now I'm gonna need some authoritative cheese for *this* whine.
Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 1:00 am
Spoiler: For the excessively stressed already, skip this one, you don't need the hassle. It just kind of amazes me, so I had to write it down.
Some days are more amazingly over the top than others.
Flew back last night from LA, get home 9 pm. Co-worker drops me off at home. At very same moment, family pulls into the driveway. They start unloading a small upright freezer from the van. We do not talk about the trip, or any of that, everybody's too tired. They proceed to tear apart the kitchen to put it in. (I could kid and say they went to Sears for an iron, and came home with a few extras, but honestly, when the iron fritzed on them, they went with the full intention of buying a freezer, too, and they did.)
My interview outfit gets ironed for me, which is service beyond the call of duty, and I'm incapable of doing it myself, although I had a quite reasonable flight. We're not talking the trip from hell here. We're just talking tension from anticipating possible problems like the last few trips from hell, some years ago, and it hasn't been like that. Compared to most people, I'm quite relaxed on airplanes, I choose to relax as much as possible, deliberately.
Go to work late (as approved) and try to get ready for job interview.
I know I don't have that business process stuff down nearly well enough. Focus! Focus! Doesn't matter now that I haven't had time to look at any of this since May, when I took over somebody else's horrendous mess. I haven't even had time to pass nice notes or memes or minor jokes at work since May, f'goodness sake, forget leisurely activities like *reading* things that don't have red flags all over them.
Also, don't scrunch up the ironed shirt and scrape it over the pencil marks on the desk calendar. Also, being a member of the "Wear Your Lunch Club" is Not Fashionable Today, okay?
Okay.
I had trouble eating a little salad anyway.
Re: that busy thing, I'd hoped to do a little more actual work than just clear away emails and voicemail, turn in travel expenses, and discuss taking off more time with boss to accomodate my other sister's expected surgery and need for family babysitter next week. For g'dness sake, it's not like I have the huge extended families that some folks deal with, where somebody's always in trouble or sick or pregnant or something.
No, not happening.
Bringgggg!
Not next week. Today. Sister (the other one, besides the one who sometimes goes into emergency for a chronic leg condtion) is going in for emergency surgery this morning for a biopsy gone infected, not tomorrow. Her 4-year-old twin boys will need supervision today, after school, 2 hours away from us.
Mad rearrangement of two weeks schedule for all concerned.
Family scrambles, such as NO extra key for the car that will stay with me and they get new key cut (no locksmith had blanks for it on many earlier attempts. Today? They find one. It works. Magic.)
They swing by work, drop off the key. (Given intervening road construction, not as easy as it sounds, either.)
The phone keeps going, people drop by and not just to chat, I wade grimly through alligators, grab the information I need to actually do the travel expense stuff right, pound it into submission against an inability to even *see* the tiny print properly, and get the bloody blasted hellacious snapping thing off my desk.
It comes back, of course, when another staffer has a question and points out it needs something else done to it before submitting.
I pound it into submission *again*.
Midday is consumed by doing simple things that don't require me to connect too many dots, and there are many of these.
It must be Halloween, nothing will stay *dead* around here.
The interview?
Sigh.
I made the usual rookie mistake of diving into great detail on the first few questions, to which one writes down answers to in a limited time ahead of the actual interview--and never getting to the end questions. Just got too deeply into those first ones, and couldn't manage to struggle free to the next, and the next, with anything like the power (or the thousand-league boots) it would have taken.
Likewise, on the actual interview.
By the end, at 5 pm, the interviewers are drooping, hoping to get the heck out of there, and I sound much as I do in my online comments.
These people include my branch manager, who is a crisp organized woman with a friendly manner and a formidable memory for tasks let undone.
I'm also making several mistakes that Toastmasters tries to train you out of--repeated ah, ums, and blithering noises with hand gestures, for instance, and completely failing to organize one's thought processes in advance of opening the mouth.
I can manage to speak fairly easily without advance planning for a little 2 minute attempt. I also sounded great with the planned material worked out. I suspect there were some hellacious bloopers in there, too, but I sounded absurdly like I knew what I was talking about.
For about half the time.
Take the script away, I'm starting to struggle to focus.
If they could talk, they wouldn't be XX--insert career choice of your preference here. Anything from cartoonist, dancer, actor, to writer.
They asked good questions. Open-ended stuff. Stuff you can expatiate upon until the cows turn blue and the spoon runs away with the platter.
Okaaay folks, freewheeling time. The whole business process questions? No diagrams will surface in my head. No visuals. Nothing. None of the words even come back. I know this stuff, and it's just not there. The hard drive is making these grinding noises, and they can probably hear it too. A large blue screen of death, alternating fritzing sounds and static.
Houston, we have a problem.
45 minutes, with half of it flying with my pants on fire and smoke pouring out of the fuselage, is a bit beyond my league as yet.
I have the horrid suspicion that my branch manager manages it to a nice smooth 3-point landing all the time, with nobody the wiser, so I know it can be done. I also know my branch manager was disappointed with that part of the effort.
