24 January 2003

Tales from the McJob Search

If I'm going to endure this misery, the least I can expect from it, apart from a secure twelve bucks an hour, is some funny material.

Lately, in increasing desperation, I've been applying for anything and everything: general assistant at a self-storage joint, parts counter guy for a Honda dealer, shit like that. I was all set to sign on as a bike courier until this morning, when I rode downtown at twenty-five below and felt physically sick after ten minutes, my body completely shocked by the cold.

Lest I sound too gloomy, there have been some legitimate leads: (1) A techwriting/web design contract gig with a government agency, six months give or take a few. It's a perfect fit on the skills, but it all depends on how serious they are about their preference for previous oil & gas experience. Alas the money isn't spectacular - it's a buyers' market these days, according to the recruiter. (2) A "research & special projects" thing at CODA, the winter sports administration and funding body that runs Canada Olympic Park. Potentially interesting but these jobs generally, and deservedly, go to otherwise unemployable former national team athletes. (3) A web content/coordination thing at SAIT, the technical institute just up the hill. Again, looks interesting, but I didn't get called back when I applied for the same job the first time it was listed, before Christmas. This time I spell-checked the cover letter.

The IT market sucks. I don't want to work in IT again, but we need money now so it's either that or the video store. There isn't time for me to retrain as a Rail Conductor (1,000 new jobs in the next 5 years!) or HVAC technician.

Ergo, on a bitterly cold Thursday morning I found myself riding to the Telus Tower downtown, where I had been summoned by the phone company to appear for a "pre-employment testing session" intended to determine if I was "likely to be successful" working in a call centre. Past the asinine motivational slogans in the lobby - spirit... teamwork... innovation... pride... - I chattered, pressing my numb, bloodless hands to my frostbitten earlobes.

It was predictably humiliating. The thirty-odd people in the room were divided evenly between pimply community college graduates and lumpy middle-aged losers, save for the guy sitting next to me who, by virtue of his goatee and black turtleneck, I took to be a similarly out-of-work former web designer.

To begin we did the usual silly IQ test stuff and a rather fun bit where you had to decide as quickly as possible whether pairs of numbers or letters were identical or slightly different. That's a useful skill for an operator, I suppose. After some really odd word-association exercises where intelligence and literacy were probably handicaps, we had to play manager and scribble down "ideas" as quickly as possible, as if we were in a brainstorming session. The sample question was something about how would one reduce workplace accidents. "We're interested in the quantity of ideas, not the quality," said the HR drone running the test. "Or morality," I whispered to the down-on-his-luck web dude, and wrote "hire illegal aliens and stop reporting accidents" under the sample answers (which were, I believe, "safety posters" and "closer supervision of workers"). The first brainstorming question was, essentially, "how would you encourage employee fund-raising efforts for charity." I'm probably the least charitable person on the planet, so I didn't come up with much besides "uh, put one of those big thermometer graph things in the lobby." The next question concerned ideas for improving productivity. I managed four or five platitudes before I felt a black urge and wrote down "weed out the riff-raff." In retrospect, I'm a little upset I didn't think of "offer week's holiday at Black Sea resort as gift of Soviet people for worker who most exceeds production quota at Red November Tractor Factory, Dnepropetrovsk."

Than after a pee break we endured that trusty old personality profile quiz, 434 questions to which one answers true or false. This is the same test I did at least once in high school and as part of the CSIS psychological profile (I passed but declined to attend an interview, a decision I'm increasingly beginning to regret). I think they wrote this thing in the fifties, the language is so beautifully archaic. "I greatly enjoy parties and dinner dances." True or false? Most of the questions are sane enough: "I think that most questions have definite answers." "I am often nervous talking to strangers." "I would enjoy the work of a race car driver." But about one question in ten is clearly designed to catch obvious homicidal psychopaths. "I am terribly afraid of wind." "Sometimes I feel as though I am going all to pieces." I was so bored I began inventing new questions: "I think I would like the work of a sniper." "Sometimes voices tell me to kill strangers." "I cut up prostitutes and bury their body parts at my pig farm."

So that was today's humiliation. Tomorrow I drag my ass and resume off to a temp agency, to see if I can't pick up a little word processing here or there. Gun for hire.