I never gave much thought to the dreaded job applicant question until I ran across it filling out an online applicaton yesterday. Describe a time when you worked in a team and your role in the team. I grumbled, longing for the day when the anti-socialites take over the world and reminding your co-workers that there's no 'I' in "team" will be a federal offense. But the more I looked back on it, the more clear it became that I actually went through four years of college not once working with a group of my fellow ego-driven, obsequeious, capitalizing user classmates — er, I mean, a team. No massive projects, no sports, no quiz bowl or Parliamentary debate or planning committees or — what else do people do as a group? — or orgies (damn!) or relays-for-life.

Didn't matter all that much anyway since the job is in Upper Saddle River, wherever that is. Apparently it's quite a hike, and I'm given to daily complaints about the off-hours commute into New York. So, I left the question blank. I told Anne about the questionnaire and my non-answer; she admonished me: "You can't do that," in that tone that tells me she's sick of my indignant impudence. And for my part, it was only an amusing anecdote. I know that I should have a happy teamwork story; that here I was talking to a computer that couldn't care less about, and hell, might possibly share my contempt for my fellow man; that when I'm sitting across a desk from an executive in a tie and he wants to know about a time I worked with a team, it's gotta amount to more than "Can I get another question?" The job market's not looking too good for jaded loners.... Well, maybe the post office is hiring. 8-)

But, for now at least, fuck team playing, fuck extroverts, and, while I'm at it, fuck Mr. Goudy and his sandbox skills. And the truth is, it ain't my fucking fault that I'm cynical!

Lemme tell you a little story about one time I tried accomplishing something with a group of other people.

It was junior year of high school and I was invited to some extracurricular literary-magazine how-to-be-a-humorist program at William Paterson University. For reasons I can only attribute to general asshole-ness of mankind, a mass contingent of retards, slugabeds, and jerks also managed to rummage up invites, as did Ankur, who isn't a retard, slugabed, or jerk, but who fits in with them effortlessly. It was some sort of creative expression program, where the administrative hand divided us into groups of twelve-ish whose goal was to produce a short game show skit and perform it in front of the larger congregation at the end of the day.

I found myself in group ten — and you know it was a incredibly lame experience when you still remember your group number six years later — and group ten didn't have particularly creative members. Or particularly funny ha-ha members either, for that matter. We did, however, have nine members who thought it'd be damn enlightening if we just copied those Celebrity Jeopardy parodies they used to have on Saturday Night Live, down to the fake questions that weren't all that funny when the professionals performed them.

Now, it's late at night, so I don't really have any brilliant game show ideas at this moment. But back then, at eleven in the morning, I had one or two that would've made Merv Griffin himself say, "Gee, I wish I'd thought of that.... Jay, your ideas make Wheel of Fortune look like the intellectual skeeball tournament that it is." My so-called team would have none of it. This color ends in "urple." What is light urple? That's comedy zirconium there.

Making matters worse, I had another brilliant idea that I shared with the group: we should write a script, rather than simply telling our "jokes" to each other and then forgetting them. Somehow, that idea got nixed, too.

Long story short: after lunch, I wandered away from the group and sat outside, writing. Figured that they didn't seem to need me anyway. The adult supervisor freaked, like I was alone in the playground while the killer bee swarm attacked. In fact, I think that bitch would've freaked less were I being attacked by killer bees instead of, uh, writing and not plaigarising. Actually, it took about two hours before anyone even noticed that I was gone — "Hey, wasn't there a kid with glasses here suggesting we write up a script? Our group could use a stenographer..." And the manhunt was on. Eventually, Napor and Aneesa and Jason Meehan came to my rescue and offered me coffee (group four, their group, got the classroom/lounge with the coffeemaker), but I spent the rest of the day moping on a cheap collegiate couch. Why couldn't I get the group with people I liked, why couldn't I get the group with the coffeemaker, why, if I made the world a better place by murdering my nine ex-groupmates with an axe, would I be the one going to jail?

It was the best field trip ever.

Nevertheless, it seems I'm still a bit resentful.