I'm certain of this. I'm equally certain they think I may be incapable of traveling without making a big whoop out of it, which would knock me out of the running.
As I am not immediately leaving to deal with the sister's surgery, mentioning anything about that as an excuse is silly and will just sound lame, so I don't.
It's not even like I'm going to be penalized if I don't get this position, except it's a more immediate promotion. I can stay where I am, where I am just becoming comfortable with the demands involved, but it's a longer and less certain process to make that promotional jump I absolutely need to have for the money, just to keep the house from falling apart on us. I don't have the money to jump to another house of comparable size if this one has any more problems.
And given some of the neighbors, if It gets worse around here, we may have to.
That doesn't matter to an interviewer in the least, it's a distraction.
How hard I work doesn't matter either--at that point, it's plain I haven't kept up with all the other organizational stuff that other people have had time to do, and I haven't been willing to sacrifice to do it on my own time anyway, grimly, against all odds.
That's what it takes to move up out of some jobs, the williness to fight out of there with every last bleeding fingernail.
I'm a little tired of the comic-book style bared teeth and bleeding gums competitive grimace stuff. Also, I don't find it helpful with the people I work with, for the most part, thank goodness. Relaxed works much, much better.
This failure to cram stuff into my head--cramming for tests used to be easy for me, you see--may reward the existing people for overloading me. Oh goodie, they get to keep me, overloaded and all, because I can't pull free of the sucking bog.
However, my suspicion is that the new unit (totally new, no existing structures really in place) will be a whole vast uncharted *new* bog demanding everything we've got, and then some.
It doesn't matter much why, excuses don't cut it, and I made no effort to explain.
I pull together the business references they ask for, send those off, and leave about an hour later than usual. Besides having to nail down a few other undead things that kept wandering round, demanding that I help the co-worker who kindly drove me home the night before, this little effort was doing the same thing. It took awhile because I couldn't focus on which subfolders I needed.
It's an interesting sensation, feeling like you've been finely tapped with thin sticks over your entire body, rolled, mashed, pureed, and laid out to dry like one of those fruit leathers.
The questiosn they asked are pretty much gone into the white void too, along with whatever answers that I gave. I don't remember exam questions afterward. That's an interesting sensation too.
I'm afraid I crawled onto the transit train, found the car in the lot, drove home, doctored the cat (which is why somebody has to stay here, too), crawled into the soft woobie blanket of email notices of comments on IBDoF and lj, and didn't even attempt to tackle working on the book.
Hey, some people would find this merely life as usual. And do it with a laptop slung over one shoulder, and work on the book in the restaurant during their lunch hour.
Must go now and doctor the cat again. He sits down and yells when he needs it. And then he doesn't like it when you do.
Wish me luck.
Some days are more amazingly over the top than others.
Flew back last night from LA, get home 9 pm. Co-worker drops me off at home. At very same moment, family pulls into the driveway. They start unloading a small upright freezer from the van. We do not talk about the trip, or any of that, everybody's too tired. They proceed to tear apart the kitchen to put it in. (I could kid and say they went to Sears for an iron, and came home with a few extras, but honestly, when the iron fritzed on them, they went with the full intention of buying a freezer, too, and they did.)
My interview outfit gets ironed for me, which is service beyond the call of duty, and I'm incapable of doing it myself, although I had a quite reasonable flight. We're not talking the trip from hell here. We're just talking tension from anticipating possible problems like the last few trips from hell, some years ago, and it hasn't been like that. Compared to most people, I'm quite relaxed on airplanes, I choose to relax as much as possible, deliberately.
Go to work late (as approved) and try to get ready for job interview.
I know I don't have that business process stuff down nearly well enough. Focus! Focus! Doesn't matter now that I haven't had time to look at any of this since May, when I took over somebody else's horrendous mess. I haven't even had time to pass nice notes or memes or minor jokes at work since May, f'goodness sake, forget leisurely activities like *reading* things that don't have red flags all over them.
Also, don't scrunch up the ironed shirt and scrape it over the pencil marks on the desk calendar. Also, being a member of the "Wear Your Lunch Club" is Not Fashionable Today, okay?
Okay.
I had trouble eating a little salad anyway.
Re: that busy thing, I'd hoped to do a little more actual work than just clear away emails and voicemail, turn in travel expenses, and discuss taking off more time with boss to accomodate my other sister's expected surgery and need for family babysitter next week. For g'dness sake, it's not like I have the huge extended families that some folks deal with, where somebody's always in trouble or sick or pregnant or something.
No, not happening.
Bringgggg!
Not next week. Today. Sister (the other one, besides the one who sometimes goes into emergency for a chronic leg condtion) is going in for emergency surgery this morning for a biopsy gone infected, not tomorrow. Her 4-year-old twin boys will need supervision today, after school, 2 hours away from us.
Mad rearrangement of two weeks schedule for all concerned.
Family scrambles, such as NO extra key for the car that will stay with me and they get new key cut (no locksmith had blanks for it on many earlier attempts. Today? They find one. It works. Magic.)
They swing by work, drop off the key. (Given intervening road construction, not as easy as it sounds, either.)
