I just did a phone interview for a job possibility in San Mateo. It is a financial firm with global offices. Not my fav but something I am very familiar with.

I was told it was very stay in the box like a place and it turns out they are looking for someone that can go outside the box somewhat. They are getting requests to build photoshop and illustrator things in ppt so they can be edited last minute by the clients, affects that look like flash in ppt, layouts that look like InDesign, and presentations that don’t looked canned. There are last minute projects that need things that are not normally done and then the inbetween time they do standard updates. This is so up my alley.

There were a couple of questions I had a hard time answering because they seemed so within normal standards I couldn’t imagine how else the situation could be handled to know what to talk about. How do you handle getting written edits for an update via pdf, handwritten, whatever and then have the client come to you in the middle of the update and tell you other edits. How do you make the client feel like they have been heard. Ummmm I do my job. I make the edits from whatever written source I have been given. I stop and listen and talk with the client focusing on them. I make the edits I have been given my them as well. If needed I will note the edits with the written edits and confirm with the client which ones win if there is a conflict between two instructions. It was sort of like trying to describe how do you walk to the corner. It is hard to know exactly what is being looked for as an answer because it is so simple and standard you don’t know what to say.

I find I am shaky. Yes I need to eat but I did have a shake and my meds at 10am and zoned out until 12:30pm when I got the call from the recruiter. The call was from 1:00 to 1:30. I searched some samples and sent them out. I got a follow up call from my recruiter around 2:45. I have a hard time believing so much time has gone by. It is 3pm. Yes I need to eat.

I think I am also shaky due to stress. I would not normally continue to be shaky this long afterwards but I am working within the current paradigm and this appears to be a feature. I think I got more stressed afterwards when I ended up facing actually getting the job than I did when I was working on getting the job. The starting on this Monday is really weirding me out.

I am happy it is only three weeks (if it turns out the way the recruiter thinks but she seems out of step with them at this time). Getting to San Mateo by 8:30 every morning is going to be difficult. Getting to San Mateo from home at any time is difficult. But work is work and I need to do whatever I can. I feel confident about doing the actual work and meeting their needs. I am learning that I am a conformist and I adjust to the environment I am in (to a certain point). Once I am there, I will fit the niche they need me for and make them happy. My problem places are ones where they expect me to do things their way without telling me what their way is. I feel this is not a place like that. They have specific needs.

I want the work but I do not want to face getting to San Mateo or the hard deadline or global structure. Everything else sounds great. They have an on-site cafeteria. I was just noticing to myself (I may have posted it somewhere) that I like places like that. The hard time deadline will probably be good for me. I will make the trip to San Mateo work for me. I am thinking I might even switch to an early schedule to avoid traffic. It has happened in the past and it will be interesting to see if it can happen again. It could be that I prefer to get up either before everyone or after everyone.

Since they want me to start right away (assuming everybody does really want to go forward with my couple of time things I can’t change) a lot of things I have scheduled will have to be dropped.

I am noticing that I am not liking things that are taking the fast track. I used to thrive being in the fast track and now it is really hard to deal with. Maybe like how some people who get sick around cigarette smoking after they quit smoking themselves. I was addicted to the speed of life and could turn on a dime. Now I feel like I am fast as a fish but turn like a cow (to paraphrase HHGTTG).