically become a number plugged into a database. A number with no experience at numberdom or otherwise.

So, that being said, I've composed an infallible system to get anyone their dream job in a few easy steps:

How to Get a Job:

1. Businesses want to hire people with experience. So I say to ye this, bear-market newcomers: lie. Pretend. Be lost in thy whimsy. Neil Gaiman lied about which magazines he wrote for back in the day to get his first job as a journalist, and look at him! It's not like they fact check that shit. Fact checking is for after you get hired.
2. Businesses want people who are creative. How many times have you been told in your life that a creative approach to problem-solving is da bomb? Well, as a job-seeker with no previous experience, you need to be creative and simultaneously show off your explosive amounts of personality. Here's what you do: 
1. Walk in to the restaurant. Pretend to be a customer.  
2. Rant and rave and yell and scream and throw a tantrum of behemoth proportions until you get the employee to whom you're speaking to bring out the manager.
3. Once the manager ventures forth from his secret managerial haunts, you pounce. Politely inform him that you're searching for a job and that, no, you haven't seen a disgruntled customer--they must have already taken a hike.
3. Businesses want people who can engage with customers. Show that you can engage with people: play up the pathos. This goes back to (1) really, but we're to include this subsection anyway. For example, walk with a limp, and when questioned (if not questioned, bring it up) inform the manager requisitioned in (2) that you were injured whilst saving a kitten from a burning bush, or something. Even better if you can make the incident relate to necessary job skills. Example: if applying at Subway, you risked your life fending off some pro-McDonald's gangsters who were attempting to Big Mac an attractive love interest, solely so you could show her the value of eating fresh. Be that dedicated. And if you're still having a hard time snagging the job after all this, fear not, there is an extreme solution.
4. Businesses, above all else, want people who will benefit the company. So study up on your terrorism, strategically place bombs around and within the locations of nearby competitors, and then go up to the manager of [insert desired workplace here] and tell him that hey, you really want to work for this place, and you could really blast the competition out of the water. Explain why. 
1. If he thinks you're crazy, capitalize on that. Tell him that you'll destroy the innocent if he doesn't hire you. 
2. If he thinks your plan is genius... well, sacrifices must be made. That's capitalism.