escape to insanity

Oooh this is good.

Today I was checking my e-mail, as I'm wont to do, and decided to check my “junk” folder to see if there was anything of interest that was mistakenly flagged as spam. Bear in mind this is an e-mail account on the tigerblade.net server, so the spam filter isn't quite as good or efficient as GMail's.

I see an e-mail with a subject line that intrigues me, so I move it to the inbox to read it.

Your e-mail has been received by the City of Janesville.

Hmm. What e-mail is that? OHH! I remember now.

About a year ago, I had moved into a townhouse back in Whitewater, and was temporarily out of work. While I was diligently looking for a real-person job, I was also trying to find some sort of work on the side just to keep some sort of cash flow going. I was occasionally pounding the pavement writing down names and addresses of small businesses around town that I thought might benefit from some sort of web work, then sending out e-mails or snail-mail letters asking if they were at all interested in having a website built (or updated if they already had one). Along with small businesses (mostly mom-and-pop places) I had contacted a few of the surrounding cities to ask the same thing. Some just had “webmaster@ci.blahblah.gov” whatever addresses, some had contact forms, some had nothing at all.

In any case, I sent e-mails or filled out contact forms inquiring about web work. Eventually I got a real job and stopped worrying about freelance stuff since none of it panned out. Fast forward a few months… I finished my four-month contract at that job and picked up a new job (which I love), which I've now been working at for about seven months. Today I get an e-mail back from the City of Janesville stating that… that what? That they'd like me to do some work for them? No. This e-mail is to inform me that they've received my submission, and that I can “expect a response shortly.”

Sweet! They've received my submission. Just to be sure, I checked the timestamp on the original form entry (which they conveniently have available to review), and it was submitted September 16th, 2006. Today is November 30th, 2007.

It took them 14 months to receive my note and send an “auto-reply.”

I'd send them a note back to tell them they're a year and some months late, and that I've had two long-term jobs in the meantime, but alas… it was sent from an address that doesn't accept incoming e-mail. Figures.

So… I got an interesting voice mail today. First, I was confused because my phone didn't register a missed call, just a voice mail. In any case, I called to check what I had missed. Oh, the excitement!

I'm greeted by the voice of a woman who identified herself as Sarah something. Sarah something is the manager of some such department at a Best Western Hotel in a town a few miles from where I went to college. At first I was confused as to why this woman would be calling me.

As I listened on, her reason for calling became apparent. It's nice to get voice mails where the person actually explains why they called. Anyway… she started to explain that they were working on filling some recently vacated positions. She was looking through applications and found my name, apparently.

Let's back up a bit, shall we? Sometime last year, late August or early September, I had just moved away from my hometown, back to the town where I went to college. I had a townhouse there with a friend of mine, and was looking for a new job. While I was out trying to market my more career-oriented skills, I figured I'd slum it a bit and put in some low-level applications as backups. Just in case I didn't find a “good” job soon enough, I wanted some applications to fall back on: Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, etc. Since I'd worked at a Best Western for a couple seasons (summer/winter between college semesters) previously, it seemed like an obvious choice.

That was early September. Sep. Tem. Ber. Month Nine in a twelve-month year. This is now mid-June. Month Six. Including the month of September, that was ten months ago. Nine and a half if you figure that we're only halfway through June.

At what point is it just too late to call an applicant? Do they really think I'm just sitting around a year later, waiting for that call from Best Western? Do they really think that banquet set-up is such a posh job that I've been hoping they'd call, hoping I'd be offered the chance to slave away, breaking my back for minimum wage, part time? Please.

In any case, I've had two full-time career-oriented jobs. Two jobs that pay more than double what the Best Western bit would have offered, even after a raise or two.

Yeah. I had to laugh after hearing that voice mail. Calling me almost a year after I applied (in a last ditch effort, by the way)?

I think I'll call her back in April to let her know I'm currently unavailable.