For approximately 24 hours, I flirted with the prospect of maybe having something that vaguely resembled employment when I got back from Rochester. I received an email from what I assume is an HR person from the Canadian Automobile Asociation (CAA), specificly their north east Ontario branch, requesting an interview. I’d had one with them a bit over a month ago, which ended up going not entirely badly. I figured this would be about the same–possibly a little better, depending on whether or not they were considering it my second in the series of interviews they typically do pre hiring. Since she didn’t say, I assumed she didn’t but there was that possibility.
There was just one very small, minor, niggling little problem. I’m in Rochester until the 24th of the month. Not against my will in the slightest–one tends to be a lot more willing to do things like that when one’s significant other has a crapload of events coming up over the course of the next week or so. The problem arose when I brought that up to miss interview chick. She had her heart set on interviewing everyone, in person, this Friday. And she wanted to interview me, in person, this Friday. Not opposed to that, I told her I’d love to–but I’m out of the country so could we do it by phone instead? Apparently not. “I prefer to do interviews in person,” was her officially and formally written way of telling me it wasn’t really open for negotiation. She included a halfway attempt at appeasing me by offering to try and squeeze me in next week. I told her again, sure, but we’d have to do it over the phone. I got another diplomaticly written response this morning, which escentially translated to thanks but no thanks.
Folks, I’m not hard to work things around as long as I have adequate notice and am not in the middle of other, more important things. I’m not even opposed to shuffling things around so I might be able to fit some new engagement or priority in at near last minute–provided the shuffle won’t result in more of a headache than just leaving it alone. But for all my flexibility and ability to actually survive a schedule that changes more often than I change my socks, I still can’t appear to be in two places at once. If in the course of a conversation I inform you I can’t do what you want when you want due to unavoidable physical limitations–such as, for example, my inability to fly from here to Ottawa for the interview, that should not translate to my saying I’d be more than happy to rewrite a week of already made plans for the sake of what may amount to a 20-minute interview. If I can’t show up until the end of the month, I can’t show up until the end of the month. If there are alternatives, and I provide them, I’m no longer the reason things didn’t get accomplished if you then refuse said alternatives. I prefer to do my interviewing in person too. However, that wasn’t an option for this one. Inability or unwillingness to adapt on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine. Now, then. Where’d I put my other applications?