I have been registered with one recruitment firm for over ten years. They are supposedly experts in my particular field. In those ten years, I’d yet to be sent on a single interview and usually had better luck with generic placement agencies that were more widespread in their focus.
I’d even interviewed the somewhat under-qualified individuals sent by said recruitment company to places I worked, in order to evaluate their worth. It’s an anomaly I’ve not really understood other than whoever I interviewed with all those years ago perhaps just didn’t like me or didn’t feel I had the right “look.”
Even after moving, it was a pretty consistent level of nothing I got from the local branch of the same company. I started to wonder if they had a “file” on me with historical notes that were following me around like a high school record.
COVID19 hit them as it did everyone and those I interviewed with were laid off and their duties overtaken by others further up the chain. Even the branch manager gave me the same level of nothing I had come to expect. So I went on, focusing my efforts on staying in touch with others I’d registered with, hunting openings on my own and applying with anything on the nothing company’s website that I remotely qualified for, because… I wasn’t just going to sit around and let them decide what I fit best.
I get a call yesterday from an individual I hadn’t met from said company about a position I’d applied for online. The company hiring was desperate to find someone with knowledge and experience that could drop in and overtake the position held by the current person who had been handling it for the last forty years. They didn’t often have openings and had listed it as a temp position because they were also gun shy about new additions. However, the person in question wanted to retire and take care of a sick spouse.
They were desperate enough that I was given a little over an hour to get ready and get there to interview. I met the owner and the head of the department for which I was interviewing. I genuinely liked them both.
All of us started off sporting masks, but after we carefully placed ourselves at an ideal distance in the owner’s office, we tugged our ear hangers a bit and showed face to have a conversation. My temp was taken beforehand and everyone else in the office sported masks and most, so I was told, had all been tested already.
The interview went about the same as all the other interviews I’ve had so far, they dig at why I was let go from my last position and how I handled it, seemed to be ok with how I presented it, even impressed… not a reaction I’ve gotten so far.
I don’t know what most people expect, I was planning the rest of my day while in HR waiting for the news to drop when they called me in there for a “review” because nothing about that place made any sense to me, not that I say such to anyone interviewing. But I’m not going to have a breakdown over it. I’m just grateful. Two places so far have let me go for a profit margin and I’m outright thankful I don’t ever have to see either ever again.
I even flat out say, my biggest vice is that some situations are out of my power to fix and letting go just seems impossible to me. I tend to think that trying harder, working longer, tackling it from a different angle is somehow going to payoff eventually and there are just some instances when its out of my control. I just have a hard time with that. They seem to love this.
They ask what I want in a company. I state I want to work for a good company who appreciates and supports it people and encourages their support of one another to have the common goal of success for all. They seem to love this.
They ask the question I hate the most… where do I see myself in ten years… I answer honestly… That every time I’ve had even a five year plan, it tends to get derailed. I’m not a corporate climber, but settling in a managerial role at some point would be ideal. They seem to love this too.
I’m told they prefer promoting within and those who grow out of their positions are encouraged to move into positions that will better allow them to grow. That ideally they want the person who stays long term, not the one who is looking for a pit-stop. I love this.
The owner goes on to say that people should have a life outside of work and balance is a big thing for them. Families should have the time with one another. Considering I’ve spent the last couple years with 85% of my weekends in the office for twelve hours at a time at minimum, I love this too.
I’m asked if I can start the next day?
I’m thrown, but thrilled.
Due to this craziness, I’m likely to sleep in three hour batches and work on my kid’s computer at 2 a.m. and take a huge nap when the heat is bad after about 16-36 hours of being awake. I’m just not ready and I need the weekend to get myself reset. When I showed up for this interview, it was almost lunch time and I’d already been awake over a dozen hours. I didn’t tell them this of course, just that I had some things I had to finalize that week. So we settle on the following Monday.
I’m then firmly encouraged not to discuss my agreed salary with anyone (which is under where I wanted, but starting a bit higher than where I was… so minor progress and not $18/hr for a bachelor’s degree…). They allude to most of the staff being hourly and at a much lower point than I will be coming in on. I do not like this.
I’m not prone to discussing my personal finances with anyone, but having five solid minutes devoted to emphasizing my discretion is concerning.
Then, with white male privilege firmly entrenched, the owner makes a remark that he hopes this mess will be over soon, so people will be forced to “no longer milk the system,” expressing disgust with people “choosing” to stay unemployed because they make more than they did working.
Excuse me, what?
I’m very grateful for the funds granted to us. We would not have survived without it. We didn’t thrive, we didn’t go on any crazing spending sprees, but my bills mostly remained paid and anything unpaid was on forced forbearance, so I didn’t have to worry about it. My fear is the taxes that are going to be taken back when all is said and done next year and I don’t have the supplemental income that even matches the year before to assist.
Nothing is ever given freely. Not in life and especially not in this country. If that were the case, our society would be a lot healthier, a lot more educated, and we wouldn’t be represented by a dementia-laden fucktard.
But no one was granted what I would call a living wage, or was barely a living wage depending on where you’re located. The sheer numbers of renters being tossed out for nonpayment during a pandemic should exemplify this.
If staying unemployed pays your bills better than being employed, there is a deeper fucking problem than extortion or laziness going on here and it badly needs to be fixed before this pandemic is done with us.
So, I hope my red flags have no influence in how the company itself works and is solely constrained to the opinions of a minority of those who own it. I’m a firm believer in people having the right to some of their dipshit opinions, as long as those opinions to not adversely affect the lives of others. I won’t ban Chick-fil-A, for example, unless they start trying to influence political policy with their anti-LGBT platform. I do believe deeply in the right to free speech, even if I don’t want to hear what some say.
I have a bit of being a temp before I will be taken on as a permanent employee. So I guess we’re going to be spending the time figuring out if we’ll be a good fit for one another. I know I’m going to stick with it no matter what because I have to work. But hopefully, I will be more capable of letting go of a bad situation in the future should this turn out to be another one. Ideally, before I’m forced to.
I prefer things on my own terms and I prefer being the dumper in all scenarios, rather than the dumpee.
It may not mean much in the long run when you’re dumped my a shirtstorm of any kind, be it personal or professional. In fact, it should be interpreted as a compliment, but I still prefer the control of the timing. I like to schedule my own day, you know?
I really want to be proven wrong. I’m so tired of being pessimistic and right. I haven’t worked for what I would call a good company in nearly ten years and the odds just have to pan out… eventually… hopefully? There has to be some reason those there have stayed as long as they have, and I really hope it doesn’t have something to do with fear.
I also hope that if there is a file on me with the nothing recruitment company, they add this one note:
“Got the job for the only interview we’ve ever lined them up for, before the interview even finished… do better should they enlist us again.”
idioglossia: the blog 