The phone keeps going, people drop by and not just to chat, I wade grimly through alligators, grab the information I need to actually do the travel expense stuff right, pound it into submission against an inability to even *see* the tiny print properly, and get the bloody blasted hellacious snapping thing off my desk.
It comes back, of course, when another staffer has a question and points out it needs something else done to it before submitting.
I pound it into submission *again*.
Midday is consumed by doing simple things that don't require me to connect too many dots, and there are many of these.
It must be Halloween, nothing will stay *dead* around here.
The interview?
Sigh.
I made the usual rookie mistake of diving into great detail on the first few questions, to which one writes down answers to in a limited time ahead of the actual interview--and never getting to the end questions. Just got too deeply into those first ones, and couldn't manage to struggle free to the next, and the next, with anything like the power (or the thousand-league boots) it would have taken.
Likewise, on the actual interview.
By the end, at 5 pm, the interviewers are drooping, hoping to get the heck out of there, and I sound much as I do in my online comments.
These people include my branch manager, who is a crisp organized woman with a friendly manner and a formidable memory for tasks let undone.
I'm also making several mistakes that Toastmasters tries to train you out of--repeated ah, ums, and blithering noises with hand gestures, for instance, and completely failing to organize one's thought processes in advance of opening the mouth.
I can manage to speak fairly easily without advance planning for a little 2 minute attempt. I also sounded great with the planned material worked out. I suspect there were some hellacious bloopers in there, too, but I sounded absurdly like I knew what I was talking about.
For about half the time.
Take the script away, I'm starting to struggle to focus.
If they could talk, they wouldn't be XX--insert career choice of your preference here. Anything from cartoonist, dancer, actor, to writer.
They asked good questions. Open-ended stuff. Stuff you can expatiate upon until the cows turn blue and the spoon runs away with the platter.
Okaaay folks, freewheeling time. The whole business process questions? No diagrams will surface in my head. No visuals. Nothing. None of the words even come back. I know this stuff, and it's just not there. The hard drive is making these grinding noises, and they can probably hear it too. A large blue screen of death, alternating fritzing sounds and static.
Houston, we have a problem.
45 minutes, with half of it flying with my pants on fire and smoke pouring out of the fuselage, is a bit beyond my league as yet.
I have the horrid suspicion that my branch manager manages it to a nice smooth 3-point landing all the time, with nobody the wiser, so I know it can be done. I also know my branch manager was disappointed with that part of the effort.
I'm certain of this. I'm equally certain they think I may be incapable of traveling without making a big whoop out of it, which would knock me out of the running.
As I am not immediately leaving to deal with the sister's surgery, mentioning anything about that as an excuse is silly and will just sound lame, so I don't.
It's not even like I'm going to be penalized if I don't get this position, except it's a more immediate promotion. I can stay where I am, where I am just becoming comfortable with the demands involved, but it's a longer and less certain process to make that promotional jump I absolutely need to have for the money, just to keep the house from falling apart on us. I don't have the money to jump to another house of comparable size if this one has any more problems.
And given some of the neighbors, if It gets worse around here, we may have to.
That doesn't matter to an interviewer in the least, it's a distraction.
How hard I work doesn't matter either--at that point, it's plain I haven't kept up with all the other organizational stuff that other people have had time to do, and I haven't been willing to sacrifice to do it on my own time anyway, grimly, against all odds.
That's what it takes to move up out of some jobs, the williness to fight out of there with every last bleeding fingernail.
I'm a little tired of the comic-book style bared teeth and bleeding gums competitive grimace stuff. Also, I don't find it helpful with the people I work with, for the most part, thank goodness. Relaxed works much, much better.
This failure to cram stuff into my head--cramming for tests used to be easy for me, you see--may reward the existing people for overloading me. Oh goodie, they get to keep me, overloaded and all, because I can't pull free of the sucking bog.
However, my suspicion is that the new unit (totally new, no existing structures really in place) will be a whole vast uncharted *new* bog demanding everything we've got, and then some.
It doesn't matter much why, excuses don't cut it, and I made no effort to explain.
I pull together the business references they ask for, send those off, and leave about an hour later than usual. Besides having to nail down a few other undead things that kept wandering round, demanding that I help the co-worker who kindly drove me home the night before, this little effort was doing the same thing. It took awhile because I couldn't focus on which subfolders I needed.
It's an interesting sensation, feeling like you've been finely tapped with thin sticks over your entire body, rolled, mashed, pureed, and laid out to dry like one of those fruit leathers.
The questiosn they asked are pretty much gone into the white void too, along with whatever answers that I gave. I don't remember exam questions afterward. That's an interesting sensation too.
I'm afraid I crawled onto the transit train, found the car in the lot, drove home, doctored the cat (which is why somebody has to stay here, too), crawled into the soft woobie blanket of email notices of comments on IBDoF and lj, and didn't even attempt to tackle working on the book.
Hey, some people would find this merely life as usual. And do it with a laptop slung over one shoulder, and work on the book in the restaurant during their lunch hour.
Must go now and doctor the cat again. He sits down and yells when he needs it. And then he doesn't like it when you do.
Wish me luck.