Dear Reader:
"It's freezer burn, dammit! I got it at my afternoon job interview on Friday", I told Fred, after he'd asked me for the second time, about the purplish mark on my left forearm that vaguely looked like Australia. He was helping me to bleed air from the brake-line on my ten year old Kia. Even after I told him, he had this quizzical look on his face, as if he didn't really understand. Thus, I was compelled to explain:
I had four job interviews this week, and this was in addition to two job fairs. I figure that four interviews in a week must be some kind of record---for me anyway. Of late, just making it past the security guard shack in the parking lot and into the reception area in HR without being turned away is a real feat especially when it seems that EVERYBODY in America is getting laid off. Heck, it seems that exit interviews for "just laid-off employees" outnumber interviews for new employees by a zillion to one.
Despite my luck in getting four interviews in just one week, none of them had resulted in a job although
the receptionist at the last company, a Ms. Angster, told me that she really needed a dog-sitter next weekend for her two year- old pit bull, Poindexter ...and would I be interested? She volunteered that the dog was no longer “acting out”, that the sitter from two weeks ago was healing quite nicely, and was even having the rest of the stitches removed later that very afternoon. She also informed me that the plastic surgeon had indicated that the long scar on the right side of the previous sitter’s face might not be permanent.
Despite my luck in getting four interviews in just one week, none of them had resulted in a job although
the receptionist at the last company, a Ms. Angster, told me that she really needed a dog-sitter next weekend for her two year- old pit bull, Poindexter ...and would I be interested? She volunteered that the dog was no longer “acting out”, that the sitter from two weeks ago was healing quite nicely, and was even having the rest of the stitches removed later that very afternoon. She also informed me that the plastic surgeon had indicated that the long scar on the right side of the previous sitter’s face might not be permanent."Aloe, applied directly on the skin works wonders", she said.
But with a puzzled look on her face, she said that she just couldn’t understand why she was having so much trouble finding another sitter for Poindexter and that after all “…the job pays $50.00 for the entire weekend.”
About that time, the phone buzzed and she took another phone call. I went back to waiting to see if I had made it to the next step in the HR process. I had already completed a stack of forms (including a twelve-page Application Form, the Credit Authorization Form, the Background Check Authorization Form, the Urine, Blood, Saliva, Hair and Toenail Clippings Test Authorization Form, the Whom To Notify In Case You Die of Thirst While Waiting Another Ten Hours for your Interview Form, the Authorization to Release Your Transcripts from College, High School, Elementary School and Kindergarten as well as my SAT scores Form.)
While waiting, I looked over the magazines in the reception area. You can tell a lot about a company from their choice of reading materials in the reception area. For example, if they have a lot of magazines, you can expect your wait in HR to be a long one---thus the large quantity of magazines to keep you occupied and to keep you from amusing yourself by say, dismantling the office furniture and building a bonfire. If the company has only a few magazines in the reception area, then the company maybe cheap or not smart enough to steal magazines from the other company's in the same building. Expect to work with a bunch of dummies in this scenario---if you get the job. But I digress...
On Friday, the company had really old magazines. Looking at some of the cover stories, Bill Clinton has just been re-elected President, The Florida Marlins are the Major League Baseball Champions, Newt Gingrich is the Speaker of the House, and O.J. Simpson is still running, unfettered, through airports and jumping all over car rental counters. All of these magazines were from the 1990's which made me think that this company was either having financial problems or that the management was involved in a thinly veiled plot to get jobseekers to think that it is really twenty years ago that they can pay less than today’s going wage for the job.
I must admit, dear reader, that I kinda like reading some of the older magazines, especially Good Housekeeping. They had some really old editions of GH on Friday. In each edition of the editor ran a article entitled “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” I remember these articles that ran as a long running series in the Good Hosuekeeping magazines of the sixties and seventies. These magazines were typical coffee table and waiting room "fare" in the doctors and dentist offices at the time. The Can This Marraige Be Saved articles described a problematical marriage where the husband and wife just couldn't stand each other. The wife might have been frigid or an inveterate drinker. Maybe she also always burned the eggs and was also a really bad driver. The husband either snored real loud, insisted upon clipping his toenails at the dinner table, or maybe didn’t come home for weeks at a time. (I figure because of her bad cooking.)
Anyway, these articles described these (invariably suburban) marriages and at the en
d posed the question:” Can This Marriage Be Saved?” I guess that the magazine editors meant for the marriage to be discussed by good housekeepers in open forums all over America. And on occasion, I found that the question has prompted great discussion in the reception areas of HR deparments, in the event you can find another jobseeker in the room who can actually read. Of course, the answer to the question is a ‘slam dunk’. I figure that if a big time magazine, circulated widely throughout America (as well as the western Hemisphere) is exposing all the intimate details of one couple’s personal lives, then the marriage is already about as dead as a bunch of mackerels and the couple is just putting all of their business out on ‘front street’ so that they can make one last money haul before going to divorce court.
