I GOT THE JOB!!!!!
Woo-HOO!!
I start tomorrow at 10.
No time like the present, I guess... :)
Woo-hoo!
On Thursday afternoon I got a call to let me know that I've been called back for a second interview for the job I went for earlier in the week. The date and time I was given was tomorrow at 2pm.
Great, I thought. Time for me to rest on Monday and go shopping for a new suit on Tuesday (can't wear the same suit to the second interview, that's just bad juju) and then have a relaxing morning on Wednesday while I get ready for the interview.
Ha. Ha ha. Hahahaha.
I got a phone call at 9 am this morning saying that the girl who'd organised the interviews got mixed up with the dates, and the date was supposed to be today, and could I manage today.
Of course I can, I said.
Ha. Ha ha. Hahahaha.
So I shall go in the same suit, go to the suit shop, get a new suit, and find some toilets or something to change in, hand D the bag containing orginal suit, and then toddle off to my interview all smart and sassy.
Or something.
Wish me luck!
Went home for the weekend. Got up at 6:45 am on Friday. Have had very little sleep, and expended far too much energy.
Saw family, saw cats (I miss my cats! [wail]), saw neighbours, saw D's family and lots of people I haven't seen since New Year. Talked lots. Showed off pictures lots (received high praise where I expected high critique), ate lots, drank enough, talked lots, travelled lots.
Glad to be home. In London.
With nice toys waiting on my arrival.
Life is good.
Strange and surreal and sometimes stressful.
But generally, good.
As D mentions here, I had a bit of an adventure the other day.
D got called into one of those "oh FUCK" meetings (rather like the one I had not so long ago) and I could tell that he was quite seriously worried about how things were going to work out.
Now, some of you may recall, some may not, that I spent a long time as a secretary, and pretty much hated it and wanted to be a web designer instead. Which I managed to do. Until the aforementioned meeting. The only problem being that it very quickly became a "be careful what you wish for" situation.
I wished to be a web designer. I got my wish. I wished I'd never made that wish.
Sucks huh?
I hated doing web design as a job. I used to think I hated my job when I was a secretary. I used to think that I could never hate a job or be more depressed on a daily basis than when I was a secretary. Oh boy was I wrong about that.
I didn't want another job as a web designer, I wanted to be a secretary again. So that I could come home without being entirely drained of any creative urges I had, and do fun stuff on the web. Stuff that I wanted to do. Stuff that I've put off for months now. Stuff that I should have done and found myself entirely unable to do.
So, on Tuesday morning, at around 9:30 am, I sat down at my computer, pulled up the website of a large and well respected secretarial employment agency and phoned their largest and most prestigious branch: Oxford Street.
I asked if I could make an appointment to come and register with them. Told them I had about 8 years experience as a secretary, and that I was looking for either permanent or temporary work.
The girl I initially spoke to put me on hold for a short while, and I was transferred to a colleague, who I reiterated the information to, and shortly afterwards I had an appointment to go and see her at 12:30 that day.
Immediately, I went into interview preparation mode. Blow dried hair, makeup (bleurgh), smart suit with white top (bleaurghhhh). CV updated and angled towards my secretarial skills. Downloaded typing test. Took typing test (just to get some practice, because I'm always nervous when I do it) and got a score of 86wpm. Not bad at all.
Finally, I'm all ready. I head out the door feeling like I just stepped out of a salon. Actually no. But my hair was nice and shiny and bouncy, so I guess maybe kinda.
So. Walk out of Tottenham Court Road tube station and phone D to ask where the office of the agency is (since that's who got him his current job) and I tell him I'm standing opposite Virgin Megastores. He tells me to turn left and asks if I see the sign. I say no (because I'm looking far up the street). He laughs that laugh that usually tells me I'm being dense, and I change my field of view and laugh as I realise I'm about two doors away from it.
I'm also a good 20 minutes early.
So I wander up and down Oxford Street, not straying too far, looking for a place where I can surreptitiously brush out the hamsters that have returned to my hair during the journey.
