The Job Interview and how to fail it

One of the tasks of my job is to conduct interviews; there is a lot involved, it isn't just asking questions. As always, first impressions are the most important and you have no idea how many people just fail right there.  Once I had a candidate show up with bones in his ear lobes.  I am sure he thought he was quite dashing.  He was interviewing for a Sales Associate position in our flooring department and I couldn't help but wonder if he actually thought people would say "I want the guy with the bones in his ears to sell me Martha Stewart carpet."

T-Shirts are another way to automatically fail.  I see a number of candidates coming to interview wearing T-Shirts.  If you're going to an interview you should at least try to show you understand employer dress codes.  How do you do this?  Take a walk through any large retailer, Sears, or Home Depot or K-Mart and count the number of associates wearing T-Shirts.  If associates aren't wearing them to work then don't wear them to an interview.

Failure to impress

Remember, you're not there to hangout with friends, you're trying to sell yourself as a potential employee.  At least wear a polo shirt, something with a collar.

If you're a guy, make sure you shave unless you already have a beard.  Stubble is another way of saying "hey, I've been so busy over the past couple of days I just didn't have time to shave."  This is horse shit.

If you're a female, don't wear a lot of make-up.  Oh, and if you're a chick and you think you can get away with wearing bones in your ears, forget it.  You look just as stupid.

Another thing to keep in mind, if you're a single mother don't bring up the subject.  Being a single mother is not a job qualification yet so many 'single mothers' think by mentioning this fact they're going to get a job.  Nope.  If I have 5 interviews and 4 of them toss in the 'single mother' bit and the fifth tells me her father was a house painter and he used to take her along to work in the summers when she wasn't in school, who's going to get the job in the paint department?

Getting hired is proving you are the best possible candidate for the job and you're the one who has to prove it.

The hair up Apple's ass

Let's wait for the next version

Well, the new Iphone is out.  Who cares?  Why the Appleheads around the world.  Who are Appleheads?  Those individuals who live and breathe Apple.  Every time a new product comes onto the market they upgrade simply because it's the newest toy by Apple.  This is a very good reason to question all of the press releases they dump into the media as a form of massive advertising.  At this point they're bragging about having orders for 5 million and there may be problems supply the vast demand.  That's pretty much horse shit.  No company worth it's weight in gold is going to be caught with its pants down when it comes to meeting the demand of their customer base.  Yep, that's right, Apple puts out a lot of Ho Ho Ho.  I think it's funny that this time around they took off Google Maps and installed their own mapping software which just happens to suck.  Basically they shit on their base because they hate the competition.  Now don't read this to mean I hate Apple, I don't, I own an Imac and have my music on 2 Ipods, but I also own a Dell desktop and a Dell laptop.  I use a Samsung Galaxy tablet and a Garmin phone.  Each one fills a need I have.  Too many limit themselves by deciding one product is more holy then the other.      Wrong.  The maps on the Garmin phone are better then those in Google Maps, I know because I used both to go to a Team Depot and found that Google had me wondering around on dirt roads way off from my destination.  What did I do?  Plugged in my Garmin and wow, there was my destination less then a mile away on a well traveled highway.

So why does Apple have this big hair up its ass?  Because they want to own market share.  It's all about domination.  They failed with Apple TV because, well, there is such a better selection out there.  They think they're golden because there has been no Ipad killer.  Unfortunately for them the Ipad has already peaked.  When ever somebody releases a new product they actually lose market share since those customers buying a Kindle Fire or a Galaxy note or even new Nook being released shortly are choosing those products over Apple.  The slow death has already arrived and they're doing everything they can to deny it.

What a combination, Romney and ME3

This has been a bad month on the job line for me, not because I'm losing mine, no, my schedule is all topsy-turvy thanks to meetings and classes and more meetings.  I can't wait for October to get here so things can quiet down... a little, and I can get back to a regular schedule.

