A Waste Of A Day

You can't tell anyone I work with, but that meeting that I was supposed to attend (which was more of a bitch session) I was late to. The reason? I was on a job interview.
I got contacted recently by a marketing firm who wanted to hire me. They sent me an e-mail and asked me to set up an interview time. This I did. I figured, I have been in sales before. I have marketed a radio station before. Surely I could do this. So, I called them. I set up the interview and went today.
What a big mistake and a waste of my time.
I took the train into the city and walked eight blocks to a building that looked like it belonged to section eight. If I had found a drinking fountain, I'm sure that the water would have come out the same color as rust.
I took the elevator up to the seventh floor to meet with this marketing company. There I was given a clip-board and asked to write some information about myself. Much like when you would visit the doctor's office. I had to fill out this form on a clip-board and tell them a bunch of crap about myself. Half of it, I made up. (Still, much like the doctor's office.)
As I was filling this crap out, about 10-15 other people joined me in the small waiting room and each began filling out the same forms. I knew then that this was a mass-hiring project and that I was in for something that I wasn't expecting.
All of us were in business professional attire. It was the first time that I wore a suit in a long time when someone wasn't getting married or had just died.
I looked around the room that I was in. Very cheap lettering was on the wall behind the secretary (who I learned was not only a partner in the company, but also the receptionist). The ceilings were not covered. Instead they showed the heating and cooling pipes as well as the hanging fluorescent lights that tried to hum louder than the heaters. There were awful mid-90's paintings on the wall. I'm very surprised that they weren't the stupid motivational pictures that we are all familiar with that show a still pond infront of a chain of mountains and describe "Goals" in three sentences at the bottom.
I was scheduled to interview at 12:30. So, I showed up at 12:07, according to the doorman. It was shortly after 1:00 that my name was called. (Still, very much like the doctor's office. They even had old magazines there.) They asked for me, and "Jeff." "Chris" was the guy who called us out. I was surprised that he asked for two people. But, none-the-less, we both followed Chris through a series of narrow hallways that opened up to generic conference tables, and then narrowed again until we got to his office.
His office was pretty bare. A $35 bookshelf held books that I would never read in a million years (and I'm assuming Chris has never read) a "L-shaped" desk and a sand aquarium behind us that I'm assuming held some lizard that we weren't able to see because it was hiding or dead. That was it. This place was probably 20' by 10' and that was all that was in it. Jeff reminded standing until Chris sat down. I sat down immediately. It was even at this point that I realized that this day was pretty much a waste.
Did I blow it there? Possibly. If I did, I probably don't want to work for this company anyway.
So, the joint-interview begins. I, needless to say, am a little upset that this is a joint-interview instead of the standard one. I see this as a very unprofessional and very obvious psychological trick on behalf of the company. While it may have been a time-saver, it also came off as a way to get the two of us to compete against each other.
This generic and pathetic attempt at a psychological edge I refuse to fall victim to. So, he asks us on a scale from 1-10 how would we rate our "people skills." What a stupid question. What am I going to say? "I don't like working with people. Mark me a zero." No. I answered a "nine." Why? Because I feel that I can relate to nearly anyone. I don't mean this in a boastful way, but I can. Relatablilty is one of my character traits and I'm rather proud of it. I told him how I was on a VERY successfully morning show in radio and proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt. I then realized what a joke "radio" is to the average person. It was seen as somewhat of a hobby or a useless venture on my behalf.
He then asked the same question of the guy to my left. He, of course, answered a nine as well. He gave some other answer that I didn't pay attention to. "Chris" then asked us if we would be available tomorrow to spend a full day following someone around. This would be our second interview. It is through this following that we would learn about the company and be able to ask as many questions as we want as well as they would be able to learn more about us.
I told him that I had to work tomorrow and wouldn't be able to. He looked at me as if I had just answered his question in Spanish. He couldn't understand why I wouldn't drop all that I had going on so that I could follow some dumbass around for a full day to learn more about the company. Hell, that is the whole reason behind the interview that I was a part of today. So that they could learn about me and I could learn about them.
The interview process, according to me, is so that I can learn as much about the company as they learn about me. He then asked me when I would be able to. I told him that my next available weekday was roughly Wednesday next week. I wasn't positive, but I thought, perhaps I could get it off of work if need-be. He looked at me as if I wasn't trying hard enough. "Ok." he said as if I had insulted his mother. "When would you be available for starting with our firm?" I told him that I would give the standard two-week notice before starting any other job. This is out of respect for the current responsibilities that I had acquired at my current position. The guy who interviewed with me took this as an opportunity to say that he would start tomorrow and tell his current job to piss off.
"Chris" seemed to like this answer more than mine. I began to wonder how many of his past employees would have answered the same way against his own company. It was at this point that I pretty much knew that I wasn't going to get a call-back from "Chris" that day to interview a second time. And, quite frankly, I was O.K. with that.
After the interview as over, I cornered "Chris" just to see what would happen. I asked him about the "benefits" that he had discussed.
"Those will be brought up in the second interview. Let's just say they are competitive."
This was his response. This did not answer my question at all. If you are afraid of telling me what I will be paid and what the benefits are of the job that I'm investing this much time in, then I don't need to be dealing with you much longer. I wasn't even too sure what it was that he was asking me to do.
I, during this interview, had flash-backs to an interview similar to this one. Almost indentical. My friend Luke (you can read his blog by clicking on the link to the right) and I both interviewed at a firm similar to this in Downers. I declined the second day-long interview when they offered it to me. Luke accepted it.
At lunch time, Luke called me to let me know that he was handing out coupons for oil changes door-to-door and hated every minute of his wasted day. At lunch time they asked him what he thought. He told them that he thought they should take him back to the parking lot so he could go home because this wasn't what he signed up for.
While this place might have been better than handing out oil change coupons, I don't think that it was much better. The whole time that I was interviewing, I kept thinking about how I could have slept in today and not wasted so much of my time and effort by coming in to interview with these idiots. I could have woken up whenever I felt like it. I would have made it to my meeting on time. I wouldn't have had to look for my suit. I wouldn't have had to taken the train round-trip into the city. I wouldn't have walked 16 blocks today. And I wouldn't have waited a half hour for my interview to start with a guy who tried to pit me against someone else in a room with an empty aquarium.

At least I have an interview with a reputable cellular company on Friday. My friend Luke and I worked for a competitor a year and change ago. Luke reminds me how much I hated it then and how much he continues to hate it now. However, it should be good money and give me an opportunity to advance slightly in this game of life.
I need to get out of my current situation and advance. Hopefully opportunity is calling instead of knocking this time.