Sunday, July 26, 2009

New job at a large University

In March I got a new job at a large university which I now fucking hate as you will soon find out. It was great cause they wore jeans and were really relaxed about everything (two of my top five desires for a place to work - number one being close enough to bike to, salary being a distant fifth, if that).

After accepting their offer, which came in the form of an emailed pdf on stationary with a start date and salary, I waited to hear back from them. One week before I was due to start I was told to revise my resume to convince the HR department that I had the required experience.

Difficult, considering I did not have the required experience. And this is despite the fact that the director of the center I would be working in wanted to, and did, hire me. So I did my best to elaborate on what was already in my resume, keeping in mind that the people I was trying to convince already had a copy of the first version of my resume. I had to be careful to achieve my objective without convincing them that I’m an unqualified liar.

So the revised resume gets sent out and I don’t hear anything until two days before I’m due to start, the day of my going-away party at work, when I find out that the HR department would not approve my hire.

Yes, that’s correct. After the big, catered lunch all for me that I couldn’t even eat because of a stomach bug, I got a call from the center saying that I did not have the job. Not to mention this was my alma mater I was going to be working for, you know, the university that I have two degrees from. Two degrees which I gave serious thought to shredding but decided that would eventually require that I pay that stupid fucking school even more money when I need copies of my diplomas.

Anyway, I have now found another job that pays slightly more but doesn’t seem as relaxed. Dress is business casual which blows cause I hate khakis. I’d rather wear a fucking diaper. I suppose I could wear both but what’s the point? I considered taking for lunch the first day a metal lunch box completely filled with Skittles. I figured I’d eat them with a spoon or chopsticks or something ridiculous like that. The problem is that this company I’ll be working for deals with product design and manufacture which is exactly what I want to do so I should probably take it easy for the first couple hours. Maybe I’ll just photocopy a sandwich and put that in a brown paper bag. I could photocopy everything, the meat, the lettuce, both slices of bread, and put it all together into a 2-D sandwich. Then take it out of the bag, unwrap it, pick up the top piece of bread and complain that there’s no mustard. Crumple the whole thing up and throw it away.

Today I ate some berries for breakfast, then a bag of Big League Chew and now I’m about to go get a Yoo-Hoo out of the vending machine. I’ll probably smoke a cigarette on the way home from work, too.

Let’s see, anything else, anything else…yoo-hoo…job…bitter hatred of degree granting university…photocopied lunch meat…nope. I think I’ve covered it.