Posts Tagged ‘cold’
I politely declined today’s job offer.
Technically, to say that I was offered a job is an overstatement. I hadn’t actually received any formal offer — only an interview — but I’m sure that had I gone to the interview, I would have received a job offer. I declined it, anyway. I’ve heard of American Insurance.
When their receptionist called, I couldn’t get a word in edgewise before she let loose with her spiel.
My name is Kira, and I’m from American Insurance. We came across your resume on Careerbuilder, and we thought you’d like to come to the interviews on Thursday.
Well, I’d like to, but …
Before we get started, I’d like to talk a little bit about our company. We’re an insurance company, and we’ve been around for 50 years. We won’t be asking you to cold-call anyone, or to sell insurance to your family.
That’s very interesting, but …
We work with local labor unions, and we have a variety of positions open — from sales to management, depending, of course, on your experience.
I cut in.
How do I get paid? Is it wage or salary, or is it commission?
Pregnant pause. I think she could tell that I wasn’t just any desperate, jobless loser.
Sales positions are paid by commission.
I’m not sure I want to do this. I would really prefer having a stable income, with at least some base wage or salary.
I pretended to take down her number in case I decided to show up to the interview, because here’s no point in being rude to someone who answers phones for a living. A few verbal sidesteps later I thanked her for her time and hung up, and I assume she did likewise.
Generally, one good way to ferret out Internet scams involves asking yourself whether or not an employer called and you hadn’t heard about it in advance.
Here I thought cold calling wasn’t one of the jobs on the menu.
Neatorama turned me on to this nice little feature from The Times Online.
A Jew was stranded in a Moscow trainstop and needed to find a telephone. He turned to the man next to him, asking, “Are you anti-semitic?” “Of course not, what an awful thing to ask,” the man quickly replied. The stranded Jew asked several more Russians the same question, but they denied being racist.
Worried and exasperated, he finally turned to a disgruntled comrade in the back corner of the train’s bar.
“Comrade, are you anti-semitic?”
“Hell yes, I can’t stand them!”
The Jew paused for a moment, sizing up the hulk of a man that sat in front of him. Then, he said, “Finally, an honest man. Here, would you watch my luggage while I go find a payphone?”
There are more where that came from.
It occurs to me that jokes like these, while they’d at first go over the head of my students, would effectively cement everything they learned about communist Russia.
To get the jokes, they have to know basic history, and the quality of life back then. While many Soviet jokes run on the premise that everyone ate potatoes and had to wait a really long time for basic goods and services, there are some wonderful exceptions.
Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev are on a train crossing Siberia when the conductor comes back to them, saying that it broke down.
Lenin says, “Re-educate those responsible.”
The conductor comes back, saying, “This has been done, yet the train isn’t moving.”
Stalin says, “Shoot those responsible!”
The conductor comes back, saying, “The driver and the engineer have been shot — but still the train isn’t moving.”
Brezhnev says, “Paint the windows black and tell everyone we’re moving.”
What I worry first about is the student who sits in the back of the room, frankly not caring and not even pretending to be interested. With enough personality, and with enough preparation, this might work marvelously.
Thoughts on how this might work? Or, if you have no qualms, any favorite communism jokes?
There’s about 10 minutes in every morning that I hate being a teacher.
These five minutes start when my alarm clock tells me it’s 6 a.m. I know it’s lying, because I set my alarm clock 20 minutes fast. I doubt I’d really even care about my alarm clock lying like this, were it not also telling me that it’s time to get up. In these 10 minutes, I hate my alarm clock.
I flop out of bed, dragging my carcass across the floor, towards my buzzing, buzzing alarm clock. I hit it once, twice, three times before it finally shuts up. In the brief silence, I rue the day I decided I wanted to become a teacher.
I stumble into the shower stall, the shower head coiled and ready to strike with a blast of cold water. I try to block it. I mostly fail. After this, the rest of the morning is one tired, hazy blur.
Brief breakfast; brief blog; brief drive to school, to the tune of “Holiday in Cambodia.” My trepidation and anxiety haven’t melted away just yet. Early mornings: the backache that only slowly fades away.
None of this matters the moment I step foot on school grounds. It’s game time, and I like this game. I like this game a lot. By the time I see my students gathered before me, and assorted into groups of distracted, interested and I-really-don’t-wanna-be-here, I know I no longer fit into that last group.
I know I love this job. I know I will endure early morning alarm clocks, cold morning showers for this job. I hope this feeling lasts.
