Sinister Dexterity

Dana pointed out that some jobs do require credit checks. She pulled up one job ad she'd recently seen for a mutuel teller at a race track. This actually made some sense to me, as a person with gambling problems and/or a criminal history (if not a criminal record) would likely not pass a credit check. I still say that the ad is kind of bogus. Many jobs require, say, knowledge of Japanese or a teaching credential, but if someone told you "I'm working at Long John Silver's because I don't know Japanese," that person would be full of shit.

Partly I'm cranky because I had two different freecreditreport.com songs stuck in my head all day yesterday, to the point where I was considering self-trepanation. And it looks like today may be the same, though it starte before I even looked at the computer, so it's not just because I saw people's responses.

I suppose a credit check for emplyment is a bit like a drug test. In some ways better, in some ways worse. On one hand, I think one's credit it more relevant to a lot of jobs than whether one smokes pot off the job. On the other hand, you can stop smoking pot and be ready for a drug test in a month (and I've heard that it's a month to get clear if you're a very heavy user) but you can have credit problems from something that happened years ago. In a lot of ways it seems unfair, but also in today's job market, it's less about finding someone who can do the job and more about eliminating the majority of the people who are qualifed, so given the choice between several qualified candidates, they might as well take one who seems immaculate. Aside from the fact that I'd rather they make that choice on someone's fit to the microculture of the work team, or even just on personal charm, doing credit checks seems like a rather costly hurdle to jump through, especially if a job isn't financially oriented. I could steal money from my job if I were so inclined, but it's not like I can do the kind of quick damage that I could if I were an accountant, or if I worked at a place where people were playing the ponies.

Verdict: in the less snarky light of morning, I still think it's a bad ad but I see the point more. (On the other hand, purely judged as an earworm and an attention-getter, it's an outrageously successful ad, and some evil person should get special evil achievement award for it.)