Hey Nelson! Your Mickey Mouse is Missing An Ear!!

I had my first job interview, and I just have to tell you alllllll about it.

As you know, I am a sorry excuse for a double degree University Grad, who is currently living at home with her family. Her dysfunctional, dysfunctional family. (Hi Mom. Love you.)

I desperately need a job. Any job. OK, OK, I've only been home from Europe for a week and a half...so I'm not taking just any job at this point..... but you need to feel some sense of urgency and desperation in my writing just so that you understand, just a little, the sheer importance of my prospective employment.

So, there I was on www.craigslist.org....

Sketchiness #1: Craigslist is easily the worst place to find legitimate employment (unless you're looking to be legitimately employed in the sex slave trade) when I come across this marketing position which talks about its commercial and not for profit base.

Interesting, I think to myself.

I google the name attached to the provided email and come up with a website for a Marketing Consulting Firm.

Sketchiness #2: The website lacks things that a legitimate marketing firm has.... like 1. A detailed explanation of what exactly their services are, 2. A client list or an area of specialty, 3. The WORST COMPANY NAME KNOWN TO MAN..... let me just say this: Were I to have taken this job, I would have often been found in my car singing to myself: "La la la...going to work at Sucks ASS" and been incredibly close to the actual company name.

I applied in the morning. Had a phone call in the afternoon. Had a job interview the following day.

The next day, with two friends in tow, I pull up to the interview site where I see about 15-20 university aged kids piling out of the building, in which my interview is about to take place in 20 minutes. They have name tags and clip boards and I start to freak out.

I do not do group interviews. I'm almost 25. I have two degrees. I am not applying to be a camp counsellor.

Sketchiness #3: Office is located next to a parole office.

So I carefully, and verbally contemplate ignoring the whole damn thing. I call my mother and she concurs that if there's a bad gut feeling about a thrice sketchy job interview, just don't go.

Naturally, she was more concerned with a gut instinct that i might be killed and my kidneys would be sold on the black market.... where as I was more concerned that I would be applying for a job that wont be able to support my shoe habit, and offered me rice krispy squares as my mid-afternoon snack while I was forced to sing Johny Appleseed.

So, I go in.

Sketchiness #4: The office is an empty space with white walls, a grey carpet and has 3/4 doors shut. There are 8 waiting chars lining the main room, and a reception kiosk type thing that looks like it has just been left there, with a slightly snazzy LCD flat screen suspended on the wall.

Sketchiness #5: The receptionist starts asking me how I got my job in Europe and what websites she could use to look into it.

Sketchiness #6: My interviewer looks like Howie Mandel.

So, Howie invites me in to his office after making me fill out some type of questionnaire.

Did I mention that I (my mother) bought me a new suit for this?????

Howie has a desk, a book shelf, three plush chairs and some frames on the wall from IKEA circa 07.

Sketchiness #7: Howie is the President of the company, yet does not own a computer.

Howie is not a dull knife...he ZERO'd in on my health background and immediately started talking about his not for profit clients.

You know those people at the mall? The ones who stand at a booth and ask you to donate to WORLD VISION? He wanted me to do that. Of course, he wanted me to do that with the possibility of becoming a manager in 6 months..... which I guess means that I get to be the one to schedule the mall set ups.... ya right.

Sketchiness #8: Howie pretty much locked me in his office until I agreed to start work on Wednesday.

He's just one of those shmarmey sales people that doesn't give you the room to say No, so while you're walking away with regret, he's laughing because he's got your money. I prefer to make people believe in what I'm selling them, and have them walk away knowing that they bought something good, excited to use it.

So, I agreed.

And then I called the next day and quit.

That's right kids, I was employed for 24 hours.... without pay.

Thank god for the Canadian Thanksgiving, which will provide enough familial drama to keep me distracted from my lowly social status ....

KK.