Behold, the fast-food job application.  One sheet, two sides, filled with questions from top to bottom.

Where did you go to high school? Did you graduate? What was your GPA? Do you have any employment experience? Have you ever been convicted of a crime?  Are you willing to work overtime? What are the phone numbers of the last 10 places you worked?

They don't need to know all this stuff. This is a job at a fast food place. They don't reject poor students. They don't reject potheads.

They are probably just going to hire you based on your looks, although technically, they probably want to check if you can read and write, and if you can will follow directions.

They know you will search your soul to answer every question, so they just ask everything they can think of on there.

And look! They leave a stack them right out in the open. Where diners can grab an application off of the pad. Or leave a new pad. A fake pad.

In the winter of 2008, I started noticing that all of the fast food places near work had these little acrylic application holders out in the open. So, I got to work designing a new job application, with much more entertaining questions. All I had to do was remove the spaces for "the last ten places you  worked" and there was more than enough room for every question I could dream up.

To blend into any setting, I invented the fast-food conglomerate Serv-Joy. With this logo, a better name would be "GoatSe.rv-Joy".

It was an application best described as absurd. My goal was to create questions that were ridiculous, contradictory and just a little seedy.

Next, I needed 500 copies.

500 plain black and white xerox copies are cheap, but I wanted the applications to have two-colors, so that they would look more authentic. Full color copies were out of my price range so I split the print job into two runs, black and red.

Office Max did the black and I used my deskjet to overprint the red titles and graphic.

They looked great! Next, I needed some paperboard sheets for the backing material. Luckily I was able to scrounge suitable sheets (chipboard) from the back of Imperial Diecutting.

I split the pile into 20 stacks, added the brown backs and re-stacked them into one big pile. Next, it was time to pad them up.

http://www.askozone.com/2008/10/how-to-make-a-note-pad/as-expensively-as-possible/

There is a special glue which you can use to transform a stack of paper into a pad of paper. It is called "padding compound". I am not sure what particular advantage it has over regular glue, so I haven't ever bought any.

I straightened the pile and added a scrap of wood and a brick to help stop the paper from wrinkling. June helped me squeeze some glue out onto the edge of the pile and to smear it to a uniform thickness.