An Olive Branch

Oh Noah.

I am beginning to know how you felt. 40 days and 40 nights must have seemed like an eternity. Don’t you think?

I certainly do.

He just needed some hope…

Phoenix. Man alive… I seriously forgot how hot you were. Seriously. Like it was 11 at night and still 106. I just had simply forgotten. Living in LA and just getting use to the weather was so natural. It felt like things should have all along. Perhaps you have a hot day every once in a while, but even on those days you have nice cool nights. All thanks to that little thing to the west called the Pacific.

Anyway, yeah you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know it is hot in Phoenix, but I was still a little surprised (perhaps more how I just blocked that part out of my memory) how warm it was.

The interview was… Well.. It was something.

I arrived in the lobby some 30 minutes early which isn’t bad considering the drive I had. My parents put Maryia and myself up for a night in Tempe. It was nice considering that I think I may have killed myself driving 7 hours each way + having the assessment/interviews in one day. Getting back to my story, they didn’t know I had spent the night – besides I still had a super long drive in front of me that evening.

The person at the front desk said she would gladly get things moving for me. 20 minutes later I began to get impatient and called the HR person directly. I heard his phone ring in the other room and no more than 2 rings into it he answered. I let him know I had arrived and he said it would be about ten or so more minutes. The front desk lady came out and said to me “you weren’t scheduled until 3pm” and at that point I began to lose faith in the whole purpose of the trip.

What a pain. You made me drive 7 hours to take an assessment to see if I qualify for an interview and now you have the appointment time off by 3 hours? Great first impression.

I waited in the lobby… pacing back and forth. Finally someone arrived, greeted me and brought me upstairs for the assessment/test portion. The assessment it self was interesting.

I snapped a photo of one page of it.

It was a lot like that. Plus personality questions. All in all it was about an hour and 45 minutes to finish. Believe me when I say that it was riveting.

A few minutes later they tell me that they have the results and bring me upstairs to talk further. They told me that I passed with flying colors. Then they told me that someone from HR would interview me shortly.

So had the ‘second’ interview. First one was impromptu with HR. It was different. They asked probably 20 different questions. Not even kidding. I think this place asked the most questions that I have ever been asked during an interview. They even tried to get me to change my answers. Such as the example below…

“What would you do if you read a prescription that wasn’t clear? However.. you believe that you know what the pharmacist / doctor was requesting. Also, you do not have any lead or manager you can ask for help as everyone has left for the day. The person is waiting on the phone for you to fulfill their prescription”

“Well, if I wasn’t 100% sure I would follow the standard operating procedure for that. So if that meant calling the doctor or the pharmacist who made the request … I would do that to clarify.

“… And if you couldn’t reach anyone?”

“I would let the customer know that I would have to contact the appropriate parties and get back with them the next day”

She sat in silence for a moment then said “what if you were really sure you knew what it was supposed to be?” I replied, “unless I was 100% sure, which I wasn’t in this situation, correct?”

“That’s right, you were mostly sure”

“Well then I wouldn’t push the order through. If you make a mistake handling prescriptions you are potentially dealing with someone’s life & I wouldn’t mess with that.”

She pressed, “even if you were really sure you knew what it was supposed to be?” To my reply “unless I was 100% sure, I wouldn’t.”

She then stopped pressing the subject and went on to another question. Multiple questions were asked in this manner of testing to see if you would change your answer. Rather annoying. On top of that – multiple questions were asking for extremely similar scenarios. A few times I may have said something to the effect of “well like I just finished saying in my previous example…”

Needless to say I don’t think I will be hearing from them. I’m not totally sure thats a bad thing either.

Oh Noah. All you wanted as an Olive Branch.

On the first leg of the trip on our way out to Phoenix we received just that.

Driving along I-10 I heard my phone start buzzing.

“Hello?”

The person on the other end was nobody else but the HR person from American Express. They called to offer me the position. They were really impressed with everything and wanted to reach out and offer the job.

Well, lets just say that is one Olive branch that I ended up accepting.

just Pray.