Homeland $ecurity Is Cheap As Hell

Based on my interview last Thursday, and the evidence previously gathered from the Exploding Car Tire Interview, I would say I'm pretty well obviously cursed in my job search.

On my way out the door Thursday morning, late already, I managed to lock myself out of my apartment and car. I did have my cell phone, but I did not have the piece of paper with the directions, name, and phone number of the person who was supposed to interview me. My landlady was on vacation, so I had to make Boyfriend come rescue me after I determined that I couldn't break down my front door like they do in the movies (see Exhibit A - huge disgusting painful bruise on hip and upper thigh), nor could I get in through the fire escape through the storm window, screen, and locked window, although I did briefly consider smashing through them all with a flower pot.

I eventually got back inside and called them 45 minutes after I was supposed to have been there. We rescheduled for 11. I arrived early at the building just in time for some sort of security lock down, which shut down the security screening point and the elevators and generally prevented me from getting past the lobby until I was 15 minutes late. Fantabulous I tell you.

At the interview itself, I found that rather than the paralegal position the HR department had described, they were hiring for something more along the lines of a... how do you say... not file clerk, because that sounds too important... they were basically looking for someone to pick up each piece of paper in Stack A and move it to Stack B for eight hours a day, but, like, totally worse. I was horrified. They made me admit to being a licensed attorney. I was ashamed. I gave one word answers to their remaining questions and got the hell out of there.

The thing that bothered me the most was that they might offer me the job. How on earth would I be able to choose between repetitive, menial drudgery (current job) and an $8,000 raise to perform, quite possibly, the worst job on earth (well, aside from ones that require one to gut things, although I did think about this for a while, and I do think it would still be worse than gutting, say, salmon, but still not as bad as maybe pigs and cows.)

Then, today, to my horror, HR called to offer me the job. And they offered it to me at a GS 6, which is one grade lower than what they had previously said I qualified for, which means it pays practically the same as what I'm doing now. Hmm... wretched job soul-suckingly comparable to wringing chicken necks knee deep in blood vs. job I already have that's comparatively not so bad. I think I'll pass on the figurative factory farming thanks. But I repressed my urge to laugh bitterly at the HR woman (who, btw, was dumb as a post - she honestly believed she had talked to me the night before because her clearly erroneous notes said she had - I had to tell her three times that she hadn't before she sort of believed me and told me why she was calling.) No, instead I said sure I was still interested, adn asked why I couldn't have my GS 7.

And so they are looking into it. She emailed to request that I fax my current yearly salary information. I wrote back that I don't have a salary since I'm essentially unemployed and have never really been employed before. I should have just said I wasn't interested right away. I cannot properly express to you how insulted I am that these cheap bastards are trying to offer me $3,500 less than they already told me I was worth for to demean myself in an office full of attorneys with real attorney jobs. This is a yuckity mess, my dears, from which I long to extricate myself most expeditiously.