About the time that I had come to the conclusion that Mr. and Mrs. Blackheart's marraige had about as much chance for rejuvenation as a bunch of dead carp, I glanced up to see a young woman headed in my direction. I could tell that she would be the one to tell me the next step in the HR (i.e. what Personnel is called these days) process. Let me tell you reader, the woman was not engaged in what I would call a "good news" kinda walk. Her walk was similar to the kind that a State Trooper has when he moseys over to your car after pulling you over. Since I have seen this walk before, especially, of late, I can tell already that she’s going to give me Job Rejection #5----- The hiring freeze:
“Will, we thank you for coming in today, but we currently have a company wide hiring freeze. However we would be happy to keep your application on file for six months. We’ll call you if any positions come open. Thanks again for thinking of us.”
Reader, this is politically correct corporate lingo for:
“ Look, you idiot, I was just talking to everybody in the back and we can’t believe that you drove your dumb ass way the hell out here to see us----- even though we called you on yesterday and told you that we really liked your resume. It’s just that your resume was the one that I hit on the dart board yesterday after a couple of lunch time cocktails. Don’t call us, we’ll call you assuming that we’re still in business six months from now, which I doubt. Good luck and I hope that you make it back home before dawn tomorrow. And yeah, eveybody in the back is snickering at you. Sucker!”
As the woman got closer to me, I still could not quite make out her features, but I’ve seen her before ---at a bunch of companies. Usually the person giving spiel #5 is a fresh faced young white woman named Jennifer or Amanda or Melissa (or one of the other popular names for white females born in the late 80's), and who’s about twenty years old. Jennifer or Amanda or Melissa has been selected to handle this particular chore because she has been working at the company for a whopping six whole months and she is a true believer in God, the American Way and the 'religion' and the Acme Products way of life. She’s dressed in an appropriately colored outfit replete with company logo and she handles you so enthusiastically that you almost want to believe her -----and in the fact that there really is more than a remote possibility that some day, the Great Employment Ice Age will actually be over.
Anyway, as I awaited Jennifer or Amanda or Melissa, who, before her emergence from the maze of HR offices, had no doubt been working at a glacial pace in keeping with her company's world wide hiring freeze. I figure that slow approach to handling prospective job seekers is a ploy that some companies use to thin out the ranks of jobseekers in the reception area. Maybe its a sneaky part of the company's aptitude test to see how much patience you have. Well, they were messing with the wrong guy. I can out wait anybody. ANYBODY! I’ve even been known to bring a backpack with a sleeping bag and toiletries to the interview----just in case I have to wait overnight. I once waited three day
s to be interviewed only to be told that my interviewer had died at their desk on yesterday.
As it turned out, I was right about the hiring freeze. This time it was "an Amanda" giving me the news the bad news. I have heard the term ‘hiring freeze” so much that I now have a 'freezer burn' spot on my left arm. (It's the mark that I was telling Fred about). Now when I go on an interview, I half expect to see icicles hanging from the ceiling, the employees dressed in parkas and polar bears roaming aimlessly about the building and outside environs.
About that time, the phone buzzed and she took another phone call. I went back to waiting to see if I had made it to the next step in the HR process. I had already completed a stack of forms (including a twelve-page Application Form, the Credit Authorization Form, the Background Check Authorization Form, the Urine, Blood, Saliva, Hair and Toenail Clippings Test Authorization Form, the Whom To Notify In Case You Die of Thirst While Waiting Another Ten Hours for your Interview Form, the Authorization to Release Your Transcripts from College, High School, Elementary School and Kindergarten as well as my SAT scores Form.)
While waiting, I looked over the magazines in the reception area. You can tell a lot about a company from their choice of reading materials in the reception area. For example, if they have a lot of magazines, you can expect your wait in HR to be a long one---thus the large quantity of magazines to keep you occupied and to keep you from amusing yourself by say, dismantling the office furniture and building a bonfire. If the company has only a few magazines in the reception area, then the company maybe cheap or not smart enough to steal magazines from the other company's in the same building. Expect to work with a bunch of dummies in this scenario---if you get the job. But I digress...
On Friday, the company had really old magazines. Looking at some of the cover stories, Bill Clinton has just been re-elected President, The Florida Marlins are the Major League Baseball Champions, Newt Gingrich is the Speaker of the House, and O.J. Simpson is still running, unfettered, through airports and jumping all over car rental counters. All of these magazines were from the 1990's which made me think that this company was either having financial problems or that the management was involved in a thinly veiled plot to get jobseekers to think that it is really twenty years ago that they can pay less than today’s going wage for the job.
