On August 28th, my wife lost her job. 24 hours later, I lost mine. This blog is a continuation of the day-by-day chronicling of our emotional journey back to employment. This is bound to be upsetting, hilarious and hopeful.
Tuesday – September 30, 2014
Erin had her third interview today, and by far her worst. The gentleman–let’s call him “Dude”–was crazy rude. Dude began the interview by tossing out the “boring,” prepared questions in favor of the brilliant questions in all of his impetuous, prepared-5-seconds-ago wisdom. Dude had things he wanted to know about.
Dude began by asking Erin about her car, and whether it was nice enough to transport clients around in. When she told him what she was driving, he thought about it a minute, clearly trying to figure out what a “Scion” is before deciding “Hmm, yeah, that should be okay.”
He then asked if Erin was okay with crass jokes and crude language. Not that they’re unprofessional, but things can get a little blue. They like to have fun, y’know. Erin responded about as tactfully as possible by saying that while she does not choose to participate in such behavior, she respects the right others have to conduct themselves as they wish. Dude no doubt noted that she “couldn’t hang.”
Dude looked at Erin’s resume and announced out loud that Dude is used to interviewing people with more sales experience. By now, Erin was wondering, on multiple levels, what she was even doing there in the first place. If she had any doubts about whether or not she even wanted the job, they were solidified when Dude asked how she planned on balancing a full-time job with three kids at home. Erin’s not a lawyer, but that felt a tad illegalish.
Interviewers, you don’t do this. I don’t care how cliched “Where do you see yourself in five years?” might be, it’s better than outing your company as a well-funded frat party.
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The big, huge, huge, HUGE news today is that my blog, Day 1 – Double Unemployment was selected by the WordPress editors as a “Freshly Pressed”. Meaning they really like it and went out of their way to share it with others. It’s an unexpected honor and, not gonna lie, a nice piece of validation. It’s been a ton of fun watching all the new people coming in and discovering what I’m doing over here in this little corner of the internet. A lot of you seem to like what you’re seeing enough to stick around. This is only cool.
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Technically, today started at about 3:30am when I went to bed. My normal bedtime seems to be between 2am and 3am, which is insane but only about an hour off from my “employed” bedtime. I always go into the kids’ rooms before laying down for the night, just to check on them and make sure they’re okay. I found Violet sleeping sweetly with all the junk on her bed artfully arranged, so I took this picture:
Erin woke up to find my Facebook post about it and retaliated by taking this photo while I slept in:
That was only fair.
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Other Artistic Endeavors Postscript:
When I’m not writing and applying, I’m filling my days by doing freelance projects. I completed two projects today, including some more of the bizarre work I can’t explain. This Two-Face piece I might have gone a little too far with:
This is the other piece I turned in, a riff on the client’s wife’s misunderstanding of the song “Nights in White Satin” by The Moody Blues.
I didn’t know the song at all, but the idea for the drawing cracked me up. Today, for the first time, I actually bothered to listen to the song. I can kind of hear her version. It’s certainly much funnier.
Brock Heasley 