waiting on fedex

This morning I am trapped in my house waiting for FedEx to deliver a package. The package will contain the top secret instructions for my interview tomorrow at the prestigious pharmaceutical company that has been ignoring my resume for the past two years.

I send them my resume at least twice a month, and every time I send it they acknowledge me by sending a form-letter postcard in the mail. I now have enough postcards to create a large wall collage that I’m thinking about calling “Rejection”.

I’ve only ever had two job-related FedEx deliveries in my life. Both contained job offers along with lengthy contracts and confidentiality agreements for me to sign and return before starting employment. This is the first time I’ll be receiving a package before I’ve even been interviewed in person. Does FedEx leave the package if you’re not home to accept it? Maybe they do but I’m not sure so I am forcing myself to stay put until they arrive. I have to go to this interview tomorrow so I can’t take any chances.

I assume the package will contain the details about where I’m supposed to go and a schedule of who I will be talking to. And also a general idea of how many hours it will take.

I’m trying not to get my hopes up about this. The timing is almost too perfect. I recently made the risky move of quitting my job and rejecting a new job offer both in the same week (who fucking does that?), convinced that my energies will be better spent trying to find gainful employment and not working for peanuts at my current job, dashing home at lunch to return calls and squeeze in phone interviews. And if I’m not going to work for crap money at my current job, then I definitely cannot accept a new job that pays only slightly higher than crap.

I have the feeling this could all blow up in my face, this overconfidence I have that I am worth more than what people have been offering me lately. I hope that this blind confidence pays off and I don’t find myself in the land of regret two months from now, desperately trying to convince the manager at McDonald’s to hire me on to run the drive-thru for eight bucks an hour plus free Happy Meals.

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Update: 2:39pm

Since this is work related, I thought I'd show you an interesting job description I came across during my search through the state health and human services website. I've highlighted the interesting parts in bite me red.

Laboratory Scientist

Special Qualifications:  Must be able to rotate among testing areas according to workload needs.  Visual deficiencies must not interfere with ability to perform laboratory analyses.  Physical condition must allow for the administration of vaccines and/or necessary diagnostics tests.  Superior manual dexterity and coordination required.  Must be willing and able to handle unpleasant and/or hazardous specimens such as feces, sputum, blood, vomitus, urine, animal heads, and samples known to contain infectious organisms and/or toxic chemicals such as carcinogens.  Must be willing to receive Hepatitis B vaccine.

Want to guess what the state pays someone to handle infectious animal heads and known carcinogens? Between $12.40 and $13.90 an hour. Things may be different where you live, but out here in the good ol' Northeast, that's enough to survive on if you live in a studio apartment (outside of Boston, of course) with no car, no debt and a willingness to survive on Ramen and tap water.

Comments

[hubs]

your mcdonalds employees get paid $8 bucks an hour?!?! sing me up!

[Jaeme]

er, I didn't do my research but I assume it's somewhere around there. Maybe I'm wrong. How much do McDonald's employees make in CO?

[sherry]

Dude. I could work as a receptionist for 11$ an hour. But I don't know, even though it's not as much money as I'd expect, it could be cool to tell random strangers at the park that I handle feces and animal heads, just to see them inch away.

[Jaeme]

Yeah I know, but I think I've already gotten as much as I can out of creeping people out about my work. I've ground up human livers, dissected human cadavers (including cutting the skull open with a cast saw and removing the brain--Eli loved it when I came home and told him to ask me why my clothes were so powdery that day. BONE DUST!), grown tumors in mice and analyzed urine. I once even got to centrifuge my own blood after I donated it and it was still warm.

I'm the grossest chick you've never met.