Ten years ago, I was living in Seattle at the peak of my misery. If you’ve lived in Seattle, you know there is only two seasons. One lasts 11 and a half months and it’s cloudy, cold, rainy, wet and windy. The other two weeks, the sun vacationed in Seattle, but it was only for two weeks. We called it the sun’s cameo appearance. It varied from year to year, but it usually happened in late July or early August…which is when all my relatives would visit. They would get this false sense of hope that Seattle was beautiful, green and lush all the time. They would state they wanted to move there, and then proceed to never visit again until the sun came to visit.

It was one of my many curses. Couple in the fact that our kids didn’t get out of school until late June and started back up in late August, it felt like we never had a summer. I swear to you on the life of someone I don’t care about, one year, on July 4th when everyone else in the country was frying from the heat of a thousand suns, like the hot dogs on their grills, it was literally 45 degrees, cloudy, rain, windy and miserable. It was the Great American Holiday that everyone associates with hot, and I was wearing a sweatshirt, warm jacket, gloves and hoping the lake didn’t freeze for the fireworks. It’s the holiday people celebrate as the unofficial peak of summer, and it looked like a typical December day in Seattle.

I knew I had to leave Seattle.

Being bitter about my job is part of my operating system, but that July/December Independence Day cemented it for me. Ten years ago, I started my slow journey to move back to Utah. I took a trip here during the kid’s Spring Break (which they should have called Winter Break) and started looking for jobs. I came two consecutive years and tried my darndest to find something here that would make me rich. During those early April trips, I realized that people in other parts of the country experience the sun in months that aren’t late July or early August. In Seattle, I was Superman being exposed to Kryptonite for 15 years. When I got to Utah, I was exposed to the sun for the first time, and I got all my bitter superpowers back. It was like a phone being at 1% for years, and then someone stuck in a fast charger.

I didn’t get a job here for another four years, but finally settle into the marketing/social media sector. It pays okay, I guess, but I’ve always wished I could work less and make more money. I’m definitely in the wrong industry for that. It’s probably too late now, but I did figure out what industry I should be in.

The corruption industry.

If you don’t know this yet, you will find out eventually. Doing work legally (and I’m not talking about being a lawyer) may be fulfilling and give you the chance to obtain a mortgage you can have for the rest of your life. But working in the legal industry won’t allow you to sail the seven seas on a megayacht or get you a Lamborghini, Tesla or whatever the latest supercar is (It’s a Prius isn’t it?)

If only I knew which newspaper or website listed all the jobs in corruption. I know having government, finance or cartel experience is a good place to start building your resume for a corruption career. It’s just disappointing that someone that works in marketing or advertising doesn’t have as much of a chance of being a corrupticrat as people in those industries.

Trust me when I say this, because of my many years of job searching. I’ve never come across a listing for even an entry level corruption job, like assistant to the Regional Manager of Corruption. I’ve scanned Indeed, Zip Recruiter and even Monster.com and there are no listings for them.

It should all start with the schools. Public schools are focused on marketable STEM skills like math, science, technology and engineering. They even try teaching us soft skills like reading, marketing, writing, and history. Why can they not spare 30 minutes a week teaching the kids corruption skills?

Let’s be real here. If there are college courses dedicated to tree climbing, Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame and the Physics of Star Trek, then there is no reason why we can’t have majors centered around the principles, methods and best practices of corruption. Even basic classes like Bribery 101, Influence Peddling, Dealing with Kleptocracies, and Easiest and Fastest Ways to Embezzle from your Company would be a boon to the economy.

Most people get into corruption industry by accident or knowing somebody. Just like almost everything I’ve learned, I had to learn on the job or on YouTube. If there was something I could tell all colleges in order to prepare their students for the real world, I would tell them to focus much more on corruption classes. They could really give a student a leg up in their career by knowing all the best corruption skills. I would suggest it would be the best way for a college to help a student get ahead in their careers.

Instead, students are coming out of college, ill prepared for the real world. Just like it should be a requirement to teach kids real world skills about finance, they should also be required to know the ways of corruption as well.

My hope is that future generations don’t have to suffer learning on YouTube, but can be taught from the moment they start teething. I hope someday my grandkids can just as easily take advantage of a loophole and they can stick their finger in a Cheerio.

If companies want their employees to take advantage of their companies in the most efficient way, they need to allocate more resources to corruption education. Corruption internships, conferences, training, etc. would go a long way to building more corrupt companies and corrupt companies lead to a more corrupt society.

If we want to live in a world of megayachts and scamming and corrupting each other, we have to start with the children. It might be too late for me to fully take advantage of full corruption, but it isn’t too late for my kids.

ARRGGGHHHHH

Bitter Corruption Industry Ben