Arsey

I got a bit arsey this morning.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm living between the dimensions, slightly out of phase, there are aliens who have this problem in some episodes of Star Trek Next Generation. I doubt that Jean-Luc will come and rescue me though.

I realised that it was about time I became a bit proactive and started putting my CV about a bit. My CV looks a bit heavy on the education though, so I had carefully added what I thought my transferable skills were.

Last Friday I took my CV into Manpower, since I am familiar with the Manpower Services Commission from Britain. In reality, I should be having no truck with an organisation that calls itself Man anything, but I did.
'Oh,' they said, seemingly delighted, 'can you come in for a three hour intensive interview next week, and could you leave your Resume with us?'

This morning I went in. They had already lost my CV and insisted on calling me Christine.
'What's your last name Christine?' said a second woman, who may it seems have had and misplaced my CV. I corrected her.
'I'll just have one more look,' said the first woman, looking in the file under 'C'.
'Maybe if you looked under 'J' for Janis?' I suggested. Not there either.

They put me in a room with a video. First of all I had to fill in a form, some of which made sense, some of which didn't, and which duplicated the information on my CV which they had lost.
I wondered why they hadn't offered me anything, water, coffee, toilet, air in the room. Woman one put the video on and closed the door. It was hot in the room, and stuffy. The video was about customer services as performed by people wearing 70's clothes and hairstyles.
'Ho hum,' thought I.
Then there was a second video on hazardous chemicals. I watched it for a while, mostly zoned out, thinking, any moment now, this will become relevant. I went out into the main office to tell the women I thought they had given me the wrong video.
'No, no,' they assured me, 'that's the right one.' I wondered about the protocol of getting my library book out but decided against it mainly because by now I had a headache.
There was a worksheet about the video.

I was taken into another room with computers. By now, woman number two had memorised my name.
I was tested on copying, using spreadsheets and using Word. Oh and colouring in. No, sadly not the colouring in. The Excel test was partly beyond my Excel-using skills, even though I have used it a lot, but the Word one was ok. I had to stop halfway and ask to use the toilet. Guess what ? You had to be given a key, one on a pink holder for the women's loo, I assumed the one with the blue holder was for the men's.

Then I went out into the main office for a 'structured interview'. The woman asked me whether the details I had written on the form were correct. I managed to stop myself from retorting that no, all my details had changed since two hours ago.
She asked me whether I liked working in a small, medium or large office. I didn't care.
She asked me whether I prefered a casual, professional or business work environment. I asked her what that meant. She said it was about codes of dress. I asked her what the difference was between professional and business dress. She couldn't answer.

What did I feel were my most useful skills.
'Dealing with the public and speaking French.'
She asked me what type of job, ideally, I liked to do.
'One where I boss people around,' I said. She didn't smile, she didn't ask me what I meant by that, or whether I was feeling ok, she simply carried on typing.
'Is there any type of work environment you like to avoid?' she said,
'A male dominated one,' I replied, 'I suppose that's a bit of a handicap,' I joked. She just carried on typing.
Maybe I shouldn't have been arsey. Maybe I should have played the game right to the end. But I wasn't feeling like it anymore. There was never any point where anyone was interested in finding out what I had to offer. Not really. I gave a lot of pointers that had I been on the other side of the desk, I would have explored.

Creative differences I guess.