Would That it Were 1997....

I am surprised that I am able to type this right now. Shocked that I have the skills to both open a new document (in Microsoft Word no less) and the freedom to change the font, point and alignment of the text which I am typing at 64 words per minute. Today I had an interview, and requisite “skills” test at Northeastern University. The event would have been laughable had it not been so utterly sad.

The interview started off as most good interviews start off: with me being late. It was not my fault though, and I did call to let them know. Northeastern is 20 minutes from where I live so naturally I left 60 minutes before I had to be there to account for any adventures I might encounter along the way. What I did not count on was both an adventure and subway troubles. The subway troubles are a given so I should not have been surprised by those. The adventure however involved walked the wrong was out of the subway station and then the wrong way down the street. I had to ask for directions, in Boston, where I have lived and worked for many, many years. This could not bode well.

I don’t think I have ever really had a good interview. I am always encountering trouble both to and during the interview. I recall walking for about an hour to an interview one time back in the days when I would wear a suit to such events thinking that such professional attire had any bearing on my getting a job. Now, I have no problem wearing a suit per se. What I do have a problem with is wearing a suit in the middle of August while having to walk through three miles of fish packing plants. Certainly today’s adventure was nothing compared to that, but neither was today’s job opportunity. Walking through Boston’s fish head district in a suit, in August is strictly reserved for a job like pre-production artist at a company that makes custom packaging for condoms, and not office slave at a university best known for its car tipping students. Pre-interview adventures aside, it is still the interview itself that always turns out awful, fish heads be damned!

Misadventures this morning (and most mornings) aside, this interview was unique in the fact that it was not so much an interview where questions are asked an answers are given, but rather it was more like the kind of interview were questions were asked and answers were given, and then those answers were sent off to be confirmed by calling every supervisor and co-worker I have ever had. Outlandish claims of my actually ever having a job aside, according to woman who interviewed me (an aged debutante I think) I might as well have no office experience at all if it is under three years and I might as well have never attended any college if I never actually finished. One of the questions whose answer I am sure will need to be confirmed by at least three sources was “how did you come to learn office software with so little experience?” I really never thought that Word and Excel were such advanced tools that it took a minimum of three years to adequately learn how to use them. Microsoft should really reconsider including these programs with their software bundles because clearly the general public has no business tinkering with them. The potential for disaster in this area could be devastating. Thankfully this potential scenario was something that I had ample time to contemplate that and many other things this morning as every other question I was asked I have been asked a thousand or so times. I spent most of the time thinking “why does this woman sound like she is from 1940’s Savannah” and “why are there antique computers in here?” Thankfully one of those questions was answered.

The second portion of interview was the skills test. Apropos of Northeastern’s distrustful ways the name of the software used to do the testing was entitled “Prove It.” I for one had a hearty internal laugh. My “Prove It” test had me proving my ability to use a state of the art piece of software that many of you probably have never even heard of because it is so elite and difficult to use that… aww fuck it, it was WordPerfect 97, 97 as in almost ten years ago 97. How can anyone be expected to take such a bullshit test seriously? With questions like bold this and underline that and preview what this would look like if you wanted to print it, there is no way to not laugh about how stupid it actually was to give me, a person with at least one or two brain cells, this kind of test.

While it is funny on the surface the whole thing is really just sad. It is sad that Northeastern is so distrustful of potential employees that they call them from unlisted numbers, ask them to recite their resumes, and then give them this kind of test. Why both hiring from the outside at all. Just promote internally or give one person several dozen jobs because clearly outsiders are not welcome. I am still holding out hope though that maybe one day, I too can be on the inside…mastering WordPerfect 97 for all my future endeavors.