On a whole I'd have to say this past week was on the funny side.  I got to watch some of the secret Mitt Romney tapes and, were I a critic, would have to call them boring and uninspired.  If you've seen any of them then you know, he rambles on and on and on totally avoiding anything substantial.  I saw where the dude who threw the fundraiser is blaming the "help."  How Republican.  My suspicion is that he, himself, taped the dinner for posterity only to discover Romney is the personification of droll.

Ann Romney's plane had to land because of smoke.  Later she whined about being a candidate's wife.  What did she think this was going to be?  A Sunday Social?

Paul Ryan got booed by Seniors and then, from one of the news clips I read, went on to lie about his percentage of body fat.

Boo, baby, Boo

Quite a number of Republicans are unhappy with the campaign, including Laura Ingram, and the want it shaken up.  I'm sure they must realize by now shaking is not going to help.  They did pay attention to their own primaries, didn't they?  Mitt basically won by default because the other candidates were just to crazily far to the right.

One of the really funny things was Ralph Reed telling Evangelicals they should vote for Romney.  Isn't that going against your faith?  Could this indicate Ralph wants a heretic in the White House?  Or, is it possible he's an White Supremacist in disguise?  Perhaps he doesn't understand that if Mitt gets elected Mormon Missionaries will swarm out of Salt Lake City like a plague of locusts.

And for all of you gamers out there, the real shocker was Bioware putting forth a statement which, and I paraphrase, states that the Mass Effect Universe is large and there are more stories to tell.  I said something similar back in... May?

Back then everybody was running around like their hair was on fire because they didn't like the ending of ME3.  Why is this funny?  Because you don't kill off your golden goose and everybody was sure Bioware had loped off its head.  I said that and nobody listened.  Now I read on Gamestop, or maybe it was Rock, Paper, Shotgun that the original team is either reassembling, or has reassembled.  Surprise.

Steve Jinks makes it permanent

With last night's episode of Warehouse 13 Steve Jinks became a permanent member of what seems to be a slowly evolving ensemble cast for the SyFy show.  As the cast evolves, so it seems, does the show.  This is what the writers and producers attempted with the doomed Eureka, their problem was with all that extra talent the only thing they could think to do was focus on relationships; every body needed to banging somebody else, or that was all they could think about.  As a result it died a sad, lonely death.  This does not seem to be the case with Warehouse 13. where it seems they float "test" characters first before casting.  They floated Claudia for a while before she made the jump to permanent cast member, the first step in the show's evolution.  As a result you have minor characters who show up for a story arc ( like H. G. Wells) and then disappear and you have major characters who appear in every episode.

Welcome aboard buckaroo!

For years the linchpin for the SyFy Channel was the Stargate franchise.  It ran for years and had a number of incarnations long after the original was off the air.  Believe me, everybody wants to create the next Stargate, which is why I think the writers and producers have chosen to grow their show in a way where relationships, other then friendship, are not the focus of each and every episode.  They are working with mystery and intrigue.  Believe me, nothing builds an audience like mystery and intrigue.  One of the most famously watched episodes on television was the "Who shot JR" episode of Dallas.  The audience was not tuning in to see cast members fantasize about banging one another.  They were watching because they wanted that damn mystery solved.  This is the smart way to evolve.  This, I suspect, is what they're doing with Warehouse 13.

Watching the Republican Party is like watching a horror film

You know what I mean, when you have one of those "don't go in that room" moments.  Even though, as an observer you know death is waiting behind that door, nothing you can say or do is going to stop the victim.  He or she is going to open that door and step into that room.  The Republican Party isn't going into any room but they are still going to be a victim because they keep moving farther and farther to the right.  After Romney's latest blunder the only ones cheering him on are those about as far right as your can go.  He evidently doesn't understand the votes are not where he's going, no, they're somewhere closer to the middle and it seems he has no problem turning his back on them.  You can see it in his face, cluelessness.  This is not at all like running a company.  He's getting push back from all directions and he doesn't know how to handle it.  Romney is used to sitting in a room with maybe 4 or five other people and making a decision and having carried out.  Those decisions were never examined by both the media and the public.  There was a time when he could chose to outsource jobs overseas and only those immediately effected would care.  Now everything he says and does is being scrutinized and making National news, and he isn't even president.  You want to say to him "don't go in that room," but he's going to because he's a schmuck.  He wants to be the first Mormon president so he's going to open that door.  To make matters worse, the crazies on the far right of the Republican Party are all standing behind him whispering "go in the room, go in the room."

