a long day of employment tests

After being gone for close to eight hours today, I am finally home, and thusly, feel that it may be time for a bit of reflection.

Stop one, Essex Temporary Services, proved to be as sketchy as the name--hopelessly old computers, a series of tests on Microsoft Office 97!! (I had no recollection that was such a crappy program) and a good ol' "for the first 65 working days, we pay you a reduced rate of $9 an hour"...to which I responded, "That's is absolutely not going to work." I managed to convince them to do some stretching and get me an absolute minimum of $12 (which is what I'd be making at Coach starting next week, on much crappier hours, including holiday weekends)...so perhaps they might find something halfway decent, in spite of being a lame company.

Later, I would end up at Clarity Temp, a much sleeker, emptier office, with much nicer and more attentive employees...I had a nice talk with a girl named Laura, who assured me that she could find something of a much better range than the Essex dumbos, and none of that funny less-pay-till-you're-perm-bullshit. She asked if I had taken the employment tests before, and I said yeah, but of course Essex hadn't provided me with the results, so I had to take a similar set of tests again. Grammar, spelling, and language started the exam, followed by MSWord, Excel, and Powerpoint (2000), and a typing test. Turns out I rocked all of it, in spite of using Powerpoint maybe once before if at all (scoring a sweet 95%)...and did disturbingly well on the typing test even though my fingers were freaking out and it felt like I was stumbling through it...62WPM and no mistakes...Definitely not used to the real keyboards anymore, though, being spoilt by the flat one on my sexy iBook. Laura, impressed, promised to call soon, so we'll see.

Still no word about the Bloomberg job, unfortunately, but oh well oh well oh well. I guess I can't complain--I mean, I am employed. But is it so much to ask for a simple, 9-5ish M-F office job? That's really all I want. But naturally, my resume leaves me both over- and under-qualified for that.....and my personality is seemingly unfit for such menial tasks (even though I love them)....at least according to the Caliper test administered me by W.P. Carey, and the sole reason that I'm not working at Rockefeller Center right now for a hotshit real estate investment executive.

Sooooooooo, I came home (hopping onto the Franklin Avenue Shuttle along with every schoolkid in Brooklyn), and ate some candy. Which I've been doing a little too much of these past several days.

Checking out Craigslist for the hell of it (after trying to procrastinate on lame websites for as long as possible, it's only a matter of time before I'm looking at jobsites as a form of time-wasting) and found an amazing posting, which I will reprint here for amusement.

||||Knicks Street Team

Reply to: casting@vincentpartners.com
Date: 2005-11-01, 4:43PM EST


The Kincks' season opener is coming up and the Knicks Street Team needs help getting the word out right. Looking for energetic outgoing people ready to get to work right away. Shifts are as follows and we need you to commit to every shift. Only apply if you are free for the next 3 days!

Wednesday, Novermber 2nd: 4-7pm (3 hours)
Thursday, November 3rd: 7:30-9:30am, 10am-Noon, 2-5pm (7 hours)
Friday, November 4th: 7:30-9:30am, 10am-Noon (4 hours)

Please send HEADSHOT, PAST EXPERIENCE INFO, and CONTACT INFORMATION to casting@vincentpartners.com for consideration. All emails without the necessary information WILL BE IGNORED. If you are not available for ALL shifts do not respond. Your email WILL BE IGNORED.
this is in or around All Over City
no -- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: $15/hr ||||

Needless to say, I sent my resume, a black and white semi-profile shot of me freshman year of college (taken by one Abigail Moldover), and wrote a nice little enthusiastic-sounding thingy emphasizing the relevance of my past experiences, including, naturally, my month of street canvassing with the Federal Fund for Public Interest Research. Rock and Roll. And, of course of course, I was called five minutes later and offered this sweet action job (for which I will receive a Knicks hat, shirt, and bag--I think to keep) and an extra couple hundred bucks that I certainly hadn't planned on earning (and which would be really really exciting right now).

What else could I possibly be doing at 7:30 in the morning on Thursday and Friday anyway?? Surely not sleeping.

Now, I'm sitting here, listen to my brother's phone buzz every couple minutes, watching him play some awesome soccer game on PS2, and thinking how tragic it is that America's Next Top Model isn't on until tomorrow night. Like Hamlet-style tragedy, folks.



weeping for Tyra.