jeudi 24 juillet 2008

Like a Thursday

Today= 4 consecutive episodes of French Internet series (Decide-toi, Clement!)
      crappy interview at my local library
      searching for employment AGAIN
      drinking old(not aged, just old) wine at Rittenhouse Square

But I ate real food (my mom's ziti that she gave my brother to give to me)!

dimanche 20 juillet 2008

It's blueberry time!

Hej girl hej.

So post France means that I gotta get a job.  I've been toiling ever so hard on this, cruising Craigslist like it alone is my job, calling around, creeping around, you name it...  And alas, months passed, and my savings dwindled and are dwindling as we speak.  My first big break was an interview for a customer service position with airline giant US Airways.  This means TRAVEL BENEFITS like whoa.  Words can't describe.  Free travel and a world of both happiness and decided misery from the crappy early morning/late night sort of schedule that this job entails for new hires.  
My neck is sweating.
The information sesh/interview was held on a Tuesday afternoon in Lester Poopy Pants Mapquest Lies, Pennsylvania.  Area code 19blahblahboo.  They gave us hopefuls the low-down/frown on working for US Airways.  The undesirable and fluctuating schedule, the full-time training, the expectations, the seriousness/officialness, etc.  Then there were individual interviews.  I scored major points with the francophile card, which has actually operated surprisingly well as a selling point lately.  The interviewer was herself a fan of Europe who spent some time residing in Strasbourg(French/German border), France.  My 10 months of customer service experience magically and exceptionally amounted to the minimum requirement of 2 years, and suddenly, I was in business.  

Oh yes, and it's important that I mention that for the duration of the interview, I had a pancake in my purse.  It's something like ass pennies, but less detestable, and certainly NOT deliberate.  But perhaps it eases tensions a bit. It's just that I didn't have time to eat that day so I found a 2 day old blueberry pancake that my mom had prematurely prepared at my aunt's urging, just chilling(pun, anyone?) in the refrigerator.  While I thought it best to instead conserve the batter to make semi-fresh blueberry pancakes in the future, my mama opted to prepare and save the pancake in it's whole and ready form.  And ya know, eating a cold pancake in your hot hot car while your one and only official business-casual interview dress is wrinkled and wet from a sweaty tummy, takes time that a US Airways hopeful just doesn't possess. So I brought it in the recruting center in my purse with me kind of like a good luck charm and a guard against excessive anxiety in the face of a super serious interview.  

And apparently it worked because one minute I was listening to funk music in the waiting/application room and the next I was being fingerprinted and welcomed to US Airways by a kindly man with an air of efficiency who I thought was the security guard.  "You must take a drug test at the designated location within 24 hours," he informed me.  Some apprehension ensued.  

Then I couldn't pee in the cup.  Well, I could pee in the cup, however, not enough to satisfy their formidable demands as made clear to me by a red line drawn across the cup.  So I had to wait it out, drink lots water, and then try again.  And I found out that they don't combine pee samples.  From Attempt #1 and Attempt #2.  This was my first drug testing experience.  

I was a champ because they called me a few days later.  After a standard avoidance period, I eventually amassed the courage to call them back long after the end of normal business hours to leave a recitative message to a nonjudgemental answering machine letting them down easy on account of the cost of travel and parking that often accompanies working at the airport, at least at first.  
Wow, I'm tired. 
So I might just try resting my eyes and maybe even my head and my limbs and stomach and heart for a little while, yea.