Dr Who, science fiction icon

A long time ago, back when I was in college, I turned on the local PBS station one rainy Saturday afternoon just to pass the time discovered Dr. Who.  I'd heard vague mentions of it on campus among the Anglophiles but had never really had any interest in this British Science Fiction series.  To my surprise, I liked it.  That was during the Tom Baker years, the fourth doctor.  While in the UK the show was telecast as a half hour syndicated series WITF played an entire story arc in one sitting, so I watched 2 hours of the doctor.  This happened every Saturday and the station was wise enough to play catch up telecasting most of the episodes of the previous 3 doctors.  I was hooked and continued to watch it until they ran out of episodes because the show had been cancelled.  The writers had started running out of creative steam when Sylvester McCoy took over the roll.  Actually, it had begun its downward spiral during the previous doctor's run, played by an actor whose name I can not remember.  If I missed a show it was "who cares, nothing important was going to happen."  When the series was rebooted and was aired on the SciFi channel I thought I'd give it a chance and to my surprise it was fairly good.  This did not mean I set my alarm clock.  Then David Tennant took over the roll and something happened.  I still wasn't setting my alarm clock, but surprisingly they had a doctor who reminded me of Tom Baker, not in appearance, but in adventurous spirit.  This was a doctor who had purpose.  I wasn't the only one who took notice, a lot of people did and the show became so popular BBC America began airing the episodes the same day in the US as in the UK.  The explanation was to keep viewers from downloading it.  I suspect it had more to do with the knowledge they had an international hit on their hands.  How rare is that?

My first doctor

Today there are fan sites galore.  Search Dr. Who and the results are simply amazing.  There is an overload if information.  Episodes have been deconstructed to the the point where analysis is almost lost.  Even the most minute detail about previous shows has been made public.  I don't go to fan sites nor do I go to conventions where if the doctor isn't there you can bet you'll get a chance to see one his companions, new and old.  I don't think that all those years ago when someone decided to begin putting this show on the air the were creating an icon, but they did.  It isn't popularity that keeps it going, it's durability.

Rockem Sockem Politics.

The conventions are over and I suspect a lot of political junkies on both the left and right are hyped up for Rockem Sockem campaigns from both parties.  If you thought the Super-Pac negativity ads were bad before, hold on to your hats, there are going to be so many below the belt punches a vast majority of the American people may have problems walking.  Not me, I rarely watch commercial television so I will not have to endure 7 minutes of hate separating the funny parts of my favorite sitcom.  Talk about a stimulus package, all those billions of dollars being spent should do more then jump start the economy.  I am surprised that the Conservative Republicans are asking their devout, Christian base to do the most liberal thing possible:  vote for a non-Christian.  This sounds so much like what the Democrats would do, not the Republicans.  What I remember most from their primaries was that not one of the potential candidates could satisfy their base.  Santorum was too, too crazy religious, Bachman was just way, way out, and Romney was a Mormon.

Now these two candidates are going to be duking it out.  I think it's  pertinent one of them is red and the  other is blue.  Unlike the game, however, this campaign is going to hurt, both the candidates and the American people.  We, who want to show the world how civilized we are, will be doing just the opposite.  If Obama wins the Republican House will be all the more partisan, another great example of American politics in action.  The more stumbling blocks they put in his way the easier it will be for them to win in 2016, at least that's what their plan will be.

Why aren't companies hiring?

