{"id":4372,"date":"2008-08-05T20:49:52","date_gmt":"2008-08-06T03:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=4372"},"modified":"2019-12-23T10:01:09","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T18:01:09","slug":"the-new-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2008\/08\/05\/the-new-job\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Job"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:5382,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.expresspersonnel.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20060901190751\\\/http:\\\/\\\/expresspersonnel.com:80\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 09:28:54&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 09:28:54&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:5383,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/en.wikipedia.org\\\/wiki\\\/Wonderlic_Test&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260108171336\\\/https:\\\/\\\/en.wikipedia.org\\\/wiki\\\/Wonderlic_test&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 09:29:02&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 17:33:11&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 17:33:11&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>There&#8217;s been a few slight mentions of my new job here, and Dad asked for some more details. As has generally been the case for the past few years, I&#8217;m not going to say a <em>lot<\/em> about my job here, but here&#8217;s the basic scoop:<\/p>\n<p>While I&#8217;d been tossing resumes at Craigslist postings for a few weeks before the move, I wasn&#8217;t having much success. Since I wanted to get away from mall jobs, I&#8217;d been concentrating on entry-level office jobs, generally along the receptionist\/secretarial\/admin assistant line of positions. I was sure I could do the work, however as my resume doesn&#8217;t really stress the skills I have (funny how mall retail and reprographics print shops doesn&#8217;t scream &#8216;office capable&#8217; to many people), I wasn&#8217;t having much luck.<\/p>\n<p>I eventually did get one interview, but I ended up turning it down. I&#8217;d applied for a receptionist position, but over the course of one phone call and an interview, the position shifted into being a glorified delivery driver, delivering and assembling copiers on-site for clients. Not only was it pretty far removed from what I wanted or had applied for, but the guy interviewing me set off a lot of warning flags &#8212; denigrating the rest of the crew during the interview (he wanted to hire me because I came across smarter than the &#8220;idiots&#8221; and could supervise them) was just one. On top of that, he would have required me to cut my hair to something &#8220;respectable&#8221; &#8212; a request that seemed a little odd coming from a man with fading, but still quite visible and legible &#8220;FUCK IT&#8221; tattoos across his fingers. Even though I knew I needed a new job, this just didn&#8217;t seem like the best option for me, so I turned it down.<\/p>\n<p>That afternoon, I got a list of employment agencies in the Kent area and took off, intending to drop my resume off with a few of them to see if I could get any hits there. That ended up being a much better way to approach things.<\/p>\n<p>My first stop was at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.expresspersonnel.com\/\" title=\"Express Employment Professionals\">Express Personnel<\/a>, and though they normally operate on an appointment basis, they were able to do a walk-in interview for me. Though the interview started a little shaky &#8212; there was a bit of confusion as to just what I was aiming for, as I didn&#8217;t really know the best way to say &#8220;I know I&#8217;m smart, capable, and I&#8217;m desperate to get out of retail&#8221; &#8212; but pretty soon we started narrowing things down. I took typing, ten-key, and keyboard data entry tests (90 words per minute, over 10k ten-key keystrokes per hour, and over 12k keyboard keystrokes per hour), Word and Excel proficiency tests, and a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wonderlic_Test\" title=\"Wikipedia: Wonderlic Test\">Wonderlic Personnel Test<\/a> (with a score of between 36 and 40, if I&#8217;m remembering correctly, well into the higher reaches of what&#8217;s expected), all of which worked together to convince my interviewer that I actually <em>did<\/em> have more than two brain cells to rub together, and might be worth placing somewhere.<\/p>\n<p>Over the next week, Express set me up with an interview at a prospective employer, I had an interview with them, and a few days later, got the word that they liked me, and I would be starting soon. Hooray!<\/p>\n<p>My first day was last Friday, and so far, I&#8217;m definitely enjoying this. I&#8217;m a front desk\/receptionist\/admin assistant person for a packaging materials and supply business. Duties are pretty much as you&#8217;d expect: answering phones and forwarding calls, greeting visitors, taking care of various paperwork, filing, tracking e-mail, and so on. I&#8217;m only on day three, but I&#8217;m doing my best to get the hang of everything as quickly as possible (and really, the actions are all easily within my current realm of knowledge, it&#8217;s mostly procedures specific to this office that I need to learn).<\/p>\n<p>Some of the best perks, though: $12\/hr, a nice change from the $9\/hr + variable commission I was earning at Kits, a full 40 hours a week, and a regular workday 8:30am-5:30pm, Monday to Friday schedule. I have evenings, <em>and<\/em> weekends! Reliably! Every week! I&#8217;m <em>not<\/em> going to have to show up at a mall at 5 in the morning on Black Friday anymore. It&#8217;s only been three days and one weekend so far, but Prairie and I are really enjoying the new schedule.<\/p>\n<p>So there&#8217;s the scoop on that. I&#8217;m part of the normal working world now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s been a few slight mentions of my new job here, and Dad asked for some more details. As has generally been the case for the past few years, I&#8217;m not going to say a _lot_ about my job here, but here&#8217;s the basic scoop&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-4372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}