i'm standing in an orderly line in front of canada place. the air is brisk and fresh. i'm up and out earlier than i'd be up most days. a shame really because this is my favourite time of day on my favourite day and i rarely ever see it. as it happens i won't see much of this glorious day either.
saturday early morning. people and vehicles are scarce on the street. there's a calm that doesn't exist at almost any other time of day. even the quality of air is diffrerent. it's as if the air has been cleaned and i'm breathing the fresh batch that hasn't been sullied by too many other people. i've been summoned for video testing for coast mountain bus co. it is no my burning desire to be a bus driver, but i'm game for anything. in these trying times, a job with benefits and a pension, well you can't sniff at that. i can see workers moving about the olympic centre, the city's albatross to host its future shining moment in the sun. there's no urgency in their gaits nothing to bely that 10 million unexpected burgeoning debt.
i realize that i am supposed to be inside the building and not downstairs in the nick of time, and i sprint up the stairs and to the room where the testing is to be held. there's a brief set of multiple choice questions to test our english comprehension before the video test. the test itself is prefaced by a lawyer giving us a stern talking to about copyright infringement and stealing of intellectual property. i guess it is enough of a problem that the need is felt to address it. the test seems straightforward enough and takes about an hour and a half to complete. we shuffle out of the testing room and into the holding room or off to search for coffee or to amuse ourselves for the half hour or so they need to grade the tests.
when we come back i am ushered quickly to the interview room, which i am not expecting at all. i thought the interview would happen at a later date. the interview is conducted by two men. the questions are a mix of scenario questions and what the government likes to call competency questions. scenario questions went something like this...." you are a bus driver and--insert scenario here--what would you do?" i answered as well as i could without knowing company policies or standards of practice; by employing commen sense. the competency questions are the sort that apparently quantify your skills. they run the gamut of "describe a work situation where you solved a major problem and tell us how you did it. or....tell us a major decision that you made and how it helped your team. or describe a time that your team was under a great deal of pressure to meet a deadline and how you contributed." you get the idea. and the workplace where you created all these miracles was to be current within the last five years. never having been in a team structured in that fashion or having the autonomy to make major decisions on my own i could merely only imagine what a person in one of those situations might do. i told the interviewers as much. they pressed me for answers. i did my best, while trying to remain chirpy and composed. all while trying to maintain some sort of eye contact with the two men, when my chair had me positioned facing the wall between them.
i had to wait 45 minutes to be called out into the hall to be informed that i had apparently flunked the interview. fair enough. i didn't give them what they wanted. one of the gents in the room had the same problem. he said he had worked a midlevel office job for 27 years and had absolutely could not answer those questions fully, and so did another woman. he thought that the questions were trying to determine whether or not the interviewees were empathetic. i wonder how he fared. the woman came back in to the room to inform the group she had been sitting with that she had been called back for the next phase. trainability. myself i would think that some amount of customer service experience, being friendly, and outgoing and possessing common sense would have been of at lease some relevance. the press says they mount inside in their own buses say as much. however.....
so according to coast mountain i am "incompetent" based on their criteria. which smarts. but only temporarily because i know that those sorts of interviews for that sort of job are mostly bullshit. they are not necessarily getting the best people, because i encounter those best and brightest as i make my way around the city and most of those even lack the driving skill that seems like a fairly basic requisite. there will be those that can fully and honestly answer those questions, but more will not be able to. i would wager that there are a good number of people that are very clever when it comes to situations like that and they give the audience what they want by lying effectively. i would also wager that if the interviewee is liked by the interviewers they stand a better chance of "passing" the interview. i can apply again in a year. doubtful that i'll bother. i didn't really want to be a bus driver anyway.
s. tried to console me by telling me that i would never pass the physical what with my high blood pressure, the medication i take, and the intermittent episodes of muscle weakness, nausea and pain flashes that i occasionally encounter. thanks babe. (the depression currently completely untreated at the moment is another matter.) but it'll do as a consolation, but the principle still bugs the shit out of me. like anyone, i really hate to lose. doesn't matter what it is.