The Democratic Convention is in full swing and I'm not watching it.  Even though I'm a registered Democrat when casting my ballot I'm Independent, you know, those people Republicans try cater to but really don't like.  Both parties say they know how to create jobs.  Here's a little tidbit about why companies aren't hiring.  Of course this isn't news.  Any American with average intelligence should have figured this out a long time ago.  What we have is an employers economy, one in which employers make all of the rules.  If your productivity dips they'll can you and hire someone who keep up with the pace they demand.  As long as the money keeps piling up in their bank accounts nothing is going to change.  If they can get twice the work out of two employees why should they hire a third?  Jobs aren't being created because they aren't worth the expense.  All tax breaks do is put more money to their bottom line.  Oh, sure, at some point down the line they will hire that third employee, but not until it is absolutely necessary, not until they've worked their employees to the bone.  When that will be is anyone's guess.  One thing is certain, Wall Street is doing just fine with the unemployment rate as high as it is.  Recovery is going to continue to be slow and nothing is going to speed it up.

Successful Business do not create jobs!

Today is Labor Day and I'm working.  I'm in retail, an ASDS in a Home Depot store.  I wasn't always in retail and for a vast majority of my adult life I had off every labor day, until September of 2009 when, at the height of the recession, xpedx, a subsidiary of International Paper decided it was fiscally prudent to outsource my job to Krakow, Poland.  And it wasn't just me, every one in my department lost their jobs, a the height of the recession (notice how I repeat myself?).  To add insult to injury they paid to fly in our Polish replacements so we could train them.  These decisions were made by a successful business man name John Feraci.  For some time now we have been fed this notion that if you're a successful business man you know how to create jobs.  That's nothing more then pure horse shit. Successful business men trim fat, they cut programs, they kill jobs in order to be successful.  When they're successful they don't decide to suddenly get fat again.  They want to stay trim because that's what makes them money.

Meg - compassionate or callous?

Take Meg Whitman, she made a nice fortune running Ebay.  She then ran for the position of Governor of California, spending some of her own money to have the voters reject her.  The people of California decided she was unfit to be Governor.  Now she's running Hewlett-Packard and cutting 27,000 jobs.  She's going to make Hewlett-Packard successful.  Does she care about the people who are losing their jobs?  Hell no.  She's getting paid another fortune to make that company make money, not to demonstrate care and concern.  That's not part of her persona.  She doesn't want to be Mother Theresa.    She wants to be in charge.  This is true for all successful business men, it's not about creating jobs, it's not about about controlling people's lives, because people don't matter to successful business men. 

Leviathan - who cares

When Mass Effect 3 ended there was nothing else to say but "that's all folks!"  Except gamers were so upset with the ending EA released a Free DLC which detailed the ending, making it more complete for a lot of people but that didn't mean they were satisfied.  I didn't down load it.  Instead I watched a walk through on YouTube.  I mean, why take up space when nothing was going to change.  On Tuesday a second DLC was released and I didn't pay to download it, some did, probably a lot did but not me.

Yesterday I watched a walk through and at least three times during the 14 minutes it played the comment was made "but nothing is going to change."  That's the hard truth for anybody who thinks other wise.  Characters who had died were suddenly brought back to life but who cares, they're still going to die.  This is a big problem for EA.  With the first two installments there was always the knowledge a third segment was in the works.  According to EA there is to be no 4th installment, it was a trilogy and nothing more.  So if the story line is dead, like a lot of the characters, why pay for additional content?  Nothing is going to change.  

Paul Ryan - dishonest

One of the big things to come out of the RNC Convention is the public dishonesty of Paul Ryan, he makes things up and changes facts.  I thought it funny watching Conservative reporters dance around this subject, pretty much saying that at a convention facts could be subjective and not objective.  Of course, this is something the party has been doing for years.  It was the Little Bush who said "if you repeat something often enough people will start to believe it."  So, when Ryan blames a Obama for letting a plant close while the Little Bush was president one can only wonder if he doesn't understand veracity.  Or, perhaps the truth is he hits the confessional booth on a daily basis.

The problem with Ryan's lack of honesty is people are checking his facts.  People are tired of politicians just out and out lying.  One of the latest facts to be checked was Paul's claim to have running a marathon in under 3 hours.  Hhhmmm.  Serious runners, and those not so serious, dug deep.  He did run a marathon.  But then the truth runs out.  Independent voters find this chronic lying offensive, doesn't the Republican Party understand this?  I guess not.