24 July 2009

Painting

If you can believe it, I got a second painting job this week! As with all painting jobs, it came about in an avante-garde fashion. You see, I had applied for a job to perform data mining (At one time I had the entire Periodical Table of the Elements memorized and I never remember an element called 'data,' so I'm not sure how its mined, which may have led to my employment declination); and during the interview I was asked what I had been up to thus far into the Summer. I said I had been working as a Man-slave slash Nanny. I explained that I had travelled Europe, and upon returning home I was pulling weeds, performing household cleaning chores for other people- such as painting, feeding the horses, folding laundry and vaccuuming up cobwebs- and baby/plant/dog sitting. The interviewer was impressed with my work ethic and my high school diploma. She was less impressed with my college diploma in 'Data Mining,' but I expected that since I had just made it an hour earlier- with crayons. They were all I could find lying around the house, and I figured a college degree made with crayons was better than no college degree at all! Apparently I was mistaken. Anyway, my disqualifications were not venial enough, and I got turned down from the job. However, three days after my interview (and before I had been informed I did not get the job) the lady called me and asked if I was interested in painting two rooms in her house!? One of my goals this Summer is to never say no to a job, so I accepted- with my Data Mining job in limbo. What was I supposed to tell her, "I can only paint your room if I am not working at the other job you interviewed me for?" Between when she called me and when I painted her house, she shot me.
An email telling me I didn't get the data mining job. Bummer, but hey, at least I got other employment And plus she paid me way more (per hour) for the painting than I would have received with a pick axe and a shovel... The last peculiar thing about the whole job was when I requested a radio while I painted, and she said to me, "Last Christmas XXX corp. gave all the employees these really nice radios. You know it's great working at XXX!" I didn't know if that was made to infuriate me or rub it in my face that my crayon diploma wasn't colored in nicely, but regardless I thought it was a pretty funny comment. I hold no hard feelings, I don't believe she meant any harm in her comment, and her tip at the end of the day made the whole thing worth it. Oh yea, my painting skills improved this time around. My learning curve was great, and therefore I learned great.

4 comments:

Jenny said...

Thoroughly inspired by your job-rejection, I researched data mining. Since the article was rather long, I'll sum it up with the most illustrative phrase: "data mining [is the process by which] one transforms data into information." I think it's best you stick to man-slaving.

Anonymous said...

Dearest Wally,
Haha, you need to come back to Utah REAL soon. I miss your humor.

Lyndsi Shae* said...

David Wallace,
Think about what you've probably seen of my personal life because of all the archives that HAVE seen the light of day on that blog.

And then, compare that to what you would know of me-- had you never read any posts.

I just need some positive reinforcement here for past bravery.

I love that you made a college degree from crayons. Hero.

T-Benz said...

Try to hit me up a few days earlier next time your going to apply to XXX Corp. I think I could have gotten you that job, a little bit of training and you would have been golden. Sorry Bro... At least you got "A" job out of the interview... :)