I finally decide on the "France" subsection of the "Travel" section in Waterstones bookshop, and make my way into the building. The agency is on the first floor, and I spy a corridor leading round to a lift. I head that way, push the button and turn round to check that I'm entirely de-hamstered and looking relatively human. I am. Well, as much as I ever get.
The lift arrives and I gape in shock before stepping in. It is entirely the smallest lift I have ever been in. The only way you would fit more than one person in this lift would be if Kate Moss and Jodie Kidd decided they needed jobs as secretaries. I'm bemused for a second. Because I'm pretty sure the lift is there to make the building accessible, but there's no way on god's green earth that a wheelchair would fit in that.
Anyway, I climb out the lift, which, by the way, smelt, as these things often do, of piss and sweat.
I take a deep breath, plaster on my professional, friendly face and push open the door of the agency.
Whereupon I'm handed the obligatory clipboard with the obligatory folding cardboard form and the obligatory blue biro. I make my way over to the obligatory seating area where various magazines are thoughtfully placed to ease your boredom once you're done with the form filling and waiting for one of the Consultants to see you. I dutifully fill out said obligatory form and hand it back as directed to the receptionist, and then make my way back to the seating area with pile of magazines and choose one. A trashy glossy mag. Great.
I read the thing cover to cover while the consultant I'm waiting to see has discussions with three other people, two who were there before me (one of whom tried the worst flirting I've ever seen in an attempt to be allowed to register) and one who arrived after I did, apparently just off the street. Sans appointment. Hrm.
Finally, she makes her way over to me and we then make our way over to her obligatorily messy desk to have a chat.
As I sat down, she quickly scanned down the details at the top of the card and said "blimey! you're a fast typist" (I was modest, I put down 85wpm). Which I took to be a good sign. We then had the obligatory chat about what I'd done, what sort of person I was, and what sort of working I was looking for, at which point she started looking through her file and pulled out three or four jobs which we agreed she could put me forward for, and then she stopped at one which she said would have been perfect (PA to the Director of Personnel for a charity), only there were interviews taking place that day, right at that moment in fact, and that there had been a long process leading up to that point, including a rather large and thorough application form and vetting process.
After a bit of an inner argument, she picked up the phone and called the company to see if the woman who could make the decision whether to see me or not was actually interviewing the other candidate, and it turned out that she was, and so arrangements were made for my cv and test scores (for the tests I hadn't taken yet) to be faxed over to them, in time for the interview ending, at which point, she would phone to find out if they would see me or not.
In the meantime, I was to take the obligatory tests (typing and word) and go for lunch and phone back at 2:15... and off I was escorted to the computer room, where it was obligatorily bloody freezing. Despite my fingers siezing up, I completed the typing test and the word test and only missed two questions on the word test - both things that are rarely used that I figured out one click too late for the test program.
Finishing just before my fingers turned black and feel off from cold, I lifted my results off the printer to have a look and mentally prepared myself for the results. Hoping that my typing speed with their test wasn't going to embarrass me. Nicely enough, it didn't. I got 82wpm with 100% accuracy which was nice. The word test showed four bars, 2 of which were at 100% and two of which were slightly under (I'm guessing the two questions I got wrong). Relieved, I wandered out into the reception area again to find the consultant.
After standing about a bit because she wasn't at her desk, she came back through and I gave her the tests back, typing on top, word underneath, at which point she did a very gratifying double-take and exclaimed "my god! you really *are* a fast typist. What a STAR!" and we had a laugh about slacking on the intermediate section of the word test and I explained how I hadn't used the particular features for a while and got it just as it moved me on.
So with that out of the way, I agreed to call her at 2:15 and headed off up Oxford Street to meet D. Which I did, and called her back from a sandwich shop where I'd just thrown half a mozzarella panini sandwich down my throat. They had agreed to see me at 3, and so she gave me the details and I headed off down the street towards the address she'd given me, getting more and more impressed with the locale as I went.
