4:30 p.m.

• So Philly's mayor has nothing better to do on a workday than wait in line for an iPhone.

Mayor John F. Street was among the first to get a coveted iPhone on Friday, waiting in line, on and off, for almost 15 hours and forced to defend the effort when a passer-by asked about the city's skyrocketing murder rate.

 

Street, who said he had been waiting in line outside a downtown AT&T store since 3:30 a.m., was among the first group to enter the store when the high-tech device officially went on sale at 6 p.m. He paid for his new phone with a credit card amid a scrum of media.

 

"It was worth the wait," Street said. "I'm a gadget guy."

 

The mayor said he was excited to get the phone. "If it works as good as it looks ... ," he said, his voice trailing off.

 

When he left the store, Street held the phone above his head to the cheers of about 100 people still in line. He then headed home to activate the phone.

 

The mayor said the iPhone replaces a top-of-the-line BlackBerry phone he purchased just three months ago.

 

Street's wait on the sidewalk outside the store was anything but uneventful. He wore large Bose headphones hooked up to an iPod Nano—one of three iPods he owns—around his neck while seated on a lawn chair.

 

He left his spot around 11:30 a.m., soon after a 22-year-old man sporting a mohawk asked him, "How can you sit here with 200 murders in the city already?"

 

The mayor replied: "I'm doing my job."

I remember for years this one guy with a mohawk always ran for office in Shittsburgh. He was named "Mad Dog." Interesting fellow.

9 a.m.

• So yesterday I left work early to do this interview thing. The place was 60 miles away, and I gave myself more than two hours to get there. Turns out I needed another 60 minutes due to road construction. OK, I get that roads need to be maintained, but when you shut down MILES of highway only to have FIVE people wearing shiny yellow jerseys standing around some 10-foot hole backing up miles of traffic, I can understand why some people get road rage in these instances. But that really wasn’t a problem for me on this day because when I arranged this interview earlier in the week I let the receptionist chick know that I was coming from a distance and had set up a time just in case of a mishap like this. I’ve done this shit enough times in the past to know things like so-called “work areas,” accidents and shoddy directions can happen. No problem. However, there were some other things that I expected to happen, and sadly I wasn’t let down.

When I got the call back early in the week from this place about the position I applied to, I had a list of questions I wanted answered right off the bat. After all, what’s the point of going through all this shit when I can nip it in the bud with an inquiry about the job from the comfort of my own home? Unfortunately, this chick (I’ll call her Kelly) had no idea how to answer my questions. Turns out she’s not a recruiter but the receptionist. However, I’m not going to rag on Kelly because during the phone conversation she told me she was recently hired and trying to learn while on the job. I can respect that. Never once was I rude, condescending or patronizing to her. The questions I had for her she tried her best to answer, and that’s all you can ask of a person. When I arranged for my interview, I asked what would be involved and what materials should I bring with me. I was told the whole procedure (including filling out the application form) would only take 30 minutes, and that all I needed to bring with me was my employment information for the last three years.

Yeah, right.

When I entered this place’s office, I saw some late-teen/early 20something sitting at a desk talking on the phone while wearing in a low-cut shirt and skimpy dress. After her work-related conversation ended, I replied, “Hello, you must be Kelly.” The reason for this is because not only did I recognize her voice, but I also noticed that there was a sheet of paper taped to the wall behind her that had all the information to the questions I had asked of her earlier in the week. Now this is where the fun really begins. Kelly asks me “Did you bring your driver’s license, social security card and birth certificate?”

She hands me the application I had to fill out, and, sure enough, the form asks me to fill out employment information not from the past three years, but rather from the past three employers. There was also a section for references, requesting names, addresses and all that good stuff. Sadly, I was ready for this sort of thing, because in the past when I dealt with these staffing organizations they had no clue as to what they were doing. As I filled out the form I was seated next to two women. At least one of them was interviewing for the same position I me. Now when you already have a job and are interviewing for another position, your demeanor is much more different than if you are unemployed and looking for work. Christ I hate that feeling. That sense of dread and all-or-nothingness. But when you know a paycheck is already coming to your bank account, your mood is much lighter. However, it seemed this chick was a bit on the nervous side, so I left her alone. The other gal, some black chick with an accent I couldn’t pinpoint, asked me for the time and then started fretting about the application she was filling out, mentioning that she had to be out of her by 4:30 p.m.. Uh, OK. The first chick got called to do a typing test and it was just me, the black chick and Kelly.

Let me tell you something about Kelly. If she wasn’t an example of a “Butterface,” I don’t know who is. From the minute you look at her from the neck down, you know why she got this job. Great figure, greater tan legs, not a large rack but perfectly in proportion to the rest of her body. Her face? Well. I didn’t look at it long enough because I didn’t want her to catch me staring, but I fear the poor girl has been battling acne for quite a long time. There was a crater/scab/whatever in the middle of her forehead so large that at first I wondered if it was one of those red dots Indian women put on themselves. But whatever. She was nice enough, and you could tell she was trying at her job, which, from my experiences, is a rarity at her type of employment. I even got a bit more information about the position out of her through cordial chitchat. (They were seeking several hirees and there were a number of cancelled appointments.) Of course, after I turned in the application, she then gave me some speling and grammer tests. Oh I hate these fucking things. Sad, isn’t it? I’m a JOURNALISM grad and I suck at the English language. I wasn’t as annoyed about actually taking these tests as I was at the fact this place was closing at 5 p.m. and the “half hour” I would be spending at this place was already past the 45-minute mark with the typing test and interview still to be completed. Well, long story short, after I completed these tests I went into another room and started typing. My score: 67 words per minute, 1 error. It was now just after 5 p.m. and the office was closed. I went with some other chick to do the interview, and at 5:45 p.m., 105 minutes after I showed up, I was out the door.

Did I get this job? Don’t really know. Don’t really care. I’ve done so many of these interviews in the past that I don’t concern myself with worrying about something I may have said or did to throw my chances of getting a job with the interviewer out the window. I’ve learned that in many instances the employer already has a set candidate in mind, and no matter what you do to prove yourself you’re just not “that fit.” Nothing personal. Just business. Funny enough, in many of these instances I’m also sitting at my side of the table thinking, “Do I really want to see you for eight hours a day, 40 hours a week?” I’ll find out sometime this week if I’ll be brought back for training, which is fine. Even if I don’t get this job, as I mentioned in yesterday’s entry, I have my resume and (surprisingly good) test scores seeded at this place, which does recruiting in my neck of the woods, away from Shittsburgh region. Ideally, I’d like to try out this at-home position as a second job, and if I like it perhaps I’ll be able to quit my current place of employment and focus solely on this one, which is a pay-for-what-you-produce type of thing. Either way, I got out of my office three hours early today, and if nothing else, this trip was worth it just for that alone.