On the Pitfalls of Paid Travel
It, as usual, has been a long time since I've updated. Why? Life!
The interview was last Wednesday/Thursday, although it seems like a billion years ago because this week for work has been Klamath Falls, Bend, and the Dalles. The latest word I have from the recruiter is "From what I can tell,the outlook is positive-they are just trying to get the details together."
So there's that.
I also may have a position with HP lined up if this falls through. One way or another I think this fall is going to be my farewell with Tolt. I'll never get full-time, I can't move up, I keep getting moved out, and unless I'm career-track soon I'm going to be one of those pathetic 60-year-old installers, desperately grateful for even helper work.
That said...the trip down to Tulsa was not without incident. Yes, I attract weirdness and chaos but this was the worst logistical nightmare (not involving the Canadian border on any number of occasions) that I've ever had to deal with. Account follows.
///
Monday 9 AM. Woke up. Tuesday 1 AM. Can't sleep, flight leaves at 6 AM, have the BRILLIANT late night idea of just heading for the airport so I can get past TSA and crash in the lounge until departure. Airport at 2 AM. TSA checkpoint doesn't open until 4AM. I try to sleep under the water fountains but wind up just reading for a while. 15 minutes before departure, nobody's boarded, and the overhead announcement reveals that they don't have a crew for the flight, they can't FIND a crew, and the delay is 5 hours. 200 people leap for the podium. During the 45 minutes it takes to process the first two, I call the travel agency the company used and get them to put another series of flights on my reservation. I pass this info to another guy in line for the same thing...he calls the hotel we'll all be staying at and reserves a pickup for 4:20P. (The meeting starts at 5P).
What with one thing and another--including 30 minutes to generate a new boarding pass for me down at the other gate--the plane ride goes badly. On a kick of "leg room!" I've been opting for aisle seats. This makes me travel-sick. Being travel-sick when combined with nausea from sleep loss and experimental earplugs means spending the entire descent trying not to vomit and concentrating on the flight number as the only thing keeping me sane and not just succumbing to utter disoriented agony.
By the time I'm out of the plane...thanks, back-of-the-bus seats!...the next plane closes doors and pushes back in 15 minutes, and it's 67 gates away across Minneapolis/St Paul airport. Yes, lowercasedee I did manage to make it to your home airport...for thirteen frantic minutes while you were 300 miles away. Reality did not end. I regard this as a positive sign. I make the plane with two minutes to spare.
We get into Tulsa at 4:20, looking around for the hotel shuttle in the 95 degree humid Oklahoma heat, but....nada. 15 minutes of phone calls later and they can't possibly be arsed to pick us up--like they confirmed at 9 AM--until the regularly scheduled 5 PM. So by the time we get to the hotel at 5:30, the meeting's started. I check in, grab key cards, head upstairs and to the complete other end to at least throw my bag in the room and apply deodorant...but my cards don't work, so I ran back downstairs and gave them to the desk clerk, saying "These don't work, YOU figure it out, I have to be at the meeting." Hit the meeting room at about 5:45 (never DID find out the hiring managers' names) with backpack in tow.
Things went fairly uneventfully until about 10:30 PM or so when meeting/dinner/etc broke up and most of us 30 candidates headed to the bar for a bit of what was supposed to be mingling/resume-passing-out-ing. I decided I needed to check in again. Surprise surprise...while most of us were booked, by the company, with a random fellopw-candidate roommate (same gender, although there were only a couple girls there), a computer glitch had booked me with a random female hotel guest who was NOT part of the hiring thing at all. Suddenly I'm glad my cards didn't work. The discussion revolves around overbooking for a while, including a mention of an "AO" room, which apparently means airbed only, but somebody from maintenance would have to remove the couch. I suggest instead that they point out the most comfortable lobby couch and I will sleep on it, snore on it, drool on it, and in general give the lie to their four-star image. They find me a room. The key works, I throw my bag and protective gear for the morning's trip in, and go back down to the bar, professional-looking binder in tow.
One shot of vanilla vodka is requested. Everybody has a beer in their hand, the recruiter said they weren't going to pay for hard spirits but FUCKIT I'd been up for 36 hours, breakfast was served at 6:30 the next morning, and I needed something to unwind responsibly with. The bartender produces a small restaurant water glass and fills it three-quarters full.
