TA DAH!
Okay, the report youÂ?ve all been waiting for: The Francis Family Job Hunt aka National LampoonÂ?s Interviews In Ohio...aka...Kim and LouÂ?s Job Hunting Adventure.

Ahem...Can ya tell that this might be quite the yarn?

I'm going to break this up into several posts, since itÂ?s a rather long story, so check back for updates.

Now..let the story begin...

Wednesday, May 5th, 2004 - Let the adventure begin!

We left the house at 10:30am. I had an interview at 1:30 and Lou had one at 2, so that gave us plenty of time to figure out where we were going. The trip up was uneventful, until we got just outside of downtown Columbus. That's when we discovered we had brought the wrong map. If we wanted to go to Six Flags, we were in great shape, but since we needed to go to Columbus, we were kinda screwed.

Thank God for cell phones. We pulled into a gas station (we are safe cell phone users!) and called our respective interviewers and asked for directions.

Ten minutes later, we were back on the road and we knew where we were going. Always a good thing.

At least it should have been.

We found Lou's location with no problem. Finding mine, however was rather problematic. The woman I spoke to told me that they were in a brick building with a green awning. Easy enough to find right?

The problem: Every building in downtown Columbus is a brick building, and at least six of them have green awnings, and none of them had addresses on them. Great for esthetics, lousy for a search.

I dropped Lou off at his interview with 40 minutes to spare. That left me with 10 minutes to find out where I needed to be. Two more calls to the office (one of which was a conference call between me and two other people), and almost an HOUR later, I arrived at my interview. Fortunately, since the whole office knew I was wandering the downtown Columbus area in search of the place, no one was upset that I was late. Remember that lesson folks, if there is the slightest chance you are going to be late, call.

The testing and interview went well, and the people (3) I interviewed with said that a decision would be made in less than a week, and that if they neinterviewnterivew me again, they would call. Read: you are one of 250 applicants. We have one job, and I kinda promised it to my brother's son. He's a dork and can't string two words together without getting lost in thought, but he's family.

As I was leaving my interview, Lou was coming into the building. He had managed to find my location without any difficulty. I coulda slapped him. I refrained however, when he gave me his news: he had an interview with a prestigious law firm.

We got back in the car and headed out on our next adventure: finding one of the apartment complexes we had found online. After going through parts of Columbus I had only heard about (police reports and the evening news) we made our way to the location. Nice complex, awesome townhome...but no pool or fitness center. Those were deal breakers, so we began the trek home.

If I would have judged the outcome from the first day, I would have had to say it wasn't a positive one. We toyed with not bothering to come back the next day, but something told me that we needed to.

Next post: Thursday - If I hear banjo music, I'm taking off...with or without you!
- posted by Kim @ 1:28 PM