The world’s most foreboding job ad apparently works a treat

Dalkey Archive Press, an American publisher, is looking for interns.

It doesn’t ask for much. Just that candidates have “no other commitments (personal or professional)” that could interfere with the grunt labour they’ll be doing at the Press. The ad helpfully offers some examples of such commitments, such as “family obligations, writing, involvement with other organizations, degrees to be finished, holidays to be taken, [or] weddings to attend in Rio”.

There’s another long list of things that will prompt “immediate dismissal”, which includes:

• coming in late or leaving early without prior permission
• being unavailable at night or on the weekends
• failing to meet any goals
• giving unsolicited advice about how to run things
• taking personal phone calls during work hours
• gossiping
• misusing company property
• surfing the internet while at work
• submission of poorly-written materials
• creating an atmosphere of complaint or argument
• failing to respond to emails in a timely way
• not showing an interest in other aspects of publishing beyond editorial
• making repeated mistakes
• violating company policies.

After the ad went viral, Dalkley’s publisher John O’Brien yesterday came out and said the whole thing was satire. But he’s apparently been swamped with applications. Go figure.