Of course…

Here’s a story about how I was offered a job.

It pains me to tell it.

I’ve been going to a lot of interviews lately. A lot of good ones. Some decent ones.

… on Friday, I went to the interview from HELL.

I go in and meet with this woman who asks questions like, “And why do you think you can write?” or “Don’t you belong in someplace like Irvine?” Why do I think? Don’t I belong? These are antagonizing questions. But I try to spin them back at her with as much tact and salesmanshipiness as possible. Then, I get my chance to ask questions.

“How many people do you have in your department?”

“I have one person below me.”

“One?”

“Yes.” The one person was the other writer on staff.

I took a breath. “But I thought you were the Director of Product Management.”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t there any Product Managers?”

“Of course, there are. There are lots of them. And there are people who interact with sales – Business Analysts – we have a whole lot of them, too.”

… But only one person is beneath her.

Then, I meet with the writer on staff. She tells me that woman was “our boss but that changes from day to day.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, we” and she uses “we” though she’s the only writer – “we like to think of ourselves as employees of the entire company. So, whenever anyone gives us work, they’re our boss that day.”

“That day?”

“Or for however long it takes to do the job.”

“So, you could have multiple bosses in one day?”

“Oh, yeah. That happens all the time.”

Check, please!

Then, she starts telling me about the documents she works on, and some of them are legal documents. I ask, “Do you have your legal department create the templates for them?”

“Oh, no,” she replies. “We don’t have a legal department. We do these ourselves.”

Recipe for disaster.

And, yep… they’re offering me a job.

“The thing is,” I tell the recruiter, “I was talking with one of your writers and she told me that the writers are responsible for all the legal documents and that there’s no legal department.”

“No. No.” he insists. “She’s got it all wrong. We have a legal department. The president’s wife is a lawyer.”

And this is all well calculated to make me feel better.

So, I figure I’d try and Google the company and find something good about them on the Internet(s)… well…in the past year… they cheated their employees out of benefits and they promised raises they never deliver and they promised starting employees a certain wage and then change that number after the person starts and they provided lousy customer service because they tried to get people off the phones instead of providing excellent customer – OKAY! ENOUGH! I GIVE!

But do you realize how much I’m going to regret not taking this job if I don’t find one in the next few months? After all, even the shittiest job is still a job, ya know?

Just my fucking luck…