Employ Me - With A Vengeance

I walked in all decked out in my nice new dress clothes (thanks, Mom) with my planner, a notebook, my resume and passport, and classy (read warm) fedora on my cranium. They handed me about 12 pages of miscellaneous application forms, which I filled out. After the forms, there was an unexpected battery of arithmetic problems.

You see, my brain has distinctly told me, several times throughout my life, that it wants nothing to do with large amounts of numbers, especially associated with mathematics. This, it turns out, was one of those times.

No calculators. Okay, so I'll wing it. Addition and subtraction go wonderfully (I did, after all, graduate college), and even the multiplication seemed to have less punch to it than I remember. So far, so good.

Long division. Like a bullet in the chest. Like a power outage in a hospital full of machine-dependent patients: Bad. Very, very bad.

I assume I missed all three. I did, however, scribble some creative markings around each one to make it appear that I was nearly certain of the answer that I essentially guesstimated.

I handed my clip board to the receptionist and presented my papers. Within moments, I was spoken to by a kindly woman in her mid- to late-thirties. We went over my recent work in data entry, made small talk about my resume and discussed the basics of signing up with her staffing firm.

Then she asked me which aspects of Microsoft Office were my strongest and my weakest. I told her I am a master of Word but that I dislike Excel (again, the numbers thing). She said no problem and led me into a room full of computers and desks. I sat down at the desk nearest the door and with a few keystrokes she began the most boring test I have ever taken. 30 minutes of Microsoft Word. After that, a typing test that, though I did well, made me miss my good old friend Mavis Beacon. I always wondered if Mave was single or what the deal was with that.

But who wants a man without a job? - so first things first. I have to call them up Friday and ask, "So, did you call my references and get started on digging me up a good solid job?" (this is apparently standard procedure, which is funny because these people seem to have every moment scheduled and have their shit together).

So, in the meantime, I plan to let off the steam that has been gathering like a storm cloud over my head and wait for my first unemployment check to show up (big ups to direct deposit!).

Hopefully, I won't need more than one.

Image from Flickr user richardsummers.