It didn't take as long as I thought it would so once more I was about 20 minutes early. So we ambled back and forward a bit before D had to go back to work, and I decided to make a good impression by arriving early.
The woman who was going to be interviewing me came down and gave me a copy of the job and person specification that the other girls had had weeks to study and prepare on, and said she'd be back down in 10 minutes to start the interview.
She came back down accompanied by a colleague and we went through to an interview room where I was thoroughly grilled by both of them for over an hour. Then I was taken upstairs to the department where I was go be given some simple tests. Easy I thought. Type a letter, sort some stuff into alphabetical order. No bother.
Ha.
Ha ha.
Hahahahahaha.
A 6 minute audio typing test (with about two minutes worth of introductory waffling at the start, which if nothing else told me that the guy had a nice clear voice and a bit of a sense of humour, and also reminded me of the first guy I ever worked for), a 25 minute organisational test (with workbook, where I was to pretend I was new in a job and a colleague was off and I had to rewrite my diary for the next two weeks and include all his work and mine), and finally, a 5 minute spelling test (which I finished in about a minute and a half, and surprised the girl who was holding the (I kid you not) stopwatch.
She then thanked me for coming and pointed me in the direction of the stairs, and two hours after I entered the building I left it again, utterly exhausted. I made my way along the road towards the Starbucks I'd spotted on the way there, got money out, phoned D and then went in and ordered a Mango Citrus Tazo frozen tea thing, sat down, and phoned the agency for a debrief.
I then ambled back up the road, balked at the seething mass of humanity collecting round the entrances and exits to Oxford Circus tube station and decided to walk to TCR to get the tube home.
So how did it go?
I'm glad you asked.
I got a phone call today at nearly 6:30pm. I've been asked back, along with one of the two other candidates, for a second interview, ostensibly to meet the guy I would be working for. Which is understandable, because he has to feel comfortable with the person who's going to be his PA, and the way I see it is that if I don't get this job because we don't get on, then it's just as well, because it would have probably been hellish.
So anyway, my appointment is next Wednesday at 2pm.
Wish me luck!
In case you're wondering how this can be a new blog and have archives a mile and a half long. Well, I've been playing with moveable type a bit, and have managed to import the files from the three different blogger blogs I had and am about to try and import the greymatter stuff too.
On second thoughts, maybe later. When I'm braver.
I'm now stuck with the awful choice between using greymatter or movable type for the new photoblog. I like greymatter (obviously) or I wouldn't be using it already... but being the pathetic geek I am, I also like new toys, and so far, movable type is proving to be loads of fun to play with.
Also, I imported all my old gubbins, so that y'all can read way back to when I actually posted a bit more regularly than I have done of late.
Ahhh, decisions decisions...
P.S. In case you wonder why the titles are weird, I didn't use titles with blogger, and MT imports the first 5 words of each post as a title. So if you come across any screamingly funny titles, feel free to leave your pawprint in the comments and let me know.
P.P.S. Yes, this is a new domain, isn't it pretty?. It will have more to look at (or not, depending on how bored you are) when I have a little more time on my hands, and try and retrieve my creativity from the cold dark corner in which it currently sits, cowering in fright.
Also. Yes, this is my name. No, I will not answer to liz, lizzy, betty, beth, buffy or any other shortened version of elizabeth. 'kay?
P.P.P.S. Yes, I know this is the default template. Yes, I am too lazy to do anything to it right now.
I love the glow of LED's at 1:30 in the morning.
Or not.
It's amazing how much working from home reminds you of all the little things you've been meaning to do... like reply to emails that have been sat since methusela was a twinkle in his daddy's eye, or decide that this is a good time to go through those last two or three boxes which have lain relatively untouched since I moved in.
Then again, it's easy to be distracted from work on a day where not only did I wake up with hamster-home-hair, but have apparently turned into the snot monster from hell.