None of the managers I approach want to deal with paperwork at all, or do anything but shoot the shit and ignore the candidates, and the candidates have already had a couple hours to socialize and get settled and so forth, so I wind up shooting the shit about cars and women with an ex-master sargeant--who I got along unsurprisingly well with--until I figured nothing useful was getting done and finally called it a night. After showering and getting stuff tidied away, it was almost 2 AM.
The next day featured a lovely (in a completely nonsarcastic fashion) tour of their training facility in different-than-everybody-else full-length coveralls, scratched-to-hell mandatory safety glasses, and slip-on steel-toed shoe covers of which one didn't have its inner steel, all in 95 degrees and cloudless sun. We were instructed to change out and come straight back to the meeting room afterwards...I took ten and was worried I'd be the last in, but was the third in...and about 20 of us didn't trickle in until almost an hour later when they were already late for the interview. The interviewers were all the hell over the map, some people got asked exclusively logic questions, some people got actively discouraged (no matter their qualifications), some people got asked "tell me about yourself" and "how do you handle stress" and then sent on their way, my guy that was supposed to just be taking notes closed his laptop down and started asking me about oscilloscopes and FPGAs and all the stuff I haven't done since college, and he's not even from the division I was applying for a position in.
So I think it went well, surmounted a fuckton of obstacles. I'd like to work for the company, they're good enough to deserve me being good for them, whether or not I get the job it was a very useful experience. But good CHRIST it was a continual uphill battle.
I remain pretty optimistic, with that feedback from the recruiter, but time will tell. Until then, well, I've got work, I'm getting a local minion work as best I can, and I have exit plans rather than just sort of aimlessly tagging along with Tolt.
In sharp contrast to another departing coworker, at least my boss is enthusiastic about me finding a full-time job that suits my skills. Not to say he doesn't like me, but he likes me enough to want to see me in a better position. How did I get here? Diplomacy, courtesy, professionalism, and requesting my start date started after the Alaska trip was done thanks to prior commitments. (If they send me a letter saying "can you start tomorrow?" the answer is YES!...but I made the effort.) I am damn well learning this socialization game. I'm not manipulative like my mother, or naturally gregarious like Dad, but through hard work and continual improvement I can now make small talk, make friends of coworkers, talk to both management and labor in comfortable ways, and in general function as a social animal. This is a pretty big step forward.
One way or another I should know pretty soon if this all panned out.
The interview was last Wednesday/Thursday, although it seems like a billion years ago because this week for work has been Klamath Falls, Bend, and the Dalles. The latest word I have from the recruiter is "From what I can tell,the outlook is positive-they are just trying to get the details together."
So there's that.
I also may have a position with HP lined up if this falls through. One way or another I think this fall is going to be my farewell with Tolt. I'll never get full-time, I can't move up, I keep getting moved out, and unless I'm career-track soon I'm going to be one of those pathetic 60-year-old installers, desperately grateful for even helper work.
That said...the trip down to Tulsa was not without incident. Yes, I attract weirdness and chaos but this was the worst logistical nightmare (not involving the Canadian border on any number of occasions) that I've ever had to deal with. Account follows.
///
Monday 9 AM. Woke up. Tuesday 1 AM. Can't sleep, flight leaves at 6 AM, have the BRILLIANT late night idea of just heading for the airport so I can get past TSA and crash in the lounge until departure. Airport at 2 AM. TSA checkpoint doesn't open until 4AM. I try to sleep under the water fountains but wind up just reading for a while. 15 minutes before departure, nobody's boarded, and the overhead announcement reveals that they don't have a crew for the flight, they can't FIND a crew, and the delay is 5 hours. 200 people leap for the podium. During the 45 minutes it takes to process the first two, I call the travel agency the company used and get them to put another series of flights on my reservation. I pass this info to another guy in line for the same thing...he calls the hotel we'll all be staying at and reserves a pickup for 4:20P. (The meeting starts at 5P).
What with one thing and another--including 30 minutes to generate a new boarding pass for me down at the other gate--the plane ride goes badly. On a kick of "leg room!" I've been opting for aisle seats. This makes me travel-sick. Being travel-sick when combined with nausea from sleep loss and experimental earplugs means spending the entire descent trying not to vomit and concentrating on the flight number as the only thing keeping me sane and not just succumbing to utter disoriented agony.
By the time I'm out of the plane...thanks, back-of-the-bus seats!...the next plane closes doors and pushes back in 15 minutes, and it's 67 gates away across Minneapolis/St Paul airport. Yes, lowercasedee I did manage to make it to your home airport...for thirteen frantic minutes while you were 300 miles away. Reality did not end. I regard this as a positive sign. I make the plane with two minutes to spare.
