I know I haven’t posted for a while when I can’t remember the stuffing password, but here I am. Work is still feral, I went to the job interview the other day and the starter motor on my car has decided to work or not work in inverse proportion to the urgency of my desire to get the hell home. All is well in my world.
I did something prior to the job interview that I don’t normally do, which was lie about my whereabouts. In the private sector, it’s usual to have a root canal or medical pathology and follow-up tests that account for several disappearances for interviews, but career intentions are more open in the public service for reasons I’ve never been clear about. However, headcount freezes and a guarantee my job will not be filled if I leave made me decide to go through the process quietly in case my manager gives a bad reference in order to keep me (he’s the man who told female applicants for my job that he thought women weren’t capable of doing it, and told some newer female employees they weren’t allowed to get pregnant for three years, among other things, so my caution has reason).
Of course, things didn’t go to plan. I went to leave my manager a message on his office phone early in the morning so I didn’t have to talk to him and his voicemail was broken. I tried his mobile phone while my nose was growing like Pinocchio’s and thankfully the call went to voicemail and I left a message about not having power and I was looking for an electrician.
On the train into the city my work mobile phone went off non-stop with messages about crap that hadn’t been handed over to me but was suddenly my urgent problem. I couldn’t take calls because people on the other end would have heard station announcements and the shrieks of 17,524 hyperactive schoolgirls in the carriage, which generally aren’t heard at my house. Shit.
I took refuge in my old haunt Collins Place away from the ding ding ding of trams for a quiet sitdown to give the boss an update of my electrical issue and to call some folk who needed spoon feeding. Somewhere, somehow, someone in charge of Collins Place has installed piped music everywhere. Double shit. I ducked into the professional suites at the rear of the building and, of course, the blackboard scratching sounds of elevator music filled the hallway.
I tried the toilet where I used to produce urine samples for my former doctor but a woman was in there talking to herself loudly in another language and wasn’t inclined towards getting the hell out of there in a hurry. I was going to ring the boss anyway and say I had SBS on in the background, but remembered at the last second that my electricity was, um, off. Phew.
I called from outside the toilet where the muzak was relatively quiet and made my calls (Spoonfed: “My office is cold.” Me: “Turn the heater on.” etc etc). Boss man didn’t answer his mobile again and I left another message saying I’d have a sparky in a few hours. By then every word I planned to say at the interview had been shoved to the back of my brainspace and I felt angry, stressed and guilty, which are all admirable qualities to chat about in front of an interview panel.
To sum up the next few hours, I got cranky at the interviewers because I thought the hypothetical questions were aimed to advantage internal candidates. I had outstanding sushi and bought some books afterwards to console myself. I got the guilts and went home, ripped off the suit and half my makeup and went to work to face the music. The boss asked where the fuck I had been. I told him about my electrical dramas and he said, “Oh yes, I saw some missed calls from you.” I growled. Some co-workers asked about my electricity and I told a really cool story about circuit breakers and RCDs that not even I understood. The next day I got a call back asking if my referees could be contacted about the job — it’s always the interviews you don’t care about that you succeed in. I’m so tired.
Crank-o-meter: More ZZZZZ Z Z Z z z z z z z z z z z
May 7th, 2009 | Tags: work | Category: work | Comments (6)
