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Published May 13th, 2026
While freelancing, I’ve found a sustained rhythm which allows for a part time job to keep me social and get me away from the glowing square, the laser-imbued rodent, and the broken instrument (I keep playing the keys but no chords speak to the room, only clickity-clackity?). I’d never betray my love of remote contracts and work, but man-oh-man, I will stock some shelves to hard-reset my brain once a week.
Here’s a fun timeline I’ve put together of a common standardized test in the US against a application to a retailer established in the area. I am appalled at how either high volume their intake must be or how purposefully built this is to weed out those they’d feel are a poor fit before a call screener even occurs, like a Litmus Test for tolerance of boredom.
The SAT section on the left is sourced from College Board, while the experience on the left comes from my journey into the pits of hell and back to bring you my tale time well spent seeking social enrichment while contributing to my local community.
| SAT (College Board Article) | Retail Application |
|---|---|
| How the SAT Is Structured The SAT is composed of two sections: (1) the Reading and Writing section, and (2) the Math section. You have 64 minutes to complete the Reading and Writing section and 70 minutes to complete the Math section, for a total of 2 hours and 14 minutes. Each section is divided into 2 equal-length modules, and there is a 10-minute break between the Reading and Writing section and the Math section. The first module of each section contains a broad mix of easy, medium, and hard questions. Based on how you perform on the first module, the second module of questions will either be more difficult or less difficult. The following table shows how much time you get for each section and the number of questions for each section: Reading and Writing: 64 Minutes (two 32-min. modules), 54 questions Math: 70 Minutes (two 35-min modules), 44 questions. Total: 134 mins, 98 questions. Most of the questions are multiple choice, though some of the math questions ask you to enter the answer rather than select it. | Search Indeed Search LinkedIN Search Google Jobs Search Company Website Review Roles Queue Several Postings Tailor CV to Resume for each Role Realize that the process has been homogenized and you cannot submit more than one application which gets pushed out to all roles of preference Hit apply Notified that you must register for an account to shop at this retailer to apply to work at the retailer Notified that you may not reproduce, distribute, or share the content of any questions within this site Asked which locations you’d like to apply to Use mapping site or GIS to make a reasonable isochrone for travel times Complete the finicky, non-tab friendly form. Hit submit. The form crashes. Retype similacrum of CV. Hit submit. Get redirected to a 20-30 minute pre-interview training video on working for company (non-optional, non skippable, no written transcripts.) Video is interactive and features five likert scale or box-and-whisker plot questions and radio button selections per hypothetical training. Finish the video. The video now leads into a 30-50 question personality test wherein you are cajoled into choosing if you agree more with two heart-wrenching statements, like “I believe I’m better than most people.” or “I cannot control my temper, often, when I don’t get my way.” Get to the end, of the application, hit submit. Notification provides you with all written employee rights literature as needed. Multiple phrasings of pre-employment drug-tests and background checks are confirmed. The applicant is notified to expect a result within an hour dependent on their background screening and to schedule a drug test result to follow. |
I have had an easier time applying and interviewing with roles in local, state, and federal government. I don’t know what to do with this information.
This leads me to reflect on the commodification of people in a over-saturated workforce. I know those in freelance or between roles feel it: the simultaneously feuding humors of job scarcity, job availability, role compensation, and role location. Everywhere I’ve worked in the past twelve years has been short staffed, and yet, actively discusses that people can’t find jobs. It’s not mutually exclusive.
I believe it’s frameworks like this that over-complicate the needs of the employer. I feel like if Operations and HR were less stringent about such false premises as making you participate in a false-dichotomy, choosing your character as an enraged toddler or self-entitled bully bundled into products like workday, it would open the doors to people that otherwise wouldn’t see a chance at interviewing. These inefficient applications aren’t meant to get to know the applicant - I surmise that they are meant to filter out those that would tire of the role too quickly. Which is an absolute shame, because sometimes you don’t need a body for a seat that was the only one willing to do a four-hour maze-of-a-questionnaire, but instead someone that isn’t going to do things inefficiently without question and instead make suggestions or contributions to the workflow.
It’s the pursuit of perfectionism in the workforce and it’s not achievable. Employees are people. And until you hire someone, you don’t know diddly-squat about how they are. How many times have you been burned by a hire that looked great on paper, but bad in practice? It’s like playing Go-Fish while counting cards, except it isn’t remotely like that because a person isn’t a deck of cards you can calculate to the umpteenth degree. I’m a test taker. I’m a over-thinker sometimes. I can look at those 35 questions and determine that, yeah, this is a test for how patient I am with tedious tasks, and the secondary content speaks to how consistent and unwavering I can be over the course of a nearly 4 hour unpaid endeavor, likely to get back a big fat raspberry blow of nada.
I don’t mean to write so astringently - I don’t like to write with frustration, since it can compound and self-rationalize. I think it’s my disappointment that the system that is might never reach the potential of what it could be: an application system not focused on bodies in uniforms, but rather, their community in roles that fit their skills. It’s such a weird concept to me that some of us have no choice but to drive 150 miles round-trip per day to a role when to do this without transportation would take days or weeks. It doesn’t feel sustainable, and I think this overly-reductive system is a contributor.