Mestee Blogger

Hello, you. That's what Pam Anderson of T-Mobile fame used to say when she forgot someone's name. In fact, I'm sure she still says it. I digress.

I had an interview this morning at Robert Half International. They found my resume on Monster.com and wanted to interview me for a recruiting position they needed to fill. About 20 seconds after sitting down with a young guy named Luke, we both realized that he hadn't properly read the contents of my resume, as he was under the impression that I had an accounting background. We started talking more and he realized that I might actually be able to use his help in finding a job while I was looking for something permanent. I ended up taking a bunch of evaluations for MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Apparently, I'm an MS Office wizard. I did particularly well on PowerPoint, which I haven't used since I was in college..."You scored a 94 in comparison to our office average of 78". Is there such a thing a a professional PowerPointer? After filling out my name, address, and social security number about 54 times a piece, as well as any job I've ever had, the young woman that I had been transferred to ran through my resume and figured that she could probably find me something in the near future. That's great, I guess. It felt a little unsatisfying to leave what I thought would be an interview for a decent job knowing only that I had a chance for some lesser ones. I figured I'd be out of there by 11:30 AM, but it was closer to 1:30 PM after the testing.

I took the Red Line home when I got out. As the train stopped at Charles/MGH, a family of tourists got on the train. The mother and teenage daughter sat down, but there was no room for the father, who was sporting big sunglasses and a black fanny pack. He went to sit down next to the man across from me, but didn't grab anything to brace himself as the train was about to start moving again. The train started moving again and the guy lost his balance -- a mass transit rookie mistake -- sending him sprawling head-first across the lap of the guy who he had intended to sit next to. They were left in a position that would leave you thinking that Mr. Tourist was about to receive a spanking from Unsuspecting Guy Across From Me, and neither man knew how to react. Mr. Tourist collected himself and sat down where he had intended to, so I got to watch them awkwardly ride next to each other in silence all the way to Harvard.

I find that reading the Dear Prudence advice column lets you know that there are people out there with much stranger problems than you. I haven't read this one yet, but there are usually a few crazy letters per week.
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