The wrong man for the jobs

Hello and good morning yet again, gentle readers. It's Tuesday, and for many, it's the last full day of work this week. I'm all for super-long holiday weekends, even if that makes the following Monday morning thrice as difficult. I plan on having posts all week (provided I have the topics to support that claim), so consider yourselves warned.

In yesterday's post, I wrote about one specific job application I turned in back in the early 0s. At the end of the post, I said I'd be back here today with some stories about unsuccessful job application processes. I'm a man of my word, and here they are. (By the way, have we ever decided what to call this decade? It's almost over, so it might be too late, but it's very confusing. I usually just say "The Ohs" and people know what I mean, but we should really have a standard name for it. Speaking of which, the next decade isn't so clear either. Sure, we'll have "The Teens" for most of it, but what about 2010-12? I can see myself referring to them eventually as "The Pre-Teens," but I'm not yet sold on that. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this decade and the next, so please comment away.)

After college graduation, I knew I wanted to stay in Santa Barbara and find a job there for several reasons. I had a lot of contacts on campus, but didn't want to limit myself to working there. One of my old bosses told me about a position that was open at a private school in town to be some kind of administrative assistant. Back then (it was still 99), they only accepted applications via fax. I didn't have a fax machine, so I printed out the cover letter and resume versions specific to that position and went to the local copy place to have them fax it. I filled out the cover sheet, and handed it to the guy behind the counter along with my other documents.

He faxed it all off, and when he came back, I noticed something awful. For some stupid reason, I brought earlier drafts of the cover letter with me instead of just the right one. Naturally, the one I handed him was an old version. By "old," I mean it still had a typo in the school's name and referred to the "company" instead of "school" a few times. Realizing my mistake, I asked him to please send the right one and I scribbled an apology note on the cover sheet explaining my error. Yeah, I never heard back from them. I can't blame them one bit; if the applicant can't even send the right application in, he probably isn't the one you're looking for. My bad.

A couple of unsuccessful weeks later, I had an interview with some kind of marketing company that did some kind of stuff that wasn't extremely clear. It seemed a little shady, but the guy interviewing me seemed nice and frankly, it was a job and I needed one. He reminded me of the actor David Cross, in his pre-Tobias Funke days, so I obviously liked him. We chatted for a while, and it sounded like something I could probably see myself doing (whatever the hell it was). At the end of the interview, he said he wanted to set up another interview with me, but that I should take a day to think about it first. I said, "I already know that I'd like to continue in this process," but he said to sit with it for 24 hours and call to set it up the next day.

I was very happy leaving that interview. I felt like I had the job in the bag and I couldn't wait to stop being unemployed. I got back to my lovely girlfriend's apartment (where I was staying until I got a job), and I was so excited that I had the sudden urge to do a cartwheel in the living room. I actually attempted one, but I knew that I was oh-so-close to seriously injuring myself, so that stopped right there. Early the next morning, I dropped off a thank you letter to the interviewer and then called his office to schedule the second interview. The woman who answered said that he was out and to try again the next morning. I did, but he was out again. I tried that afternoon, but he was "busy." The next morning, he was "busy" again. Same with that afternoon. The next morning, when he was still occupied, I was frustrated enough to ask if I was ever going to be able to set up that second interview. "I'm sorry, but that position was filled a couple of days ago," she said. I immediately pictured my half-assed cartwheel and felt as stupid as a coach who gets a Gatorade bath only to have the other team come back and win in the final seconds. I guess you can't spell "Jumper of the gun" without Peter.

Lastly, after five years of solid, good work at the university, I was out on my own trying to get a job in Sacramento. I applied all over the place, including quite a few colleges in the area. I also tried some more marketing or advertising positions, and I had this exact conversation with a few different companies:

Them: Do you have any sales experience?

Me: Well, in a way that's a big part of what I was doing at UCSB in the Orientation office. It was my job to sell the thousands of students and parents on their decision to attend that school and make them comfortable with that decision while also preparing them for the challenges ahead.

Them: So, that's a "No" then.

Good times, good times. All worked out in the end, but I'll always remember those trying times. That's it for now. Tomorrow, I'll be back with some tales from the other side of the interviewing desk. Have a good one, friends.