OMGWTF

Here's what not to do when applying for a job: hit spellcheck and trust what it says.

Otherwise you'll get things like this:

"JOB DUTIES: I peppered customers' tax returns."

"Give me 10 minutes to show you how much you need an employee like me. Take a ghance for once."

And remember your dictionary: "My firm salary requirements are $17 to $20 per hour, though I'm willing to accept any other salary amounts." (Wha??)

But take heart: it's not only jobseekers making these goofs. "J. Alfred Proofreader" turned up a doozy of a typo in a job ad: the company misspelled its own name.

flickr: Unhindered by Talent

She began working for the company in August 2009. When she got the mysterious e-mail on Oct. 4, saying the site was being temporarily suspended, "I...was also expecting my first paycheck."

So this student (and many others) put in more than a month of work that never got paid for, and probably won't:

"Another student editor emailed our former employer and asked questions about compensation. We've been left with vague answers and no promise that they'll actually follow through.

"We've gotten few hopeful responses that we'll ever be paid for our time. We never signed contracts; we communicated only through email and passed along personal information that way."

Yow.

Well, it happens. Every freelancer gets stiffed at some point in their lives--not to make light of it, but it is gonna happen. May as well get it over with sooner than later.

Here's our guide to getting paid on time as a freelancer—Juana may want to take action on Step 1 because if UWIRE does come back, she'll want to have paperwork proving that she's a creditor.

Here's some silly Friday fun for you, courtesy of Tales of the Cluefree:

Once I did a phone interview with a candidate for a travel agent position. This candidate had a flat Midwestern accent, which is pretty common here in Milwaukee.

The candidate answered all the questions reasonably well, and there were no red flags, and she seemed qualified, so I scheduled her for an in-person interview.

When she came in, she had a very strong Russian accent...because she was not the same person. She'd had someone else do the phone interview for her.

Apparently her excuse was that she thought nobody would notice. And you'll have to visit Clue Wagon to find out what she said next.

We really can't figure out why you'd want to do this. Having someone else take your drug test? At least you have a chance of not getting caught, in that case.

Ridiculous, but this is the world we live in: rules and regs are stuck in an era where the Internet doesn't exist.

A laid-off attorney (going by "Karin") started a blog posting about meal specials in St. Louis. She signed up for Google Adsense, the service that pays bloggers and webmasters to host ads on their sites. After three months of blogging and receiving unemployment benefits (at $405 a week), she received a check from Google.

Forbes reports: "When the check came in, Karin realized she had a legal obligation to disclose the income to New York State [where she had last worked and therefore the state that was paying her unemployment benefits], even though doing so might reduce the weekly unemployment benefits she received....It was after Karin notified the Department of Labor of her AdSense income that the confusion started. New York cut her weekly benefits to $300 and sent her a form to fill out and send to her employer. Unsure whether Google was considered her employer, Karin called the DOL to get an answer. She says a state official told her she shouldn't have claimed the AdSense payment as income because it was 'residual,' meaning a payment made for services previously rendered."

Confused, she contacted New York State again, stating that all she was doing was running a blog. The NYS DOL concluded that she was self-employed and no longer eligible for unemployment benefits.

She contacted them again and was told she would have to claim earnings every time she received an AdSense check. She called yet again and was told she needed to declare she was working every time she updated her blog.

Forbes couldn't get a clear answer on what's going on, despite "several calls."

"Such payments are 'uncharted territory' and questions of eligibility are 'very case specific,' according to a DOL spokesman."

Meanwhile, Karin's removed the ads from her blog.

The one (minor) bright spot in this whole mess: at least the DOL considers what we do "working."

This video is not work-safe. Do not watch at work or don't blame us if you do!

But it strikes us as a pretty accurate representation of what it's like to work with clients...

1:40 or so reminds us of an ex-designer friend who had a client fond of saying, "A good ad should look like a beautiful room full of furniture." (WTF?)

A man accused of raping a child bought every copy of the local paper he could find when the story of his arraignment hit the front page, reports Boston's WHDH Channel 7.

Roland Hill bought out all the stores he could find in the downtown area and emptied a number of honor boxes, apparently to prevent others from seeing it in the paper. He was found, police said, with hundreds of papers in his van.

