TERRIBLE DECISIONS: The okaywe’redoneination

Luther M. Siler1 Comment

There’s still the tiniest amount of work to be done– note the spot that needs to be patched and repainted next to the towel rack– but the bathroom is, at this point, nearly entirely finished, or at least close enough to post. That’s actually our vanity (those drawers are soft-touch, which I love) and our actual storage cabinet to make up for the fact that the shower ate a closet. Seriously, check the storage out:

There’s a lot of storage in there. I am pleased.

In other news, at approximately 5:05 PM this afternoon– which, remember, is a Friday– I got a call that my phone identified as “possibly” belonging to the guy who interviewed me a couple of weeks ago and then, as far as I could tell, ghosted me, since he said they’d be back with a decision over a week ago and they weren’t. I did not answer the call because I found myself suddenly not in the mood for it, and he …

… not only didn’t leave a message, but he didn’t email me either, which leaves me wondering exactly what the motivation for calling me at the end of the day on Friday. I don’t know if that’s a good news thing or a bad news thing, and I also don’t know what the reason for not leaving a message might be.

Either way, it’s not making me more interested in taking the job.

A couple of quick things

Luther M. Siler

It is 8:17 PM as I’m beginning this, and I am already completely ready for bed. Asleep by 9:00 is not in any way out of the question right now. It might even be likely. So, in no particular order:

  • I am starting to think I didn’t get that job I interviewed for over Spring Break, as they were supposed to be making a decision by today and I haven’t heard anything, which makes me think they’re waiting on a “yes” from someone else before they tell the rest of us no. This is actually fine; I wasn’t sure I wanted it (losing my summer break and taking a pay cut, even if it’s a small one, is kind of a rough ask) and if I’m not offered the job I’m not put in a position where I have to turn it down myself. I am still powerfully ambivalent about next year, but I’m not sure this is the solution.
  • I have really been enjoying Moon Knight, but I completely forgot about it this week. It aired Wednesday. I didn’t even think about it until today. In other words, it’s suffering the fate of every TV show I like.
  • There will be at least one more game series on the YouTube channel; I started recording Tunic today, which looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun.
  • The cabinet and vanity is finally installed in the bathroom and we got some repainting done today as well as some drywalling in the laundry room. The last major piece to be installed is the mirror (which I may just do myself) and then a little bit of detail work here and there. I’ll post pictures again once the mirror is in place. This long saga is finally almost at an end.
  • I still do not have Twitter on my phone, but I put TikTok back on it today.

Five things is more than a couple, so I’m going to bed now.

Oh good this again

Luther M. Siler2 Comments

I’ve been in this crabby, sluggish mood all day, and the steak and mashed potatoes my wife just made for dinner has helped with the crabby a little but but definitely has not helped with the sluggishness. I’ve spent most of the day reading, which is generally good, and I’m enjoying the book I’m reading, but … just … blech.

It’s Sunday, if it wasn’t perfectly clear.

In addition to reading, I’ve dedicated some time to job applications. I’ve done … maybe a dozen since the snow days started? I’m mostly doing moonshot type of jobs right now, putting ludicrously high amounts of money as my expected salary just to see if I get it, that sort of thing. I also started a trick today with several of the applications: most of these places will reject you before a human being ever looks at your resume if their software doesn’t find the keywords it’s looking for, so I’ve been taking the entire job description, condensing it to one-point text, turning it white, and sticking it at the end of my resume. The algorithm will find whatever words it’s looking for, but if the resume is printed it won’t be there for humans to see. We’ll see if I feel like it made any difference; if I get more emails from people for this round that might have had something to do with it.

(Does anybody out there do hiring? How important are cover letters? How much individual legwork should I be putting into each of these applications?)

Anyway, I’m going to put together tomorrow’s assignments for my kids– at this point I’m pretty sure there’s going to be school tomorrow– and then I’m going to go finish that book. No recording today, I think. How was y’all’s weekends?

On doxing myself

Luther M. Siler2 Comments

job-huntThe two-year anniversary of my formal resignation from teaching passed without comment a couple of weeks ago.  It took six months of looking before I found the job I have now, and I basically have not stopped looking for work since then, as I’ve never really felt like furniture sales are a viable long-term career for me.  The hours are killing me, in particular; I can count the number of weekends I’ve had with my family in the last two years on one hand, and there are still multiple days a week where I don’t see my son at all in between dropping him off at school in the morning and putting him to bed immediately when I get home at night.  Plus, while I am actually pretty good at my job– I was #61 in the company in overall sales for the year, and this is a company with over 250 stores– the economy is slowly starting to collapse and I really don’t like working for commission.  We get paid on delivery, not on initial sale, and right now a huge percentage of the stuff I’ve sold in the last few months is still backordered to March.

