Wednesday, May 14, 2008

What's up with "Sally"

First off, I did get the job.  I did take the job.  I start training on either June 2nd or June 9th.  I would prefer June 9th since that date wouldn't interfere with my trip to ABQ.

Speaking of which (airport codes that is.)  I now have to memorize a laundry list of airport codes in the next two weeks.  I really don't want to do this, but I'm going to just have to sit down with index cards and a couple of sharpies and start making me some of them flashy cards they used on me in that learnin' facility.

I'm pretty excited about it all at this point.  They flew me up to MSP for processing yesterday.  That was a fun little challenge in and of itself.  I was scheduled to be on a 6:50 flight out of MSN so I was up at 4:30 getting myself prepared (business casual and A SHAVE!!! along with some breakfast) and I didn't sleep much during the night mostly because of nerves.  So I was that feeling amphetamined-out tired buzz as I prepared to meet some of these people who(whom?) desired to hire me.   

At this point I would like to explain that I was feeling edgy about the whole trip because they were shipping me off to do some pretty basic post hiring, pre training paperwork/orientation stuff that could have been perhaps just as easily handled by the manager at MSN.  (Or so I was thinking.)   It felt as though they were sticking extra steps into a process that didn't need extra steps and said steps only added to the "risk of failure" that would mean I wouldn't be where I needed to be at the required time.   So I wasn't sleeping well.  Worrying that I would oversleep or something else would happen to make me late and miss my flight.

When I finally got through the line to check in (mental note - from now on, e-check in) I entered my reservation number twice and was told my reservation didn't exist.  The totally awesome clerk at the counter told me to enter my res. number and make sure I got the entry right (which I had done twice before he instructed me to do it again.)  So I complied with his instructions while muttering under my breath,  "It's not going to make any fucking difference the fourth time as the first.  It's still going to say the same fucking thing, ASS!"   I was told by the console to speak with a clerk so for the second time I told him it wasn't working.  He then looked up my reservation and said that it was canceled.  Of course!   Why wouldn't it be?  I was supposed to be flying to a meeting at hub and the airline that set up the meeting and the reservation was now telling me to sit and spin for getting up at 4:30  (that and taking a day off from work.) 

I managed to get a hold of my HR contact at seven when she rolled in to her office.  She didn't seem to know why I didn't have a seat on that plane but she was awesome enough to get me on a 9:15 flight.  So I had a few hours to contemplate if I even wanted to go through with the process since I had felt like I was being treated with disrespect (and after about fifteen minutes of indignation, I decided that it wasn't anything personal and that I shouldn't take it as such.)

So I left MSN at 9:15 or so and was back by 2:30.  And I'm still really tired.

In other news, I'm writing this post on my new laptop... the one that I'm going to be doing the mixing of the album on.  (We're also going to use it to track everything but the drums for the next one in the fall.  If nothing else, we're ambitious in that degenerate slacker sort of way.  More on that later.)

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