Yesterday was my appointment with the employment agency not far from my last job. It's not my ideal location, but at this point I'm open to anything. This is also the flaky agency that forgot to send me a confirmation for my last appointment. My opinion wasn't changed much after my visit.
But first I have to get ready again. Getting ready to go places now is an ordeal that starts early. Gone are the days when I could get ready to go to work on autopilot. Now I have to dig out an iron to iron my pants (using a towel on the floor... Ironing board, what's that?). I pick a purple shirt to wear under my suit jacket and put on my jewelry. I put on the hooker boots and off I go. I have to leave an hour and a half early to guarantee I'll be there on time. This time I leave Scooter and Smoke home.
I do take my Drake CD with me. That's the one thing about driving alone. You can play your own music! Drake is my inspiration. Started from the bottom, now I'm here! Driving to a job agency, now I'm here!
When Drake and I get there, I have to park in a parking garage, and it's still cold so there's a lot of walking and freezing. I'm so spoiled! I text Katie the floor of garage I'm parked in so I don't have a Seinfeld situation where I lose my car and my fish dies. You never know! They might provide a free fish!
It's been a long time since I've been near an actual office building. The last building I worked in was a warehouse with office space. That still doesn't excuse me acting like a country pumpkin looking at the elevators like crazy contraptions that take you up in the air. Golly! I manage to get the flying boxes to take me up to the 4th floor, where the company is located.
When I walk in there's nobody at the front desk, but there is a sign-in sheet. I start signing my name when a woman walks up and says, "Are you here to meet with someone?"
"No, I just wandered off the street and found this company randomly," is what I want to say. What I do say is, "Yes, I'm here to see Blah, Blah."
"Ok, have a seat and I'll let her know you're here."
I sit down and notice that the color scheme seems to be orange. Not the orange of the 70's, (which would've been awesome), but more of a burnt orange. Kind of a Denver Bronco's orange. (Did you like that? Topical! Five years later if I read this, I'll have no idea what it means. Dear Future Melly, the Denver Bronco's are playing the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl. A Super Bowl is a football game between.... Wait, that will probably still make sense).
Orange is everywhere. It's mixed into a gigantic dried flower arrangement on the table in front of me. It's in the material of the chair I'm sitting in which have a tiny clouded glass plate welded to the right arm rest. You could use it to write on a Post-It. Or eat a cracker.
The lady comes back and lets me know that Blah, Blah is finishing up something and will be with me in a minute. After she leaves at least four other people ask me if I'm being helped. A receptionist never shows up. A group of employees starts congregating around holding pads of paper, obviously going to a meeting. It's crazy how out of touch I already feel with office life. It wasn't that long ago I was holding a pad of paper on a way to a meeting!
Finally, Blah, Blah comes back and introduces herself and leads me to a conference room. She seems to have a hard time turning on the light. She stands there waving her arms until they come on, explaining, "I never use this room." That leads me to believe she doesn't have a lot of clients or I'm not good enough for the VIP conference room. "Don't let the blonde too far into the building. She doesn't know how to work a elevator."
The conference room table is small and kind of cracked and old looking. It makes me think of my last office when it was new and we weren't allowed to even bring in drinks to the new conference room tables. Now it makes sense to me.
She starts the normal interview questions, asking about what kind of work I do and about my experience. The location I want to work. She apologizes for not sending me the confirmation email and explains that I need to leave a message to contact her because her phone "doesn't show missed calls."
O...k. Finally, she lets me know I'm going to be meeting with another one of her colleages who will see if she has any openings for me. She leaves me alone. That's when I get that feeling...you know the one. When you think something is on your nose. I start to panic until I remember that the other day my mother gave me something and I never took it out of my coat pocket...
Yes, that's a foldable cat mirror! For once my crazy cat lady tendencies worked in my favor! I take it out and check that everything is ok just before she walks back in.
"Boo, Boo got pulled into a meeting, so you won't be meeting her today." For a minute I'm flabbergasted. It's weird because you'd think that she would be pulled out of a meeting for someone that might make them money. But maybe I'm misunderstanding employment agencies.
She hands me a business card. "I ran out of business cards, so I wrote my information on this."
And readers, I shit you not, she had used someone else's business card and crossed out their information and wrote her own. Professional, no? I begin to wonder if maybe she'd given me a fake number. She shakes my hand and then kind of flitters out of the room leaving me to wander out on my own. I pass by her talking to the receptionist that has now magically returned. I've been dismissed.
I leave the office and go back down the magic boxes (first finding a public restroom in the hallway...yes, so sad). I didn't need the text because I actually did remember where I parked.
It really was a surreal experience. She didn't take the job application that they had me fill out in the email. She didn't take any of my information, which leads me to wonder if they even wanted me there. Maybe they will find me a job, but it mostly felt like a waste of time and gas. I started from the bottom and I'm still there... I still haven't tried the number yet. I'm kind of scared too. It might end up being a deli. (Friends reference of course).
I went to another employment agency today that was much better, but this story took so long, I'll save it until tomorrow.
To be continued...
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