Multiple Personalities

I can only imagine what someone would think of me, or my brother, if they were to read this blog. The conclusions people can arrive at after reading a few posts can be vast, especially if the people who read our blog have a very unique mind (or minds nearing the point of insanity). Is the fact that we have multiple sports posts instilling the idea that we are stereotypical sports obsessed males? Does someone compare the amount of posts my brother has to mine and deduce that I am a lazy writer? Many people would respond "Who knows? Who cares?" Well, I'll let you know, a lot of people care.


While talking to a friend recently we came across the subject of employers conducting Facebook searches to find people who have applied for employment. She has a private Facebook account, and her Twitter account is also private, because she doesn't want her employers to know about certain aspects of her life. The purpose of this is to make the employer believe that you are the person you presented yourself as in your resume and in the interview, and not allow them to see things which may make them think otherwise. By doing this, you have now split yourself into two people: person A, who is the perfect employee and the right person for the job, and person B, the real you composed of various pros and cons.

Of course this begs the question: does this truly help your cause? The employer can see this and think that you are diligent enough to protect your privacy, and understand the difference between the workplace and your private life, or, they can begin to assume that you are hiding things which may cause issues during your employment. In all honesty, the employer may be the living embodiment of Kurt Vonnegut's character Dwayne Hoover from Breakfast of Champions, looking you up just as he is reaching his tipping point. The possibilities are actually as vast as the amount of different personalities that exist on this planet, because any of those different personalities can be your employer.

This doesn't stop most people from fragmenting themselves into multiple different people in one body though. People consistently create personas for each situation they will be in so that they can be the person which can benefit the most from that situation. It's how we are all brought up, and is the basis for ethics and etiquette. I have friends who will end up drunk and shirtless at a party, but are near saints at their place of employment. Hell, the person I was talking to probably has their Facebook page private because while she may be an "A+" student in college, she couldn't wait to get liquor in her system when the semester ended. People have their work persona, party persona, online persona, family persona, boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/husband persona, all very different people living in one body.

Ever heard someone complain that when they're alone with someone they act completely different then when they're around other people? That's because that person is in fact a different person when in a different situation. It should be fairly obvious to us all by now that we are rarely if ever our complete selves. Even with this fact staring us in the face though, we still believe that when we meet someone we may be getting the real them. If your employer had to create a work persona to become your employer, how is it that they can believe you are a genuine person? Are they simply rewarding your effort to create a facade?

I wonder what it would be like to take the personality traits of someone in their workplace, then their personality traits at home and put them side by side. The differences between them would be very notable, yet the name these personalities belong to is the same. If you were to show them to someone with the name not present, would that person believe they belonged to the same person? I guess the only response I can have for that is "Who knows, but a lot of people care."

A quick side note I want to add before I finish up: I was watching The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy yesterday and a character made a relevant observation to this post. Sam Rockwell's character Zaphod says "You can't be president with a full brain." He states this because some of his personality traits weren't "presidential." Suits this post pretty well, doesn't it?

- Dennis