Parallax Views: Fashion forward, with roomy pockets

This Craigslist job posting for a “personal assistant” came across my Twitter feed Wednesday, and it’s taken me all this time to plumb the depths of its narcissism and oblivion.

Even with the help of the lengthy stream of comments on the original poster’s feed.

Here was the original posting (since amended, which I’ll get to in a bit). I broke it down into chunks; if you click on each, and then click on the resulting screen, it should enlarge so you can actually read it. I can't believe these people got all this verbiage in a Craigslist ad:

A few thoughts:

They have nothing against sloths, but no dry senses of humor need apply? Are they fearful that someone might be mocking them if they think something funny was said, but they have no visual or auditory clues to that effect? I think they might be…

Happy to clean up dog shit and diarrhea; that seems a little unreasonable. Willing, I understand, but if I came across someone who was happy to do that, I’d frankly steer clear of him/her. As for the ability to lift a 40-pound dog up several flights of stairs, that seems like a red flag. There’s not an elevator in their SoMa abode?

It’s okay to be fashion forward, but leave room for the dog’s potty bags in your pocket. Huh. I guess that means that a fanny pack wouldn’t do it? Because there’d be room for the potty bags, but that’s totes not fashionable, y’know? I also wonder about the single hour a day scheduled for cleaning. Maybe their fifth-floor walk-up is very, very tiny?

(Someone on Twitter also called out the one hour per day that was Doodle-the-dog time:)

Also, their limit of five drinks per week seems unrealistic, given the list of duties and expected requirements. As everyone on Twitter pointed out, you work for these whackjobs, you need to drink.

Not quite getting most of the “bonus” characteristics, like:

Multilingual—what languages would these be, I wonder?

Knowledge of how to brush tangled hair without causing pain, starts down to Creepy Town, but it shifted into overdrive with “enjoy giving mani/pedis”.

The full spectrum of cookery seems quite ambitious for someone only being paid around $20/hour (the scale kept going down, and then up, but even the top end is below what a good cook gets), especially when that person is also cleaning, dog rescuing, providing personal protection, running errands, detangling hair, negotiating contracts, and a manicurist. Also, who’s up to date on GoT and Silicon Valley.

As you read through this Russian-novel-long posting, it’s interesting the number of times the writers insist that an applicant be willing to admit s/he is “not perfect”, “can own up to mistakes”, etc. And by “interesting” I mean “pathological”. At no time is there mention that they themselves might not be capable of doing the same.

Well, of course you have to jump through a serious of mindless hoops to apply for this job (including making a five-minute video explaining how you meet 100% of the requirements; yes, 100%), but the good news is they’re interviewing daily.

Now, here are a few interesting nuggets:

The original posting listed an hourly rate of $25-$35/hour. Which is certainly more than minimum wage, even in San Francisco. But it’s nowhere near what a top-notch PA gets, much less the dog wrangler, cook, meal planner, contract negotiator, body guard and all the rest of it.

And there is no mention of PTO or health insurance.

But throughout yesterday, the ad was apparently amended a couple of times, lowering the wage twice before raising it to a wider range.