Worst. Job. Interview. Ever.

I had an interview this afternoon for a tech support position at a call center in Palatine. Stephanie's uncle works there and referred me, putting in a good word with his boss. I figured I would show up, they would ask me a little bit about my experience, I would tell them, and they would hire me on the spot because I knew an employee. I couldn't have been more wrong.

If I had had a nightmare about a job interview in Hell, it could not have gone any worse than the one I had this afternoon.

There were two people conducting the interview: A kind-looking Asian fellow named Ted and some fat lady whose name I can't remember. I think it was Winnie or something fat-sounding. Anyway, Ted was handling the technical questions, while Winnie handled the situational, customer-service-related questions. Since the job is tech support at a call center, the job required technical understanding as well as good customer service skills. They took turns asking me several questions at a time.

I think I handled Winnie's questions pretty well. "Describe a situation in which a customer was unhappy, and how you handled it". No problem. Nailed it. However, every few questions Ted piped up with his own questions.

It wasn't that the questions were hard. Here are some examples: "Define, in your own words, what the Windows registry is". "Define TCP/IP". "If ipconfig reported the IP address as 192.0.0.0, what would this tell you?" This, for anyone who fixes computers, is like asking someone who's been a fine-dining server all his/her life where the salad fork goes. Basic shit. Fundamental. I knew all the answers. Anyone would have. The problem was, I COMPLETELY BLANKED. ON ALL OF THEM. The first one was the registry. All I had to say was "The Windows registry stores user preferences, license information and hardware/software settings for the operating system". That's it. One sentence and I'm golden. Instead it went something like this:

Uh...

Man, I know what it DOES, but, um........

AT LEAST a MINUTE of dead silence while I sweated and stared hard at the table....

Uh...

Pass.

The exact same thing happened for TCP/IP.

It was completely miserable.

Every time Winnie would finisher her few questions I would say, "Oh, no! Not Ted again!" And they both laughed because they knew, like I did, that I had NO business being in that room.

Halfway through the interview everyone in the room knew that I completely blew it and it was hopeless, but they both still had questions left on their papers that they had to ask. It was humiliating for all of us.

At the end, after I had completely wrecked myself and wanted to jump out the window, they asked if I had any questions. I figured I'd go for broke and let it all hang out. I said this:

"I know that you're interviewing many people for this position, and I know that just about everyone you've talked to or will talk to has more work experience and knowledge than me. I feel like what I lack in experience I make up for in learnability and trainability. There were a couple of things in the phone interview I blew as well, but as soon as I hung up I looked them up and learned from them. I know I blew everything that Ted asked me, but if you called me in two hours I'd be perfect for the position! Anyway, I know I didn't get a chance to show the intangibles I bring to the table, but I feel like I am better than I showed you today. Hard to be worse!"

I wanted to end on a laugh, and I did. But yeah, I've never done worse at anything than I did today. It completely invalidated all the stuff I thought I knew and made me feel like I've never used a computer before in my life, much less was I qualified to walk people through fixing them. I now have no idea what to do with my life, besides maybe learn how to fix computers. I am a total failure.

The Soft or Brown Step

I have a feeling that every post I make on here will involve poop somehow. Such is the nature of my business.

One of my regular daily clients are (that's not proper English, is it? One--are? Oh well) two Cairn terriers which belong to a couple who definitely think of their pets as human children, and dote on them way too much. Their names are Talisker and Phoebe. Their names have nothing to do with the story, but there they are anyway.


So I was walking them today and I took what I like to call a "Soft Step" or "Brown Step", depending on the day and my mood. These terms, as you may or may not be able to guess, both apply to the act of stepping in feces, usually canine. Anyway, I scraped as much of it off as I could on the sidewalk, finished the walk, and took Talisker and Phoebe back to their rich-person house. I took off my shoes upon entering, and went to their kitchen sink to clean the rest off with running water and paper towels. They have a garbage disposal, so I assumed any waste would magically disappear, seeing as that is how garbage disposals work. I'm scrubbing away, and the man of the house comes home.

Fortunately I was 99% completed with my task, just putting the finishing touches on it. Also fortunately, the kitchen is at the back of the house. I quickly turned off the water (not having time to run the garbage disposal), tossed the stinky paper towels in the kitchen trash can and casually strolled to the front of the house. "Hello, Mr. McCourt", I said. "Just washing my hands real quick. Have a great weekend, sir."

As I was closing the door behind me I couldn't help but notice one clean-yet-wet shoeprint leaving a trail from the kitchen.

Cookie Queen

Things have reached an entirely new level of stupid when I find myself thinking back fondly on my high school job at the Original Cookie Company at the mall. I mean, for the love of Jeebus, it's a job at the fucking mall. I obviously didn't care for the wildly unattractive uniform of red baseball caps and polo shirts, and I have super self-esteem boosting memories of, on more than one occasion, being called "sir" by fatass mall patrons. Pretty! Shockingly, not so much love for the customer service or the handling of money either. Ahem.

However, coming in before the mall was open and playing stupid music (Gorilla Biscuits and various other hardcore favorites. hilarious.) and baking everything while it was all dark and quiet and weird and full of doddering, elderly mall walkers and then hiding out in the back decorating insanely tacky stupid ass cookie cakes seems immensely appealing right now. Pitiful and retarded.

Though, that bitch, Mrs. Fields, has claimed dominion over the Mall Cookie Empire, so I guess I'm not all that interested after all. Crap.