Keeping the dinosaurs out with squirt guns full of thousand island dressing. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

It's my first day to start working at a local cafe. It's huge, like a warehouse with a lot of different rooms created with room separators. 

I spend a lot of effort listening to a young barista talk about getting her art in a magazine. She had put it on display in the cafe, which helped her get it in the magazine. 

Then I listen to another young barista's personal beliefs and problems. 

They train me--or I should say, they tell me what to do, but they don't show me. I do my best, but the cafe is like a maze and I get confused. 

I stay late and follow a guy around who makes rat poison to seal the dinosaurs out of the room using thousand island in these very serious-looking black super soakers. 

My parents come to pick me up. 

The next day, I open the cafe alone. Luckily, my old boss from a bar I used to work at pulls in with his sports car and tells me he pays useful people very well, because he makes a lot of money off of them. I feel incentivized. Let's both make some money!

And then he does a much better job of training me how to open. He does every step himself with me right beside him to show me how to do it right.

Then I wake up, pee, and give my cat his 3 a.m. snackies and brushies. 

I go back to sleep, and then I'm manning a booth at a science fair. The scientist hasn't come and set it up yet, but I'm admiring him from afar. 

I really like what's on display in this booth. They're called "biological blankets," and they're quilts that do some kind of cool sciencey thing. I don't know what. I need to look into that after they get the booth set up and I have a minute to read the presentations. But I'm excited to come here to do this. 

Then the scientist arrives! I'm surprised to see that I recognize him. He's Dr. Bruce Greyson, who wrote a book about near death experiences called After. I absolutely loved that book. He's even more impressive than I had thought!

"Can I have fifty bucks?" he asks me. 

Instant disappointment. 

"Uh, yeah!" I give him $50, almost all the money the fair paid me to be here, which wasn't that much, but it had meant a lot to me. I would have stretched it out. 

He goes to work putting up his quilts, and does a good job. But he hits on my assistant running the booth with me. I think he's married. And he says little things here and there that are starting to make me think that he's kind of a douchebag. 

I hate that someone I had admired so much is throwing up so many red flags now that I'm actually getting to know him. 

INTERPRETATION

Hmmm! I'm sure remembering a lot of my dreams lately, although I did have a lengthy dream about hanging out with the Beatles that I forgot. Pity. 

Anyway, I think both of these dreams have something in common: meditations on the way people are hired. 

In the first dream, I'm confident and happy to be at this workplace when they take the time to train me properly. When they just expect me to show up and know everything with a mostly hands-off approach, I'm nervous and am not useful for much other than listening to my coworkers and hanging out with the exterminator. 

In the second dream, this guy clearly isn't hired for his personality. He's hired for how he looks on paper. 

Over time, I have come to be very wary of people who have credentials and look good on paper and don't have a personality type that gets along well with others. 

In my opinion, workplaces these days have it all ass backwards. They should be interviewing and hiring people with good personalities, and then invest heavily in training them. They shouldn't be looking for a certain set of credentials at all.