We get into Tulsa at 4:20, looking around for the hotel shuttle in the 95 degree humid Oklahoma heat, but....nada. 15 minutes of phone calls later and they can't possibly be arsed to pick us up--like they confirmed at 9 AM--until the regularly scheduled 5 PM. So by the time we get to the hotel at 5:30, the meeting's started. I check in, grab key cards, head upstairs and to the complete other end to at least throw my bag in the room and apply deodorant...but my cards don't work, so I ran back downstairs and gave them to the desk clerk, saying "These don't work, YOU figure it out, I have to be at the meeting." Hit the meeting room at about 5:45 (never DID find out the hiring managers' names) with backpack in tow.
Things went fairly uneventfully until about 10:30 PM or so when meeting/dinner/etc broke up and most of us 30 candidates headed to the bar for a bit of what was supposed to be mingling/resume-passing-out-ing. I decided I needed to check in again. Surprise surprise...while most of us were booked, by the company, with a random fellopw-candidate roommate (same gender, although there were only a couple girls there), a computer glitch had booked me with a random female hotel guest who was NOT part of the hiring thing at all. Suddenly I'm glad my cards didn't work. The discussion revolves around overbooking for a while, including a mention of an "AO" room, which apparently means airbed only, but somebody from maintenance would have to remove the couch. I suggest instead that they point out the most comfortable lobby couch and I will sleep on it, snore on it, drool on it, and in general give the lie to their four-star image. They find me a room. The key works, I throw my bag and protective gear for the morning's trip in, and go back down to the bar, professional-looking binder in tow.
One shot of vanilla vodka is requested. Everybody has a beer in their hand, the recruiter said they weren't going to pay for hard spirits but FUCKIT I'd been up for 36 hours, breakfast was served at 6:30 the next morning, and I needed something to unwind responsibly with. The bartender produces a small restaurant water glass and fills it three-quarters full.
None of the managers I approach want to deal with paperwork at all, or do anything but shoot the shit and ignore the candidates, and the candidates have already had a couple hours to socialize and get settled and so forth, so I wind up shooting the shit about cars and women with an ex-master sargeant--who I got along unsurprisingly well with--until I figured nothing useful was getting done and finally called it a night. After showering and getting stuff tidied away, it was almost 2 AM.
The next day featured a lovely (in a completely nonsarcastic fashion) tour of their training facility in different-than-everybody-else full-length coveralls, scratched-to-hell mandatory safety glasses, and slip-on steel-toed shoe covers of which one didn't have its inner steel, all in 95 degrees and cloudless sun. We were instructed to change out and come straight back to the meeting room afterwards...I took ten and was worried I'd be the last in, but was the third in...and about 20 of us didn't trickle in until almost an hour later when they were already late for the interview. The interviewers were all the hell over the map, some people got asked exclusively logic questions, some people got actively discouraged (no matter their qualifications), some people got asked "tell me about yourself" and "how do you handle stress" and then sent on their way, my guy that was supposed to just be taking notes closed his laptop down and started asking me about oscilloscopes and FPGAs and all the stuff I haven't done since college, and he's not even from the division I was applying for a position in.
So I think it went well, surmounted a fuckton of obstacles. I'd like to work for the company, they're good enough to deserve me being good for them, whether or not I get the job it was a very useful experience. But good CHRIST it was a continual uphill battle.
I remain pretty optimistic, with that feedback from the recruiter, but time will tell. Until then, well, I've got work, I'm getting a local minion work as best I can, and I have exit plans rather than just sort of aimlessly tagging along with Tolt.
In sharp contrast to another departing coworker, at least my boss is enthusiastic about me finding a full-time job that suits my skills. Not to say he doesn't like me, but he likes me enough to want to see me in a better position. How did I get here? Diplomacy, courtesy, professionalism, and requesting my start date started after the Alaska trip was done thanks to prior commitments. (If they send me a letter saying "can you start tomorrow?" the answer is YES!...but I made the effort.) I am damn well learning this socialization game. I'm not manipulative like my mother, or naturally gregarious like Dad, but through hard work and continual improvement I can now make small talk, make friends of coworkers, talk to both management and labor in comfortable ways, and in general function as a social animal. This is a pretty big step forward.
One way or another I should know pretty soon if this all panned out.