It's typical really. Tonight I'm due to make my premiere appearance at a babble-meet (that is, a meeting of a few of the London members of the babble email list) and tomorrow, I'm to pack up my PC and toddle off to the Cotswolds for a weekend of drunken truespacing at UKtS 2001. Only my head feels like it's full of lead, my nose is dripping like a tap in need of a good spannering, and I'm starting to get that husky voiced thing, which some might find sultry and attractive, but on me just makes me sound like a pre-op transsexual needing to do some more work with a voice coach.
Wah.
Anyways, must get back to dissecting sites to discover their search engine attractiveness, and trying to come up with a price and timescales proposal to optimise and submit the aforementioned sites that won't scare the pants off my potential client.
Wah2. I need an agent, I'm crap at this money lark. I want to earn decent money, and yet I'm sat here trying to figure out exactly how much I need to make to survive and figure out how low I can cut the price and still eat.
Hi-ho...
Woke up this morning and as I was doing that morning stretchy yawny thing I accidentally touched the back of my head and discovered that a colony of hamsters had taken up residence in my hair overnight.
Or at least, that's the only valid explanation I can come up with to explain the mess of tangles that was my hair.
It was pretty drastic, my hair had taken on Diana Ross-esque proportions. Truly scary stuff.
But fear not, gentle reader. My trusty brushy (found at least, after being lost for days, and of course, after I'd given up with the toothbrush/hotbrush/anything else vaguely brushy and gone out and bought a new one) in hand, I fought the hamsters and won.
I am all sleek and slinky once more.
Well, as much as I ever get.
So my new monitor got delivered yesterday. Why did I need a new monitor? Well, I had a 17" monitor at home. Perfectly servicable, but it just wasn't, well, big enough. I wanted a 19" monitor like the one I used at work. One where I could have a resolution of 1600x1200, at 32bit colour, and at least 75hz. My mum had a 15" monitor. Perfectly servicable, but it just wasn't, well, big enough. Soooo, instead of carting my 17" monitor down here, the plan was that I would leave the 17" monitor at home and purchase a new 19" monitor to be delivered down here. Perfect.
So, the monitor got delivered at about 10:30 am yesterday. It got heaved up the stairs by D in a very impressive display of manliness, and everything was fine. Except it wasn't. Because I needed the 8 waty surge protected gang socket (19.99) that I'd tried to purchase from Argos the two previous days, that was still out of stock. Sooo, I remembered that on the bus on the way home the day before I'd seen a Woolworths, and I knew that I'd got surge protected sockets from the Woolworths at home, and thus reasoned that there would be surge protected sockets in the Woolworths here. Right?
Wrong.
Ordinary sockets a-plenty. Surge protected sockets? Not a one. But there's electrical stores nearby, so off I toddle, and we enter an electrical store that smells for all the world like there was a recent death in there. Doing my best to not breathe through my nose, I ask for a surge protected gang socket, and after a quick rummage, he pulls out this dusty, ratty old plastic bag containing a 4 way gang socket. Hrm. Okay, maybe I can get two, because there are two sockets in the wall. Sorted.
Not.
I look at the price. 14.95. I resist the urge to scream "DAYLIGHT ROBBERY" and instead swallow quietly and mumble that I'll leave it for now, thanksverymuch. So we leave, and a small discussion on the ridiculousness of going to Argos three days in a row ensues. We decide to check about getting it (and the extra deep bookcase that's also been out of stock) delivered from Argos online via the internet cafe at the top of the road (the one that's been full every time which has meant us being here and not there) and miracle of miracles, there are two terminals available. Only that place is kinda weird, and I don't really feel like taking my cards out there, so after about 20 minutes, D says he wants to leave, and we head out.
Of course, by now it's well after lunchtime, and I'm starving, and so we decide to go to a local cafe/sandwich bar/bistro (!?) for some lunch. So we sit down, and it looks nice enough, and I order bacon, sausage, egg and chips. It arrives without much delay and as usual, I pick up the vinegar to put some on my chips. Except there's wee black things floating in it. Wee black things with wings.