To wit: I made less than minimum wage this week.  I have two Master’s degrees, and I made less than minimum wage for the 42 hours that I was at work this week.  My boss is barely 30 and my two assistant managers are both in their mid-twenties.  I have already been offered chances to move up to management but the simple fact is I honestly don’t want it, because every time I wargame it out it becomes clear that it would actually lead to less money for more hours and more responsibility, and … nah.  I can keep calling the kid who is young enough to be my son “boss” instead.  It’s just not that big of a deal.

I’ve applied for several dozen different jobs in the 19 months or so since I started at my current job.  I’ve had, I think, two interviews.  I did not have a second interview for either position and heard through the grapevine that one of the jobs ended up going to a relative of one of the people who interviewed me, which was fun.  I’m at the point where I’m so deadly tired of writing cover letters that I’m having to scan them carefully for sarcasm before sending them out, and I was so annoyed by a rejection later that I got today that said they’d “evaluated my skills” that I was halfway through a go fuck yourself, you assholes sort of response before I got control of myself.

You didn’t “evaluate my skills,” you fucks.  You glanced at a cover letter and a resume and didn’t immediately see the boxes you wanted checked so you moved on.  If your letter had said that, I wouldn’t be pissed off.  But I wouldn’t have applied for your job if I didn’t have the skills to do it.  I assure you that my skills are fine.

Most of y’all know that “Luther Siler” is a pen name.  I had perfectly good reasons to take some steps to conceal my identity when I started the blog, but while I’m not considering abandoning the name (I’ve written six books as this dude, and have an actual network of real people who only know me by that name) it’s occurred to me that if I really want a different job, this blog and my Twitter following probably legitimately do represent my best networking opportunity for finding one, and I haven’t used it at all because I’ve always wanted to keep Luther’s and “my” lives separate.  I may need to reevaluate this conceit, is what I’m saying here.  Because this furniture selling thing is really getting old, and I don’t seem to be having any luck finding any alternate work as me.

Somewhat related anecdote: we have a Saturday morning meeting every week as a staff, since everyone works on Saturdays, and this week we did this little team building exercise involving our goals and fears.  One of my co-workers noticed that I more or less dropped out of the exercise entirely when the “write about your fears” bit came up, and asked me about it later in the day.

I told him the truth: that damn near all of my legitimate fears right now involve being stuck selling furniture forever, and that I hadn’t really thought that sharing that little detail with the rest of my co-workers was the smartest way to start my day.

What th’ heck just happened there?

Luther M. Siler10 Comments

HNG04Man, District Four, I just don’t know what to do with you.

I had an in-person interview today; the second round.  The first round was a phone interview that, I thought, did not go very well.  I was, frankly, surprised to hear from the principal yesterday; scroll down and keep reading to see some of the comedy that produced.

Anyway, the interview was today.  I had thought, from my discussion with the principal, that the interview was just going to be with him or, failing that, maybe their assistant principal or something like that.  Ha!  When the AP came and got me out of the office, he let me know that there would be seven other people sitting around the table– himself, the principal, and five of their teachers.  (I’m good with that, mind you– teachers should be involved in the interview process.)

I’ll give you two guesses about what the actual questions were like, and the first one doesn’t count.

Did you say “standardized”?  Good job!  In fact, a number of the questions were exactly the same questions that were asked in the initial screening interview.  I think some of them were different, and there were certainly some that were omitted from the screener, but a lot of them were word-for-word exactly the same.

That said?  I think I did well– certainly better than I did during the initial interview.  The presence of an audience makes all the damn difference; I am so much better when I have actual humans to interact/perform for, even if they’re not supposed to be talking to me.  Again, though, I walked out of the building without feeling like I knew anything about the school or, really, the job itself; there’s a “do you have questions?” phase at the very end, but actually asking anything is kinda weird, y’know?  They’re done with me; I’m not going to spend fifteen minutes interviewing them about a job I haven’t actually been offered yet.

I’ve got two more interviews with other districts next week.  One of them I think may be a non-starter due to salary issues; if I understand their master contract correctly there’s no way I walk in the door with less than a $6000 salary hit, which isn’t going to happen.  The other may be similar but I’m not sure.  Either way, I’ll go in for the interviews, it can’t hurt.

(The weirdest thing?  No building tour.  I have never, never been in an interview in a school that didn’t involve at least a little bit of walking around the school.  I saw the main hallway and the teacher’s lounge and that was it.)

We’ll see how it goes, I guess.