An interview

Pangloss, sorry I have been so long in posting a response. You see, I was out of town. I had a job interview. For a real job.

It was a crazy experience -- the company paid for my flight to their location, paid for my stay at a (nice) hotel, bought dinner, breakfast and lunch, and picked up every taxi bill as well. My first thought, as soon as I arrived at the hotel, was how bizarre it seemed that a company would be so interested in me. After all, six months before any given day this week, I was probably drunk on Spring Break. I thought, if these people only knew me well enough, they'd realize how silly it is to hire me. But then, that's how a lot of people feel, I bet.

Of course, this company is a real company with huge revenue numbers. They're capitalist to the bone. They're expanding rapidly. They're the opposite of what I thought I would do when I graduated. And now that I'm in the running for a real job with real pay and real benefits, it unsettles me that I am so excited at the possibility of abandoning the hopes I had when I was in college for a life that eschewed conventionality in favor of vibrancy. What does this mean for me?

For starters, I haven't completely abandoned my ethics. The company is incredibly gracious and very concerned about doing the right thing. It's not Google, but they're motto is not very different from Google's "Don't be evil" mantra. So I've either a) found the shining example of responsible profit-motive or b) been seduced. Either way, though, I've let something slip since college. Taking this job, if I'm offered it, doesn't mean that I'm entirely selling out, but it does mean that already, in the three months since graduation, I've become something of that person I used to disparage. You know, the college-age liberal who was not quite so willing to forgo the luxuries provided him in the safe environment of the university when he was on his own. "Fight for world peace, until you find that you might have to go without HBO!"

It also means that I have to abandon, at least for a few years, my plan to go international. It once was incredibly formalized and had since devolved into little more than foreign vagrancy, but it still holds a dear place in my heart. Deny that? For a job? Where is my gusto? In six months, I might only be able to find it in my locker at the country club.

The company, though, really was great. I'd love to work for them, at any age, which is part of what makes this process so frustrating. If I had already gone into the great big world to have my adventure, then this is exactly where I'd like to work when I came home. The company really seems perfect, save one thing. While they may have arranged all flights and accomodations, I did still have to pay for parking at the airport.

Straight shooting?

How the hell does a company like Target stay afloat? I don't like the store in the first place because it doesn't have useful things (like hunting knives, propane, or PVC piping) but prefers to stock lots of "trendy" cheap clothes and "hip" furniture bordering on studio apartment kitsch. Oh, and they carry wine but no beer. That tells you something about their target demographic.

But what baffles me is their approach to their staff. My brother worked there, hired basically as an assistant manager for the consumables section. They told him it was a full-time position but it turns out it only worked about 25 hours a week, because they like to hire more people than they need in order to keep from paying benefits to full-time workers.

Yet knowing all this I applied anyway to work there, mainly out of desparation. Big box stores make me sympathize at least in part with people gone postal, but I was willing to bite my tongue just to get some positive cash flow. I put in my application and applied for every open position they had. After nearly three weeks, I went back over to talk to them and ask why they hadn't called me back. They had a "system crash" the woman said and would contact me once they got my application pulled up. My brother said this was bullshit, that nevers happens to them. I went in the next day to talk to the HR rep in person, just to inquire what the status of my application was. She wouldn't even come up front to talk to me; the peon at the "Guest Services" desk said that she was "reviewing" applications and would call me by the end of the week to set up an interview.

I left the store, not really believing them, and on a whim, went to a store next door. I applied to be a cashier. They called me a 24 hours later and asked me to interview the next day. I went in, completed two surveys and three interviews, and the next day got my job offer and a drug test. I never heard back from Target.

Why the hell would Target basically ignore someone who wanted to work there doing anything, came in dressed nicely and asked on several different occasions to meet with HR reps? You have to have staff to run a store; if you can't even handle that properly, how much worse can the rest of your operations be?

This problem can't be endemic to corporations in general. Clearly the company which just hired me has their act together. But I do wonder how these organizations run themselves and still manage to make millions of dollars in profit.

But Martin, if there's one thing that pisses me off more than Target, it's The Home Depot. I will not put up with their shameless pandering to ethnic groups. Slavishly trying to lure in the Dutch ex-patriate community with a profligate use of orange is just unethical. I mean, really, what's that all about?