"You know what I like about Canadians? They're real easy to elbow out of the way."
I went up to Oakville on Tuesday for the interview at TDL corporate, and I discover that I know absolutely nothing about inter-municipal travel in this province. The trip should have taken 25 mins by car on the QEW, which is the highway that connects all the lakeside towns in Southern Ontario with Toronto and points further east. But it ended up taking nearly two hours because I had to take a bus to the GO station in Hamilton, get on another bus to go to Burlington, and then take a train to Oakville. Christ, it was a marathon. But I made it in one piece and with 45mins to spare before the interview, so I sat in the Tim Hortons National Training Centre (really, it's just a regular old Tim Hortons store with a fancier oven), had a hot chocolate, and tried to do some non-academic writing.
The interview itself went very well, I think. The questions were mainly those behavioral-type ones, like, "Tell us about a time when something didn't go as planned and you had to correct the situation" or "Can you give us an example of a way you dealt with a conflict?" I answered everything honestly and, I thought, pretty professionally. Things went swimmingly until the second interviewer (not the HR representative I'd talked to on the phone, but the one who actually manages the position I was applying for) asked me why I wanted to work for Tim Hortons again after I'd earned a post-grad degree.
Sigh. "I need to eat and pay back my student loans" is never an acceptable answer in these situations. I asked her if she was concerned that I wouldn't complete the contract and she said no, of course not - she just didn't understand why someone like me ("very obviously a bright girl") would "settle" for work in the customer service industry. I told her that I wanted to take a break from academic work, and that I wanted to be a part of a team-oriented environment and improve my interpersonal skills. She didn't seem entirely satisfied with my answer but I'm not sure what a more acceptable response would have been. Because what do you say when you've spent five years pursuing your education and you can't even seem to find work as a public servant, secretary or admin assistant? I've applied to over 70 jobs in Hamilton and the only call-back I've gotten is this Tim Horton's thing. I don't think of it so much as settling as surviving, and now I'm terrified I blew my chance because I couldn't find a way to explain that my post-grad degree isn't worth shit and I'm desperate.
At any rate, they said they'd let me know before the end of next week. I really hope to hear something by Friday, though, because at least I could stop worrying about it and think about other things, like writing the LSAT in October and applying to law school and making sure all our damn bills get paid. I cleaned out my office at school and worked a little on that last essay, which is starting to freak me out because it's due Saturday and I think it'll take major restructuring to whip it into shape. We're going out tomorrow night with our grad classmates for a last hurrah before everyone goes their separate ways, so that'll be fun. I'll try to convince scarfe to take the camera so we'll actually have pictures of all the great people we met this year, and I'll post them to demonstrate that our department is composed of very attractive single girls and very skinny, scruffy-looking, bearded guys.
The interview itself went very well, I think. The questions were mainly those behavioral-type ones, like, "Tell us about a time when something didn't go as planned and you had to correct the situation" or "Can you give us an example of a way you dealt with a conflict?" I answered everything honestly and, I thought, pretty professionally. Things went swimmingly until the second interviewer (not the HR representative I'd talked to on the phone, but the one who actually manages the position I was applying for) asked me why I wanted to work for Tim Hortons again after I'd earned a post-grad degree.
Sigh. "I need to eat and pay back my student loans" is never an acceptable answer in these situations. I asked her if she was concerned that I wouldn't complete the contract and she said no, of course not - she just didn't understand why someone like me ("very obviously a bright girl") would "settle" for work in the customer service industry. I told her that I wanted to take a break from academic work, and that I wanted to be a part of a team-oriented environment and improve my interpersonal skills. She didn't seem entirely satisfied with my answer but I'm not sure what a more acceptable response would have been. Because what do you say when you've spent five years pursuing your education and you can't even seem to find work as a public servant, secretary or admin assistant? I've applied to over 70 jobs in Hamilton and the only call-back I've gotten is this Tim Horton's thing. I don't think of it so much as settling as surviving, and now I'm terrified I blew my chance because I couldn't find a way to explain that my post-grad degree isn't worth shit and I'm desperate.
At any rate, they said they'd let me know before the end of next week. I really hope to hear something by Friday, though, because at least I could stop worrying about it and think about other things, like writing the LSAT in October and applying to law school and making sure all our damn bills get paid. I cleaned out my office at school and worked a little on that last essay, which is starting to freak me out because it's due Saturday and I think it'll take major restructuring to whip it into shape. We're going out tomorrow night with our grad classmates for a last hurrah before everyone goes their separate ways, so that'll be fun. I'll try to convince scarfe to take the camera so we'll actually have pictures of all the great people we met this year, and I'll post them to demonstrate that our department is composed of very attractive single girls and very skinny, scruffy-looking, bearded guys.