How the Interview Went, or The Bus Stop

Good news and bad news: The interview went well.

I went to the interview on time, a little early. It’s a 25 minute drive when the traffic isn’t bad. It would probably be a 40 minute drive home, which is still not awful on the scale of DC commutes. I was wearing one of my favorite shirts, and thanks to the weaning, it actually fits.

He didn’t ask me a lot of things. He basically tried to scare me off by telling all the difficult aspects of the job. It didn’t work. Well, ok, he scared me a little. My last job wasn’t as active and hectic, but, well, that’s why they had to lay me off – not enough work to do.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I have mixed feelings about getting a new job. I absolutely must get a job. This is not negotiable. I feel awful about how I have not maximized every second of my time off, but it’s time to get back to work now.

Ultimately, it went well. They called back in the afternoon saying they want to move forward and have me meet a couple more people next week. I got very positive feedback from the man who would be my boss.

I had an email this afternoon from someone else, too, a recruiter who is hopeful about finding me a job. She says she’s out of the office today, but has "an exciting update" from another company that I had a phone screening with a couple of weeks ago.

This suddenly reminds me of a poem. Just replace the word “men” with “jobs”:

Bloody Men
“Bloody men are like bloody buses —
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.

You look at them flashing their indicators,
Offering you a ride.
You’re trying to read the destinations,
You haven’t much time to decide.

If you make a mistake, there is no turning back.
Jump off, and you’ll stand there and gaze
While the cars and the taxis and lorries go by
And the minutes, the hours, the days.”

 Wendy Cope, Serious Concerns

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Next day:

The “exciting update” was not so exciting. They went with another candidate. You think it’s a bus worth taking, but then the sign says “Out Of Service.”

Another company that I talked to a few weeks ago said there would be an update in a couple of days. Hm. I can’t quite read the sign from here, but that’s usually a “we went with someone else” kind of update.

The folks I interviewed with called back, though, and asked to set up another interview for me to meet other members of the team.

Maybe there’s just the one bus in service. I hope the other passengers will let me on.