They tell you to ?do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.? But what if the thing you love is ?not having a job??
From blue collar to white collar, Franklin Schneider has had every kind of job, and been fired from them all. Internet start-up. 24-hour adult bookstore. Television writer. Assembly line at a cookie factory. Telemarketer. The dreaded, ubiquitous cubicle, many times. Schneider was fired so many times that he spent the majority of his twenties on unemployment. He is extremely proud of this, though he’d never say it out loud. “Canned” is the inspirational story of an adulting fail ? several of them, in fact. It will either make you feel much, much better about your 9-to-5 fluorescent-lit ennui, or much, much worse.
This is the book for you, if you’re a fan of: George Orwell’s ?Down and Out in Paris and London,? the self-immolation of late stage capitalism, the Cam’ron song ?I Hate My Job,? working for six months and then getting unemployment checks for a year, Charles Bukowski, the fifteen hour workweek, getting blackout drunk and hurling a lawnmower through the picture window of your ex-boss’s house, Michel Houellebecq, the surprisingly Marxist undertones of Dolly Parton’s ?9 to 5,? things that cost exactly $3.99, makeshift break room tiramisu made from crushed Twinkies, instant coffee, and stolen yogurt, Mikhail Lermontov, abruptly throwing yourself onto the third rail while waiting for your morning train, hate-reading Dilbert comics, ?The Office? (the funny one, not the American version), universal basic income, ?Tropic of Capricorn? by Henry Miller, bad attitudes, shoplifting from Wal-Mart, saying ?on the dole? even if you’re not British, that scene from ?Seinfeld? where George and Jerry are trying to think of a new career for George, using lots of emojis and novelty fonts on your resume, ironic poverty, ?Journey to the End of the Night? by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, the more depressing stories in the Raymond Carver oeuvre, or the theory of surplus value.
