Yes, it's what you've all been waiting for, More Fun Looking for a Job…..


Got a call for a job interview yesterday. At 6:30 last night, I got a call from someone about coming in for an interview Tuesday morning. Since I didn't get home til late, I couldn't call her back. And, of course, since she didn't call me during the day, when I check my messages, I couldn't call her during the day.

No problem, I'll just call her first thing in the morning.

Which I did.

But she's out of the office today.

Basically, I got a call early Thursday night for an Interview on Tuesday of the next week, but the person who was setting it all up is gone for one of the two days between now and then. Good to see that the person who was setting this all up was so concerned about setting up interviews that they took care of it while frantically tying up every loose end trying to race out of the door for a three-day weekend.

Here's the other whacky thing about it. She says she received my resume, as opposed to finding it posted somewhere, but I don't recall sending that company a resume. In fact, I searched the job boards to look for it and couldn't find it. There are, however, several anonymous type postings- job postings that don't mention anything about the company- and it could be one of those. Unfortunately, there's been several over the past couple of weeks and considering I've sent out about 15 resumes over the past couple of weeks, I have no idea which one is for this particular position. Since I, say, bullshitted, different elements for each job posting, I have no idea what bullshit I have to bullshit about during the interview. Regardless, I have no idea of where I'm supposed to go and who I'm supposed to talk to and the one person who does know has only one day to give me all that information.

Got a bad feeling about all of this.

All of which reminds me of another interview, years ago, during those wacky, carefree dot.com boom days. Man, someday I'm gonna write a book about all of my bad job-hunting experiences, but this could very possibly be the worst job interview I've been on. Actually, it's a tie between this and one I had two days later, but I won't get into that one.

It was with iSyndicate, one of those long gone Web sites that went down in a fiery ball of wasted millions, foosball tables, and enough juicy gossip that Fucked Company was rocking for weeks. I got a call to go for an interview, but when I went back to see what job it was, I couldn't find the resume I sent them. Totally my fuck-up. When I went to the job board to see what job it was, I noticed that they were basically doing the whole "we need to hire a bunch of people" thing and that there was more than one job posting, two of which could be what I sent my resume in for- one for editorial, the other for production.

Okay, no problem, I said to myself, I'll just go in and see how it goes. If the interview gets all editorially, I'll give them my editor schpiel. If it gets all productiony, I'll go with my production schpiel. Easy, right?

First thing that goes wrong is that while I wait for my interview, I have to fill out one of those stupid employment applications. Stupid applications. I hate filling them out because I don't know if anybody ever reads them, yet you have to fill them out anyways. Just paper-work for HR, I guess. On the form, however, they ask what position I was applying for. Ooops. So I guessed and wrote one of the two. Nobody looks at them anyways, right?

Then the interview starts. It's with the manager of the department, a timorous, meek woman in her early thirties who reminded me way too much of one of my old timorous, meek bosses. She starts asking me about me being an editor and all sorts of editorial questions, so I go with my editorial schpiel. Which went really well until she said that it I was supposed to bei interviewing for a production position.

So I back up, and start in with my production schpiel, hoping to save myself Don't do such a bad job either, but things aren't looking good. It's not my fault she's conducting a lousy interview, or so I say to myself.

Then there's another problem. It was for a dot.com, as I said, one of those that didn't really do anything that could be explained. Which is probably why it's no longer around anymore. Don’t know how many of you have had to interview for jobs like this, but what it meant was that I had spend most of my interview trying to figure out just what exactly the job was and what the company did. Little did anyone know then that that's not a good sign, but back then, nobody thought that was a big deal. I spent a good half an hour saying things like "oh, I get it. It's like this" only to be told that I was close, but it's more like something else. Then I'd say "oh, now I get it" and on and on it went.

The person I've been talking to says she's done with me and wants me to meet up with the person who I'd be working with, nominally the person who would be my boss. Down comes this 24 year old girl (who, as I said would be my boss) and as she looks at my resume, notices that I work at a certain department at a certain company and asks me if I knew them. I do. Turns out she's roommates with someone in my department.

Now first off, this means I'm kind of busted. Since you're not supposed to let people who you're working at know you're interviewing elsewhere, the cat just got let out of the bag. Somebody's gonna know what I'm up to.

But that's not the big problem. Not even close. The big problem was that I had a huge crush on said roommate and asked them out not more than month prior, only to be turned down and given the "friends" speech. And now I'm interviewing with her roommate. Yeah, San Francisco is a really small town, sometimes too small. The first thing that went through my mind was the realization that this girl knew who I was without knowing who I was yet. The second thing that went through my mind was how humiliating it feels to be in the middle of this disastrous interview and that someone who just rejected me is going to find out all the nitty-gritty details of it.

Needless to say, it took a full bottle of wine to recover from the whole experience.