Cleveland Man Looks to Hire a Fake Family to Increase Salary

By Kara Brown | November 7, 2014 | 4:25am

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The job market can be tough—there’s no denying that. Everyone is looking for ways to make themselves a more attractive hire or develop skills that will lead to a higher salary. But those things generally require some sort of actual work and intelligence. Meanwhile, one man in Cleveland is willing to craft an elaborate yet poorly thought-out lie about a nonexistant family in order to receive a better salary offer.

The creep in question posted an ad to Craigslist—an ad that includes the most terrifying baby I have ever see—looking for a woman and child to pose as his fake family because he, rather strangely, believes that people with families get offered more money. Never mind that you could easily argue the exact opposite—that single people will work harder and be able to dedicate more time to their jobs, but we’re not dwelling in reality here.

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Two things have become quite clear to me: The business world will do everything in it’s power to pay young professionals entering the working world as little as possible, and people are always a sucker for cute kids. I have personally witnessed many cases of favoritism towards married employees or employees with children, the idea being that they have more of an incentive to be a devoted worker then others might and are therefore deserving of a better wage regardless of actual performance. The internet has loosely confirmed this. I have even witnessed a hiring manager become furious upon hearing the starting wage of a young man recently hired into a company claiming that “Single people don’t need that much money”, which got me thinking. This is where you and your kids come in.

He claims to be a college student returning to school “after a several year absence” to finish his degree. He’s clearly not an English major because the wording of the post is confusing, but what I gather is this: he wants a woman and her kids to pose as his family over the next several years during fun family outings and fake birthday parties where they’ll take plenty of photos that he’ll later post to his social media platforms. He believes that when companies begin doing background checks on him, they’ll see that he has a family and offer him a higher salary.

Approximately six months before I formally begin searching for a job, I will post approximately 12-24 photos of my “family” and my “life”, meshed together to create an entirely phony yet truly believable picture of myself. If everything goes as planned, whatever branch of whatever organization that looks into my background pending being hired for my first real job will be inevitably perusing my Facebook page and more and will come to the conclusion that I am deserving of a “Family Man” level of compensation. If the secret gets out that I live alone, have no children, and spend the majority of my disposable income on restoring vintage cars I could find myself in a vastly different income bracket since it will be perceived that I can get by on less- MUCH less. This will not stand. This is how these people think supposedly. It’s so crazy it just might work.

He is looking for a woman “within approximately five years of [his] age (21-30)” and a child or children that share his “Aryan ancestry” because, did you really have any doubts?

Ideally he is looking for an infant so that photos will show the child aging over the next few years. The lucky participants will be subjected to things like Sears photo shoots and trips to the Memphis Kiddie Park. The gig pays a minimum of $100 for each “photo taking session” and whatever other bones he decides to throw your way. Also, he likes the names Marissa and Logan. Now, to be fair, it’s really not bad money if you don’t mind spending a few afternoons with a guy who is probably a sociopath.

This man is obviously a moron. The entire argument behind this proposition makes absolutely no sense and is the ramblings of someone who has no knowledge of how businesses and hiring managers operate. He also doesn’t seem to understand that many people have common sense.

I don’t know why this idiot thinks that people are going to believe that some guy fresh out of college has a wife and kids. Presumably, he’ll use his absence from school as an explanation, but I still don’t think most people are going to buy that.

There is also a major snag in this plan:

All photographs will be of a fun, family friendly nature and will be immediately deleted once I am formally hired. They will be no longer needed, since that wage bracket will be carried to other establishments in the future and once that wage level has been set, the fact that I drop money on all aluminum racing radiators instead of baby formula will be irrelevant.

Does he think no one is going to notice that his family just fucking disappeared after he was hired? Isn’t he going to have to mention them in his interviews if this plan is going to work? Am I asking too many logical questions about a completely nonsensical hypothetical?

God forbid the guy actually put some effort into becoming a more qualified applicant who is actually worthy of a higher salary. But if he had that foresight and intellectual capability we wouldn’t be here right now, would we?

Let’s also take note that it is pretty damn rich for a college-educated white man to worry about not being paid the salary he deserves. Try being literally anything else and see how that works out for you, buddy.

A part of me hopes that this whole post was concocted by a brilliant troll but I just can’t shake the idea that there truly might be a man lurking the streets of Cleveland trying to act out the plot of an ABC Family holiday movie.