:: Searching for Puck... ::

:: Friday, December 20, 2002 ::

Went to a job interview yesterday...

I recently posted my resume on Monster.com in the hopes of landing a decent marketing job. I sent it out to about a dozen companies, and heard back from about four. Three of them looked like real fly-by-nights...the work from home kind of stuff, you know. So I deleted them. I did, however, get one that really sparked my interest.

It was an email saying that they'd read my resume and I seemed like a worthwhile canidate, and to call for an interview. The place was all the way in New Brunswick, so I was a little apprehensive, but I decided to go anyway, because they were advertised as "direct marketing" and they made a lot of hints at the opportunity to get real experience with the things I want to study and do for a living. So I called, and questioned the poor receptionist half to death, making sure that no car was needed for the job, and that the job wasn't fly-by-night. After numerous reassurances that there was no need for a car to hold down this job, I made the appointment for 11am yesterday.

I broke out the "interview suit", did my hair and makeup, and got an extra copy of my resume to bring (I thought it was weird they asked me to bring another copy of my resume to the interview, being as my posted resume was the reason they were contacting me in the first place) and mom and I were off. We got there with a minimal amount of incident, and she dropped me off and left to go shopping.

The first thing I noticed about the building was that it was a complete shithole. Worn stained carpets, water stains all over the ceiling, splintering stairs, and those really cheap hollow wooden doors that you can buy for like, 40 bucks at home depot. The place looked like it had seen a lot of offices come and go, and it was lit about as well as a candle lights an auditorium. The door was so hidden and ill-lit that I actually knocked because I thought maybe it was a bathroom. I was admitted.

The office itself wasn't too bad, but it was plastered with those stupid "Aspiration Is..." and "Teamwork means..." posters in cheap frames. The guy on the desk barely looks up, then shoves one of those photo-copied application forms (you know the kind...every piece-of-shit mom and pop place has a stack of them, photocopied over and over to the degree of barely being legible) at me, on a clipboard with a pen attached. I went on to explain that I had brought my resume and it was already online (which was the whole reason they contacted me in the first place) and he just shrugs and tells me to fill it out. At that point I noticed the twenty clipboards stacked behind him, all loaded up with the illegible forms, ready to go.

I sat down, irritably scribbing in the necessary info on the sheet, and five minutes later, I got called in. "Diane" was one of those pencil-thin aged-too-quickly "career" women with handshakes that felt like skeletal vises. Prattle, prattle, prattle...nearly too fast for me to catch. It was a rehearsed skit. I was in an assembly line, and at this point, there was no doubt of it. I was supposed to go "in the field" and, from what I gathered, cold-call on businesses (the intelligent ones of you would know this as "soliciting") and try and get them to switch their phone lines from verizon (which is new and growing) to At&t, (Which is old and bankrupting). When asked how it was humanly possible that I wouldn't need a car to do this, I was answered "Oh, you know. You can give someone gas money, or take public transportation." Add this to the fact I found out that the job is *entirely* commision based (and at only $16 a phone line, at that!) and "temporary", and I was out of there like a pagan at a southern baptist revival.

They didn't call me back. Oh *damn*.

So that was my fun and adventure for the last 48. After the fiasco, mom and I ended up finding a very good indian place and having lunch there. It's a shame it's so far away...I'd love to go back there.

Jeff and I are supposed to hang out tomorrow, so that's cool. There's a music show in middletown tonight a lot of my message board friends are going to, but I don't think I'll go. I'm not familiar enough with the music and I don't really know anyone there, so I think I'll just wait until those two problems are fixed.

Until next, peace and love.

~Fox






:: Fox 12/20/2002 10:45:00 AM [Say what?] ::
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