In other words, they looked at my skills and found me wanting. And can I just say how relieved I am.
Every so often, I get the idea that I should get a job where I have to go to a job site and do job related tasks. That impulse led to the cool transcribing job earlier this year, although I worked at home. And then just last week, I applied for a couple of jobs and actually got a phone interview for one of them.

The job I applied for was part-time, working in a call center for a large retailer. Miraculously, I got a phone interview, which I felt pretty good about, considering that my resume’s work section is unconventional and contains large gaps between jobs where I go somewhere else on someone else’s schedule and do tasks someone else wants me to do.

I was even more optimistic when they set up an in-person interview. I wasn’t nervous at all. I know I’m a good worker. But there was a little nagging voice asking me if I was sure I wanted to commit to a job (were it to be offered to me) that would require me to go somewhere five days of every seven to do job things on someone else’s schedule. Well, I figured, interviewing couldn’t hurt.

The interview went ok. I hadn’t been interviewed for a long time, and afterwards I knew there were a few things I definitely should not have said. They said they’d be giving an answer within seven days. I immediately began to figure out how I would structure my life with this new job.

Two of my kids work in retail and they have been clear about the problems that exist where companies are overly concerned with keeping customers, pretty much at all costs, so each of them has been on the receiving end of some very unpleasant interactions with customers who have been taught that the customer is ALWAYS right, even when the customer is most definitely wrong.

As the days went by, I came to realize that a job like this one might actually be mentally fatiguing for me, and I was concerned about using my brain power to do a part-time job that was for a purpose no higher than helping a company sell more products. 

My second realization was that I find it very difficult to understand people with non-native accents on the phone. And I would surely be taking calls from plenty of folks with accents. 

That second realization came to me about thirty minutes before I got the rejection email. 

Perfect timing, I’d say.