My friend C-Dawg has been doing massive amounts of references for me in my job search, and for some reason enjoys my blog, so this is dedicated to her. I’m just going to write little snippets of the massive trainwreck that is my life right now.
Ruthless Irish Efficiency
So the job search has been…going. When they say the job market is bad right now, they are being pretty serious. I’ve found that part-time jobs especially are really hard to come by. When one appears on a website it’s like throwing a big ham hock into a cage of rabid hyenas. That YMCA job I talked about in my last entry was uber competitive. My interview actually went really well, but the lady said I wouldn’t get it because I could only stay through July. She also told me that she had been interviewing people for two weeks for a part-time 7.25 an hour job. [I’ll take a minute to pick your jaw off the floor.] Another hosting job I found I applied too and the lady said she had twenty interviews lined up. That also went well, but I didn’t get it. When I say an interview went well, I basically mean that I didn’t look like an idiot, which seems to be my forte in human social interaction.
I actually interviewed for an entry level marketing job with a sports company. The guy who did the interview was this cool Irishman who talked at the speed of light. Large chunks of the interview consisted of me going “Huh?” and him protecting his Lucky Charms (j/k he actually keeps all his charms in a safe). The interview was actually one of the most efficient, cold interviews I’ve ever had. I think I talked for like 2 minutes out of the half-hour we met. It started with him rolling in and saying, “Why are you here?” I was like, “I’m interested in marketing because – ” He interrupted me and was like, “Good.” He then asked me to describe myself, which had me babbling for a few minutes. Then he went into circle mode. This guy was all about drawing circle flow charts. He would draw five circles and be like “I need a guy to do this, this, this, this, and this.” He would always finish with a flourish of his pencil as he sketched his final circle. My favorite was when he would draw the chart before hand and then as he described the chart he would randomly insert arrows and lines to describe what was in the circle. As I said, the guy talked at the speed of light with an Irish brogue, so most of the time I had no idea what he was saying. After several flow charts he just stopped drawing altogether and looked at me with intense Irish eyes (they weren’t smiling) and was like, “Can you do this?”
I just kind of sat there for a minute and then with as much gusto as I could muster I said, “Yes.” He was like, “Why?” I babbled some nonsense for about two seconds, which he interrupted, and then we moved to the lightening round. The lightening round was him asking rapid fire questions about my work ethic:
“Do you work better alone or with people?”
“What do you look for in a work place?”
“Do you work better inside, outside, in a team, as an individual, on the road or while spinning plates and singing the Star Spangled Banner?”
He talked so quickly that I was like on the edge of my seat sweating as he asked the questions. After a lot of them I would say, “Huh?” then he would slow down and I would freak out trying to figure out the right answer. It was pretty nerve wracking, but it was actually my kind of interview. He just wanted you to answer the question and didn’t really need you to add a lot of details or bullpoop around. After the questions he was like, “Good.” Then suddenly he turned into Mr. Cool and started asking all these questions about Notre Dame football. That part was pretty cool. Afterward he said that he would call me form 5-7 if I made it to the second round of interviews.
That night it got to 7 and I started getting all down on myself, worrying that I couldn’t ever get a job and would die in the dumpster outside of my St. Louis apartment. Then he called and invited me to the second round of interviews. This took me from “I’m a terrible interviewer and will never have a job” anxiety to “this is a full time position and they are going to train me for six months at which point I will have to quit” anxiety. I was pretty tortured trying to figure out if I should give it a shot or just look for part time stuff. You would have thought I was deciding whether I was going to euthanize my pet or something. I ended up phoning a friend on the issue and called my mom. She told me to forget about it and look for a position that wouldn’t consist of me giving my employer the shaft in six months.
Bits of Random
The rest of this is just little snippets of crap that has happened:
The other day I went to the gym at a different time; I saw this guy working out that absolutely defies categorization. I saw him on the elliptical machine and just started laughing. He was wearing skin-tight acid wash jeans and this wife beater (which, of course, showed off the tats on his arm). I thought he was funny on the elliptical and then he went into the weight room and started pumping up. This guy lifts about as much as I do [read: most octogenarians could compete with us] but he was strutting around the weight room like he was cock of the walk. Then he’d do bench press and do the whole grunting thing. I was kind of glad he was there because he was really entertaining.
I think I might go as him for Halloween. If I can find acid wash jeans tight enough.
All of my sisters-in-law have Facebook now, which means that family gossip spreads at the speed of DSL. Since everyone joined I have found out that one of my brother’s wives is pregnant and that one of my brothers is moving. It’s funny because my mom will call and thinks she has ‘news,’ at which point I’ll tell her that I already know and am kind of over it. The best story so far is one of my sisters wrote on my wall that I was “a Facebook slut” because I have a bunch of friends. I went home last weekend and while I was there one of my other brothers called my mom. She got off the phone and was like, “Did Erin call you a slut?” So weird.
I just got a call and was hired by the restaurant I applied to. Hey-hey! I’ll be bussing tables at a fine Mediterranean food establishment for the next few months.
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