By this time D notices me sat frozen with the bottle at 80 degrees from upright staring at the vinegar bottle, and not, as is my usual habit, drowning my chips in vinegar (would you like some chips with your vinegar? no? okay then).
So, I didn't have vinegar on my chips, I ate the bacon after examining it closely, I poured on small amounts of brown sauce, spreading it out thin to check for flies, and felt vaguely ill.
I don't think we'll be going back.
Thank god they didn't have honey out on the counter for breakfast...
So, when I left this fine establishment yesterday, we toddled down the road towards Argos, famed purveyor of furniture and all manner of other items to the light of wallet.
Once inside, we located the stock checker thingy, which looks for all the world like a jumbo childrens calculator and checked on the items we wished to purchase. To our dismay, two of the items we wished to purchase were out of stock in the store, although the other three showed up as available. After a short conflab, we decided to see about getting the stuff delivered, since fitting a 180cm tall bookcase in the back of a minicab seemed like it might be a little, well... awkward.
So anyway, we talk to the girl to get the stuff delivered, only the desk we wanted (well, I wanted) was out of stock at the warehouse the deliveries come from. Pooh. Okay, so we try the small chest of drawers. Also out of stock. Pooh sticks (only if you don't wipe right away). Then she checks the stock for the store. A-ha! They have the desk and the chest in stock and we can take them away today (yay!) and they'll even call us a minicab (but my name isn't mini... never mind). Oh, but the bookcase and the 8 gang socket aren't in stock (they aren't? oh dear... ), would we like them delivered. Sure!
Oh no, the bookcase is out of stock at the warehouse too, but six are arriving tomorrow and would we like to pop back then and collect one? They can reserve it for us. After another small conflab, we decide no, we'll take our chances elsewhere.
So, we go over to the waiting area for the collection point (four rows of folding wooden chairs that look ready to collapse if you sit on them wrong) and we sit, and D mumbles about how the last time he went to collect furniture the guy didn't call him a minicab and he got messed around and how this is going to be such a nightmare, and we sit and watch the display waiting for our number to come up.
Finally, after ten minutes or so, our number is called, so that we can go up to the desk and stand for another ten minutes, watching everyone else be served in front of us. Hrmm.
Eventually, she comes over and hovers near enough to us that we can attract her attention and point out which items are ours, and eventually, we get her attention long enough to request that a minicab be called. She agrees, and gives us directions round to the loading bay where we're told to wait, receipt in hand, for our stuff, and the aforementioned minicab.
This we do, D mumbling the whole way about the cab not turning up and the girl being a bit, well, dim. So, we get round to the loading bay, and we wait while they locate the second part of my desk, and then close the door on us, leaving us standing in the loading area, waiting on the minicab, with no real way of ensuring that one is on it's way.
D turns to me and says "did you see a flash". I hadn't, and reply that it must have been his imagination, when a large clap of thunder proves him right. Damnit. Remarks about bad weather, heavy boxes and absent minicabs are exchanged with the other person who has been similarly sent round to the loading bay, and at that instant, the minicab turns up.
Whooopeee! My first London minicab. Complete with the bounciest suspension ever, and the requisite odd driver. The furniture is packed, the doors are closed and we're off home.
Well, I made it. I'm in London. A webcafe on a fairly well known North London street to be exact.
We arrived at about 11:15 on saturday morning, in the pissing rain, with a van full of stuff to unload. Gotta love it.
Drive was a bit hairy, especially being overtaken at 90mph by a huge articulated lorry that was clearly upset that we'd overtaken him about a mile back.
Almost back to normal, awakeness wise, but the stuff isn't nearly unpacked yet.
S'pose I'd best get back to it then...
... the online home and (not very) alter(ed)-ego of Ann McMeekin, a recently freelance Web Accessibility Consultant.
... passionate about many things, most of which will turn up on this site at some time or other.
... contactable via email.
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