You're Driving Me Crazy

I just can't explain it to you, and I don't even feel like I should have to.

I appreciate that you have emailed me, out of the blue, to offer me a new job. I understand that it's a great opportunity, that your company is prestigious, that it represents a nice jump in pay. I get all that.

But I'm not taking it, because taking it means I'd have to haul my ass all the way out into the suburbs every single day.

Oh, I see the irony. I was born and raised there, spent thirty years of my life there, so now I don't want to go back? How metrosexual of me, to have invented myself in this fancy new urban mold.

No, you douche. It's not about where you are (although dude, where you are sucks). It's about the getting there. The act of dragging my ass out of bed every day, and figuring out how to get way the fuck out there. I could:

1. Buy a car, deal with the DC DMV, spend an hour a day looking for parking, spend 3 hours a day wondering what day it is, hoping I'm parked on the non-street cleaning side, worry about gas, pay astronomical insurance rates, contribute to the destruction of the planet, fight traffic for hours every day on a highway full of people I want to die (but please pull over first), have to listen to the same nine records that have been playing on a loop on corporate controlled radio for the last 15 years as I sit in my car (honestly, Stone Temple Pilots weren't even good then, can you please add something new to the rotation, Clear Channel?), kill kill kill, die die die, everything everything everything, etc.

2. Use some combination of atlas and GPS to devise a way to take public transportation all the way out there, involving taking the Orange Line to the bitter end, then getting on some kind of bus or shuttle and sitting in traffic on the beltway for hours on end, which is supposed to somehow be better because I don't have to worry about the driving? If I'm not driving, I don't even get the benefit of fantasizing about standing on the gas and plowing my car into every fucker that cuts me off. Explain to me again how sitting on a bus with a bunch of whack jobs (have you ridden a fucking bus?) is better than sitting in your car by yourself?

Or I could just not take the job, which is what I'm gonna do.

You just don't understand, because you haven't tried it. My commute takes, at the very longest, a half hour. And that's if I walk from door to door and get stuck at every light. It takes about fifteen minutes if I take the Metro. Do you get that? I'm home and drinking a beer before you even pull out of the parking lot. Guess when the last time I scraped ice off my windshield was? Guess how much time I spend waiting in line at Jiffy Lube?

So spare me the condescending tone that suggests I'm a flake. There are more important things in life than salary. I value those extra hours I'm not sitting in my car every day, and I relish not having to worry about any of that car nonsense. Some people only care about money, and they're willing to commute four hours a day for every last dollar they can get their hands on. Some people value the piece of mind that comes with never having to worry about any of this shit. And fuck you if you can't see the difference. If you're going to be a cunt about this, why on earth would I ever want to work for you?