I must admit, dear reader, that I kinda like reading some of the older magazines, especially Good Housekeeping. They had some really old editions of GH on Friday. In each edition of the editor ran a article entitled “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” I remember these articles that ran as a long running series in the Good Hosuekeeping magazines of the sixties and seventies. These magazines were typical coffee table and waiting room "fare" in the doctors and dentist offices at the time. The Can This Marraige Be Saved articles described a problematical marriage where the husband and wife just couldn't stand each other. The wife might have been frigid or an inveterate drinker. Maybe she also always burned the eggs and was also a really bad driver. The husband either snored real loud, insisted upon clipping his toenails at the dinner table, or maybe didn’t come home for weeks at a time. (I figure because of her bad cooking.)
Anyway, these articles described these (invariably suburban) marriages and at the en
d posed the question:” Can This Marriage Be Saved?” I guess that the magazine editors meant for the marriage to be discussed by good housekeepers in open forums all over America. And on occasion, I found that the question has prompted great discussion in the reception areas of HR deparments, in the event you can find another jobseeker in the room who can actually read. Of course, the answer to the question is a ‘slam dunk’. I figure that if a big time magazine, circulated widely throughout America (as well as the western Hemisphere) is exposing all the intimate details of one couple’s personal lives, then the marriage is already about as dead as a bunch of mackerels and the couple is just putting all of their business out on ‘front street’ so that they can make one last money haul before going to divorce court.About the time that I had come to the conclusion that Mr. and Mrs. Blackheart's marraige had about as much chance for rejuvenation as a bunch of dead carp, I glanced up to see a young woman headed in my direction. I could tell that she would be the one to tell me the next step in the HR (i.e. what Personnel is called these days) process. Let me tell you reader, the woman was not engaged in what I would call a "good news" kinda walk. Her walk was similar to the kind that a State Trooper has when he moseys over to your car after pulling you over. Since I have seen this walk before, especially, of late, I can tell already that she’s going to give me Job Rejection #5----- The hiring freeze:
“Will, we thank you for coming in today, but we currently have a company wide hiring freeze. However we would be happy to keep your application on file for six months. We’ll call you if any positions come open. Thanks again for thinking of us.”
Reader, this is politically correct corporate lingo for:
“ Look, you idiot, I was just talking to everybody in the back and we can’t believe that you drove your dumb ass way the hell out here to see us----- even though we called you on yesterday and told you that we really liked your resume. It’s just that your resume was the one that I hit on the dart board yesterday after a couple of lunch time cocktails. Don’t call us, we’ll call you assuming that we’re still in business six months from now, which I doubt. Good luck and I hope that you make it back home before dawn tomorrow. And yeah, eveybody in the back is snickering at you. Sucker!”
As the woman got closer to me, I still could not quite make out her features, but I’ve seen her before ---at a bunch of companies. Usually the person giving spiel #5 is a fresh faced young white woman named Jennifer or Amanda or Melissa (or one of the other popular names for white females born in the late 80's), and who’s about twenty years old. Jennifer or Amanda or Melissa has been selected to handle this particular chore because she has been working at the company for a whopping six whole months and she is a true believer in God, the American Way and the 'religion' and the Acme Products way of life. She’s dressed in an appropriately colored outfit replete with company logo and she handles you so enthusiastically that you almost want to believe her -----and in the fact that there really is more than a remote possibility that some day, the Great Employment Ice Age will actually be over.
Anyway, as I awaited Jennifer or Amanda or Melissa, who, before her emergence from the maze of HR offices, had no doubt been working at a glacial pace in keeping with her company's world wide hiring freeze. I figure that slow approach to handling prospective job seekers is a ploy that some companies use to thin out the ranks of jobseekers in the reception area. Maybe its a sneaky part of the company's aptitude test to see how much patience you have. Well, they were messing with the wrong guy. I can out wait anybody. ANYBODY! I’ve even been known to bring a backpack with a sleeping bag and toiletries to the interview----just in case I have to wait overnight. I once waited three day
s to be interviewed only to be told that my interviewer had died at their desk on yesterday.As it turned out, I was right about the hiring freeze. This time it was "an Amanda" giving me the news the bad news. I have heard the term ‘hiring freeze” so much that I now have a 'freezer burn' spot on my left arm. (It's the mark that I was telling Fred about). Now when I go on an interview, I half expect to see icicles hanging from the ceiling, the employees dressed in parkas and polar bears roaming aimlessly about the building and outside environs.
I left the company's reception area right after Amanda administered the coup de grace. However, I also called Ms. Angster about the dog sitting job. Fifty dollars looks awfully good right now. She also said that give me shin guards, arm shields and a face mask to wear for my weekend with Poindexter.
Still jobless in Atlanta,
JustPlainWill
Posts
