I had an interview today at 10 with the City of New Haven Public School System; a simple clerk typist position. I think it went ok for the interview from hell...

First problem was getting there - the directions were simple (shoulda been my first clue, right?), and I gave myself an hour to get there, when Mapquest said it should only take half an hour. I won't bother with actual street names since you won't know where they are anyway. Take the highway to exit 1, turn right on A, right on B, right on C and left on D... well, there's no sign as you come off the ramp, so unless you know the area really well, you'll completely miss the fact that the exit ramp becomes A after the first curve... and that the SHARP right turn off the exit-ramp-that-is-now-a-street is the turn you want for B. I went 3 blocks looking for the FIRST turnoff for A before I discovered I was already on it. 2 blocks later I knew I had to have missed B, so I started looking for a place to turn around... which I didn't find until I got to Yale (yes, THAT Yale), 3 miles down.

So I turn around, come all the way back, and I'm just getting to where I think I should be to start over from the beginning - and the road gives you a choice of turning onto a cross street or getting back on the highway. So I turned on the cross street, and turned back onto A, and basically found myself where I was
the first time I realized I was lost. Yippee. So I looked for a place to pull over and check the map - there's nowhere to pull over that isn't a hotel's pay garage. 3 blocks down I finally spot what looks like a driveway - turns out to be an alley-sized connector street, but whatever. I've got the hazards on, looking at the map, just getting ready to call their office for help - and somebody honks cuz they want thru. -sigh-

So I pull thru the alley, turn right cuz that's my only option, but I figured if I was lucky it would get me beyond the highway onramp that had blocked me a few minutes before, and maybe I could come up on the whole thing from behind. Faint hope, I know... but 3 blocks down I found B! Yay!! I turned left, since originally I was supposed to turn right from A onto B, and the street I was on wasn't C, but it was the next street up from A, so C had to be the next block down... makes sense, right? Well, 3 blocks later I pulled into the Metro's bus lanes and called because it was 10 and I still hadn't found C. The nice lady told me I was going the wrong way - which, now that I know the exit ramp becomes A and if you stay ON the exit curve it becomes B (constant curve to the right apparently counts as successive right turns to Mapquest AND AAA - yes, I doublechecked them against each other) and continues to corkscrew around, bypassing all the other logical road choices, makes sense.

So I go up 2 more blocks looking for a legal place to flip around (finally giving up and making an illegal u-turn), come back down and 1 block past the street I should've turned right off of, I see C, which is a left turn only... jump across 2 lanes to get to the left turn lane, glance at my directions and realize I want West C, jump back across 2 lanes of traffic and under a bridge, and there's West C! Yay!!!!!! And D, right where it's supposed to be!!! Soooooo... I find the building... and they don't have a parking lot. And the streets are full of parked cars - worse than DC on a club night - including illegally parked cars, which is amusing since the police station is across the street.

So now I get to waste more time looking for parking... except I don't have any quarters for the meters and I'm 10 minutes latealready and I have to PEEEEEEE. Luckily I notice the sign for a parking garage at the corner... and had to turn 2 more times, basically going around the block, to get into it. It's in the
'backyard' of the building I want! Gahhhh!!! So I pull in, drive up 4 floors to finally find a space, praying I actually have some cash on my to pay them when I'm ready to get out, find the elevator, rush to the building, and up to the interview room... at 10:20... to find 5 interview "stations", all full of other applicants, and 3 girls waiting ahead of me. Yeah, ok, so I didn't have to worry about being late, and I did have time for the bathroom... but it would've been nice to know this wasn't a normal interview setup. No mention of a panel of interviewers in the letter...

Sooooo, after waiting an hour, I finally get to go to my first interview. It seemed to go well, the lady was the lady I'd be working for, she co-ordinates 11 elementary schools in the area and I'd be working in
the same building I was interviewing in (now that I knew how to get there). Wasn't really a clerk typist spot, tho - more of an admin assistant, which again is fine, but I was told there were 12 clerk typists positions open, and nothing else. Then I moved to the second lady, after a short wait. She liked me, but 3/4 of her student body is hispanic, and the only thing worse than my spanish is my ASL, so that's unlikely. The third person had apparently found who he was looking for and left already, so that got rid of the third one. The fourth one seemed to like me, but had to cut it short because "she didn't know it was going to take so long, and could I come back in the morning" - this AFTER she found out I was working a temp job, so the interview was costing me money, AND telling me 3 other girls were also going to come back because she'd had to cut them short, too. If she'd said it was a second interview, giving me some hope I had the job, I'd have arranged it... but she'd already gone thru ALL the information every other interviewer there had, and filled in ALL the blanks on her interview notes form... so unless she wants to tell me about her cats, that interview was finished in my book. Then it was on to #5... she definitely liked me, and I saw her write "good!" in big letters on page 2 of her sheet, so I'm thinking that went well.

By this point it was 1, and I'd thought I'd be back to the office by noon; most interviews are only an hour or so. Feh. So I headed home, planning on stopping at the house and changing my clothes, getting my badge, grabbing something to eat I could eat in the car, and I'd still be at work by 2:15... and discovered that the highway I use every day suffers from Ireland disease. It shouldn't have surprised me, really, since almost everyone here is either Irish or Italian... so yeah, my exit didn't exist. Turns out it does, it just has a different name AND A DIFFERENT ROUTE NUMBER coming from the other direction. I thought about turning around, but it was already 1:40 by then, so I just said the hell with it and went on to the office; got there at 2, no badge, still in my nice clothes (which everyone has noticed), no lunch (unless you count the cheetos I had in my desk drawer from last week), cold coffee, and sore feet from pretty shoes that weren't made for doing anything but sit and look pretty. Best part? The closer I work with, Gloria, told me the lady who handles all the temps timesheets and time off (who I'd emailed 2 weeks ago saying I'd be late today, right after calling my agency and telling them I'd be late today)), told everyone the agency said I'd called in sick!! If I'd known that, I'd have just gone the hell home and
not bothered coming in for 3 hours.

I damn well better get a good job out of this...