DharmaSurfing:  Another interview, another result…

Although I’m still hemming and hawing about starting a business, wading through reams of financials and business planning, I’m still looking for a job.  I'm just hedging my bets; what kind of business person would I be if I didn't?

Today’s interview was rather unexpected; I’d called a number listed in the newspaper and somehow managed to catch the person named in the ad as the contact.  Not only the contact, but the business owner, to boot.  Sheesh…how likely is that?

We had a nice little ten minute chat yesterday; he asked if I was available today to interview.  Of course I was, what was I going to be doing except working in the garden and blogging?

This hasn’t happened for a while: during this hour and a half long interview, I found an interesting job that I won’t take if offered.

What am I going to say?  The truth may hurt:

·         the business is located in a highly dangerous part of town;

·         the people in the office are permitted to smoke and do so OFTEN, right at their desks;

·         I’m uncomfortable asking about a succession plan, but the owner's health is questionable (due in part to smoking and obesity).

Any one of these things is normally a deal-breaker for me.  What’s a real shame is that this guy really believes in good benefits for his people, travels the world to operate a home-grown business on a global basis, and is someone from whom I could learn a heck of a lot about starting a business.  Heck, he said more inside that interview that was inspirational and educational than many of my business professors said in an entire semester.  I’d have paid to learn from this guy.

The neighborhood is sooooo bad – I can’t begin to tell you how bad.  If you’re familiar with questionable areas in downtown Detroit, you’re on the money.  Seven or more shootings within a 1 mile area, inside one week.  Yeah, that  kind of bad.

I still smell cigarette smoke on my skin and hair, even though I left the interview two hours ago.  Ugh.  I couldn’t handle it, I’d run out screaming by noon on my first day.

This guy, while very polite and intelligent, wheezed that dry kind of breathy wheeze that one hears in emphysema patients (I’ve heard it before, my grandfather had it).  He freely admitted during our chat that he’d lost eighty pounds in the last year, but he’s got another twenty-five to go.  No, I can see you need to lose at least fifty, but that won’t help your poor lungs, I thought to myself.  His color is terrible, that yellowy toxin-filled color (I’ve seen this before, too).  Not good at all.  I’ve worked before at a business owned by a man terminally ill with cancer; they didn’t disclose this during my interview (what interviewee would dream of asking??) nor when I accepted the offer.  He died inside nine months, leaving a bankrupt sole proprietorship, after he lost his mental faculties and we staff members closed the doors.  Never again:  I’m not going to go through that at this point in my life unless it’s my own business.

So very sad to see this, when after listening to the patter of the business while waiting for my interview I could tell I could walk right in.  And I could tell I could do wonders with this business, too.

Can’t do it.  Maybe it won’t be a problem and they won’t call me.  But he’d asked about salary, asked about my expectations on benefits, lots of personal details and chit-chat…compared to a brief one-minute phone call brush-off he’d given another candidate (within my earshot), the odds are good I’ll get a second call. <sigh>

I sure hope one of the other hundred or more applicants for this job will be up to the challenge ahead and then some.

It’s just not this DharmaSurfer.

6:22:33 PM    comment []

RantsCounterRants:  It’s a “Cock and Bull” from down under, too

Even the intelligence analysts of countries like Australia are coming out of the woodwork and denouncing the justification of the Iraq War as a bunch of crap.  Former analysts as well, it seems, from all the way around the other side of the world, think the story we were given as U.S. and world citizens was a line of garbage.

What’s it going to take before an open public investigation begins here in the U.S. on this matter?  Public protests, rioting in the streets? 

Worse, it appears our cheese has been hanging out in the wind even after billions of dollars were allocated for the protection of the Homeland; with the resignation and ship-jumping of Rand Beers, one really has to wonder.  What’s really going on here?

Shouldn’t we be screaming for answers, demanding satisfaction?

Looks like cock and bull, talks like cock and bull, walks like cock and bull…amazing, it looks the same from here at closer range than Australia, too.  What's it going to take for people in Washington to notice the resemblance from point-blank range?

11:03:31 AM    comment []

I'll be out of pocket this morning, away from the PC while I tend to my garden.

A baby rabbit has been savaging my beans and broccoli (again, with the broccoli!)  He is still small enough to slip through the mesh of the fencing I put up around the garden bed.  Each time I catch him in the act and head for the garden to chase him, he flies through the air like a Wu Xia fighter, as if evading his pursuer with Asian magic.

It'll be a nice respite, watching for my Wu Xia-enabled rodent while I weed and mentally gear up for an interview this afternoon.

Hard to believe these morning interludes might be disrupted by - forbid it! - a job!

10:04:16 AM    comment []