Finally! in Diary

The hide-a-bed I sleep on kind of crapped out on me last night. I don't know if it's broken or not. So I ended up sleeping on the couch. Surprisingly, I got a really nice sleep, even if I was a little crunched for space. Every once in a while I would stretch my legs over the side, which felt good.

So anyway, today I went to "the interview" at the call center at 2pm. I decided to bag the idea of buying new pants and went with a passably decent set of khakis and a sweet dress shirt that I never wear. It's black with thin lines of blue, gray, light blue, and white running mostly vertically all over it. Brown leather Doc Martins and a brown leather belt completed the outfit. Sorry, cow. I decided it was good enough. They that blue gives people the impression that you are honest. Who "they" are, I have no clue.

The interview process itself was excruciating. Filling out the application and taking three separate tests including a math test took me 2 and 1/2 hours. It was so not what I wanted to be doing. When I signed in at the front desk I noticed a lot of people had written 2nd interview and 3rd interview on the sign-in sheet. As I was struggling through these ridiculous, kind of difficult tests, I groaned inwardly. And maybe outwardly too, but I hope not. The last thing I wanted was to be forced to come back to this place two more times just to do an awkward interview with someone I've never met.

Finally, I finished all that crap and interviewed with some guy in the lobby who deals with new hire BS. It was okay. He seemed nice. I wasn't overly nervous. Just a little, like I always am. And then, to my surprise, he told me a supervisor would be coming down to give me a 2nd interview. Yay, I thought. At the worst I'd have to come back one more time. I was thinking, judging by what I saw on that piece of paper, that everyone had to do three. The second interview was with a pretty chill dude with long hair and a patriotic-looking tattoo on his left arm that I couldn't quite make out. I was more nervous with him, and I'm sure he could tell, but I felt like I nailed his questions as well as anyone in my position could. As I completed the questions, I noticed that he kept circling the number 3 after each one (from 1-3 on his paper).

And at the end of it all he started telling me when training would start, and that he looked forward to seeing me there. I was pretty shocked at hearing that. I didn't dare ask if I'd really gotten the job, so I just followed him back to the lobby. One of the girls working there asked me "How did the interview go?" I told her I thought it went pretty well, and she said, "It must have because he offered you a job. Would you like to accept it?" And I said, "Absolutely." It was kind of cool.

Training doesn't start until 9/1, but that's okay. I can chill for a couple weeks and get myself geared up for a long bout of training, followed by a shorter"nesting" period, until I eventually am put on the floor by myself. So good times. Oh, and I read in the new hire booklet that benefits begin after 30 days. Woo, and hoo! That will make a huuuge difference for me, being able to afford medical and dental care. And vision. I do have to take a drug test tomorrow and pass the results back to the company who hired me, along with my passport, but that won't be too bad. I recently took one drug test and passed that one. So, yeah.

Other than that, I watched a gaming video and had a small bite to eat. After that I worked on my story and wrote a scene, a continuation of a dream sequence I began earlier in the chapter, with Chet and Aija and Bavane. And I guess Carmen was there, too. It was sort of the start to her whole becoming a vampire process. I listened to another Dirty Three album (Whoever you love, you are) while I worked on it. The writing went more smoothly than I expected it to, and I ended up getting more done today than I have the past couple.

I'm going to try to take out the hide-a-bed again tonight. I may regret this, but I really don't want to sleep on it as a couch again so I'll go for it. I dunno. If worse comes to worst, I'll fold it back up and couch it for another night. And if the thing is truly broken and I can't figure out how to fix it, I'll go out and buy an air mattress. I've slept on those many a night, and I find them comfortable. Well, take care.