How To Land A Job Without Really Trying

OK, this is gonna be good.

Back in '93, I was looking for work and let all my on-line buddies know. Might even have forwarded my resume to a few. One afternoon, I get an e-mail from Judy, who owns a little shop that does a lot of business with Sandia National Labs. She wanted to know if I was still looking. Yup.

So, she makes me an offer I couldn't refuse. She's looking for a technician to work in her shop, and invited me over to work the afternoon on Monday, for which I'd get paid, and she'd have the opportunity to check me out. Fine by me. I go over Monday afternoon, do some work, run some errands, and at the end of the day, she tells me she's got a couple of other candidates and would be making a decision by the end of the week. Cool.

Along the way, during the afternoon, she sent me over to another place to pick up some parts. Ten widgets or something to put in new systems they're building. No problem. I drive over to the store to pick up the order and the guy tells me they're having a special on them and I can get 12 for less than the price of 10. Now I have a decision to make. Judy only wanted 10, but I can save her money by buying 12. My gut tells me to go with the 12, so I buy the 12 and return to the shop with the parts and some unexpected change. Just before quitting time, one of the other guys there tells me "Judy likes you. She was pretty impressed by how you thought on your feet when you went to pick up those parts." So, I go home with a half-day's pay and a warm fuzzy.

Unfortunately, one of the other candidates had way more hardware experience than I did (I'm a software kind of guy), so I didn't get the job. No harm, no foul. He beat me fair and square.

Fast forward 12 years. There's a little computer shop in the old Target building across the street, where the flea market now is. One day, I go wandering in there while the flea market was open and had a look around. Got talking to the woman who owns the place. Tried to buy a new ethernet adapter for my laptop. We went thru about half a dozen; no luck. Along the way, we get chatting about this, that, and the other. She's a real no-nonsense type, just like me. Over the next couple of weeks, I keep going back trying to find an ethernet card that works, as well as another laptop.

During our conversations, Martha learned that I was retiring from the Air Force Reserve and making Chattanooga my home. The subject of work came up, but only in a peripheral sort of way. Today, I went back over to return a diskette she had given me with some drivers on it (that didn't work). OK, the disk is probably only worth a dime or so, but it's her disk. Also, I had put a recipe on it that I had told her about. Also took her a bottle of "Switched" that I had made. (Long story. I'll be posting the recipe for that and some other things later.)

Once again, we got talking and she asked me what I was looking for in the way of work. I had a gut feeling about what was coming, so I said probably something to do with computers. She casually mentioned that she was looking for a tech. So, I quoted the Godfather ("Gonna make you an offer you can't refuse") and told her about the experience with Judy. Then I said "You pick one day during the week; I'll come over and work the afternoon for free and you can make a decision whether to hire me. One way or the other, you get a free afternoon's labor out of it." That was agreeable, so we spent some time talking about her operation and how I might fit it. I left the number to my handy with her and left.

Now I'm all a-twitter to see how this is going to play out. I'll post updates as they occur. Tuesday afternoon will be about the earliest.

Meantime, I'm still looking for another laptop and an ethernet card.