He produced receipts for $21 worth of papers, and so will not face additional charges, the Taunton Daily Gazette reports; however, numerous business owners had complained to the Gazette that someone had stolen all their papers for that morning, including bundles outside businesses that hadn't yet opened for the day.

Question: Does nobody read TauntonGazette.com, where the rape story is currently the second most-popular?

And did Hill not realize that by creating more publicity, he'd only end up with more problems?

This is the "man steals paper" story online:


Oops!

And anyway, the paper didn't get rich off his escapades since he only spent $21. But think of their circulation figures!

Grr, argh, grr.

Old House Web, which—we're surprised to learn—is not affiliated with This Old House, is sponsoring a blogging contest. It's easy! All you have to do is write a blog post about home improvement in an old house and link Old House Web to it! (You also have to subscribe to their RSS feed though we are not sure how they plan on verifying this??)

The winner gets a $250 gift card to Lowes and an opportunity to become a paid blogger on Old House Web.

But, of course, the fine print:

"By entering into the Contest, each contestant agrees to grant OldHouseWeb.com and its owners/operators permission to copy and publish to OldHouseWeb.com any and all copyrighted or uncopyrighted images, writings, texts, and/or graphics submitted by the contestant."

And:

"The winner will be awarded $250 and an opportunity to discuss with [Old House Web's parent company] QuinStreet the possibility of becoming a paid contributing blogger on OldHouseWeb.com. The foregoing is not an offer of or guarantee of employment or any freelancing opportunity with QuinStreet."

This practice is becoming more prevalent but there are still writing contests in which you don't automatically sign away your copyright. Honest.

We're not going to say which way is better, but always read the fine print before getting into anything like this. That's all we're sayin.

Las Vegas station KTNV-TV aired an investigative series exposing a local auto repair chain's misdeeds. The anchor who introduced many of the series' segments offered the chain owner her boyfriend's PR services to spin some positive coverage.

Ouch.

In a recorded conversation between anchor Nina Radetich and Tire Works owner Roshie Weightman, Radetich gives her boyfriend's number and says: "He sort of does this stuff on the side. But he is more than willing to talk to you and this is, like, his favorite thing to do. I'm not kidding. If he could do this full time — consult and tell people how to handle the media — he would. So I wanted to kind of give you that heads-up. That's his cell phone and he's more than happy to talk to you."

Numerous news outlets (like the Las Vegas Sun) and journalism groups (like the Poynter Institute) have covered this story from the "what a terrible call on the news anchor's part" angle, and it is. But we're also guessing this isn't helping the boyfriend's career transition any.

We ain't joking, though sorta wish we were, but Kiplinger's has just published an article by a career coach talking about why it's better to hire ugly people. Really.

Is this supposed to make us, the non-supermodels of the world, feel better?

Career coach Marty Nemko writes:

All other things being equal, I'd give the nod to an ugly candidate. It's not charity: They have less value in the marketplace and can be hired less expensively, even though looks have, for most jobs, little or no bearing on job performance. I've found that, on average, ugly people are more likely to be kind and to work harder because they know they're working at a disadvantage. And unattractive people are more likely to stay with me because they tend to have a tough time getting hired, in part because they generally don't network efficiently. If I treat unattractive employees well, they're usually very loyal.

In the very next graf, though, he says to "gently nip 'lookism' in the bud."

And what is making assumptions about people's behavior based on their looks other than lookism?

Nemko posted a picture of himself; he ain't much of a looker either. But that's kind of like giving yourself permission to make racist jokes because you have that one black friend...

Once again we are astounded by Careerbuilder's total fail.

The site has launched a quiz at Careerpath.com called the Job Discovery Wizard. It's supposed to help jobseekers transfer their skills to a new industry.

We filled in our profile as honestly as we could, because we were curious if CareerPath could get us out of dying journalism and into something a little more comfortable.

The first result the site suggested?

Biological Technician.
Followed by computer systems architect, machine tool setter, and economist.

Don't you, uh, need skills in biology for one of those jobs? Or a master's in economics?

To be fair, the sixth result down said we'd make a good broadcast news analyst. Which is closer than any of these other results.

We'd stay away from this product if we were you, though.