Dave Barry - Bad Habits

Things are much better today. But you young folks still must be careful about how you prepare for your careers, because otherwise you may be misled. For example, you have probably seen those television ads claiming that if you join the armed forces, you’ll get all kinds of useful career skills. You know the ads I mean: they show people repairing tanks and jumping out of airplanes at six o’clock in the morning. Now I’m not saying these are not useful skills: I’m just saying that executives at major corporations, such as IBM, rarely repair tanks, and virtually never jump out of airplanes. Successful executives usually wait until their airplanes have landed.

Another source of bad career advice is school. Your teachers will tell you that the way to get a good job is to memorize such things as the capital of Bolivia. Do you think that your average successful corporate executive can name the capital of Bolivia? Don’t be silly. I’ll tell you who can name the capital of Bolivia: your teacher, that’s who. Do you want to be a teacher? Do you want to spend your days trying to convince a bunch of snotty kids that they should memorize the capital of Bolivia? Of course not. You want to make large sums of money and have a nice office with various buttons you can push when you want coffee. So what you want to do is memorize as little useless information as you can in school. And as soon as you graduate, you should apply for a job in the government.

The government is loaded with terrific jobs. For example, you might want to be an ex-president. Here’s a lifetime job, with excellent pay and benefits, that virtually any incompetent can do. The only real duty ex-presidents have is to write their memoirs, which nobody ever reads anyway. If you were an ex-president, you could turn in Volume Four of the Encyclopedia Britanica (Ceylon-Congreve) and claim it was your memoirs, and nobody would know the difference.

You could also apply for a job as Supreme Court Justice. The pay is excellent, and you cannot be fired unless you appear on national television naked or something. You don’t even have to know anything about the law. If the Chief Justice asked you what you thought about a particular case, you’d answer: “Oh, I don’t know, I can see both sides. What do you other justices think?” Then you’d vote with the majority. Your only other duty would be to wear a robe.

If you can’t get a good government job, you may have to work for private industry, which is not as good, because many private employers expect you to work. The best job, of course, is corporation president, but even this has its pitfalls. For example, when Lee Iacocca was named president of Chrysler, he probably thought he would be able to spend his days sitting in his office, wearing expensive suits and signing the occasional document. Instead, he is regularly forced to appear in humiliating television commercials, in which he offers to pay people money if they will buy his cars.

I think the best private-industry job is construction worker. You may think this would be a difficult job, involving lifting heavy objects and assembling buildings. But if you look closely at a construction site, you’ll notice the workers walk around a lot, drink coffee, and yell to each other, but, because of various clauses in their contracts, they never actually build anything. I’m not sure who really builds buildings;

I suspect it’s done at night, perhaps by serfs.

This is an excellent time of year to get married, what with the warm weather and all. As you may recall, it was around this time of year that Prince Charles and Princess Diana got married in a ceremony that lasted, by my calculations, about two weeks. It took Charles nearly a half-hour just to say “I do”:

“I, Charles Arthur Philip George Henry Maurice Billy Bob Norman Howard Elmer the Third, Duke of the Realm, Defender of the Throne, Earl of Pillsbury, Lord of the Manse, Prince of a Fellow, Knight of the Trouser, Top of the Morning, Vice President of Marketing, and much, much more, do.”

If you want to have a nice wedding, a really Special Day, you have to plan very carefully and follow the rules of wedding etiquette. Here’s what you do:

You should get engaged to somebody who has a job and will show up at the wedding. If you think your fiance is unreliable, get engaged to several people, because there is no breach of etiquette worse than making your friends and relatives give you wedding presents and then failing to go through with it. If you get engaged to several people and they all show up, take all but one aside, tell them you won’t be needing them, and give them each an inexpensive fondue set (you’ll receive dozens as wedding gifts).

If you are a member of the working classes and have a name like Heivina Spackle, the newspapers won’t print your engagement announcement, and you’ll have to settle for a three-by-five card on the bulletin board at the supermarket. So if you want to make the social pages, your best bet is to use a name like Allison Weatherington-Huffington DuBois and send in a picture of Julie Andrews.

You must do this carefully, because some churches won’t let you get married in them unless you hold certain specific religious beliefs. Check this out in advance by calling the clergyman:

YOU: Hello. Could you tell me if you require people to have any specific religious beliefs?

CLERGYMAN: Why yes, we do.

YOU: How many?

CLERGYMAN: Let’s see ... five, six, seven ... nine in all.

YOU: Fine. Can you send me a set?

Your invitation should consist of a large envelope containing several smaller envelopes in random sizes, a piece of tissue paper, and a card with these words:

Mr. and Mrs. Earl C. Spackle Request the Honour and Favor Of Your Attendance at the Marriage Of Their Daughtour Heivina Mae (who is not pregnant) To Elrood P Budgcood At the Manor Downs Vista Country Club And Racquetball Court Friday at around 4:30

RSVP

No Tank Tops

The groom’s party should wear pastel senior-prom-style outfits rented at the shopping mall. The bride’s party should wear expensive dresses so unattractive that they can never be used again, even as tourniquets.

The first person down the aisle should be an adorable child belonging to the sister of the bride. If the bride’s sister has no adorable child, she should rent one. Next comes the sister of the groom escorted by the maid of honor’s boyfriend, followed by the niece of the maid of honor’s boyfriend escorted by the oldest brother of the mother of the bride, followed by the oldest unmarried bridesmaid escorted by the youngest male member of the groom’s family who has completed at least two years of college or technical school, followed by the great-grandmother of the bride (unless she is dead) escorted by the best man, followed, in order, by anyone else at the back of the church who is wearing nice clothes.

The family of the bride pays for the church, the clergyman, the limousines, the bridal gown, the flowers, the reception room, the band, the photographer, the hors d’oeuvre, the dinner, the cake, the liquor and the honeymoon. The family of the groom eats a lot and gets tanked.

So there you have them, the rules of wedding etiquette. In a future column, I’ll discuss the other two major etiquette areas, which are eating and death.