> Here's the deal, though. How are you going to live on minimum wage for a year? Is it even feasible? If it is, I say go for it.

First I need to find out what sort of money I *can* get, and how regular the work will be. If it does turn out to be minimum wage, well, I've lived on minimum wage before and I guess I can do it again. My only debt is what I still owe on my boat. However, I owe less than half of its resale value, so in the absolute worst-case scenario, I could sell the boat for enough money to be debt-free plus have a nice lump sum in the bank to live off if necessary.

Like I say, this would be the worst-case scenario, but even in the best-case scenario I'd be selling or trading my boat after a year anyway, so it wouldn't come as an emotional tragedy or anything.

> What scared you so much about the corporate job, anyway?

Oh, it was appalling. The guy who interviewed me drew organisational charts on a whiteboard. He put circles around things and drew arrows from them to other things. He used words like "synergy" and "leveraging productivity". He asked me personality-testing questions full of so many buzzwords I didn't even know what he was trying to ask me.

Also, they don't even have cubicles, they have workstations. It's an "open environment". They sit in groups of five or six at little circular clusters scattered around a big open floor. You're supposed to work with your back and desk and monitor and every move you make exposed to fifty other people. There's no privacy at all, or any way to avoid people who walk around or talk or (for example) crunch peanut M&Ms at 138 decibels. Yes, this is a senior position: I was told it makes things "equal" when everybody works in the same conditions. Yeah, sure, so why not give everybody an office with a door? I'm sorry, but there's no WAY I can get anything done like that.

Add rush hour traffic twice a day, the entire parking-building problem revisited, having to dress up, office politics, corporate crap and the certainty that none of this is leading anywhere except to another similar job sometime in the future... you'd have to be a brain-damaged masochist to want this job.

Brunnen-"I don't care what salary they offer me, it can't possibly be worth it"G