Interviewing Boston

I hate it when Higher Power sends me on a wild goose chase. But then, it wouldn't be an adventure if everything was perfect, right? I feel guilty though because many family and friends really really wanted me to like Boston, but maaaan... I just ain't feelin' it. Apparently Boston wasn't feelin' it for me, either.

I arrived at Logan airport the morning of the 20th, and took the Blue Line to the Orange Line out to the Forest Hills area. Or tried to. In a foreshadowing of the news I would receive on Thursday (the 22nd), while waiting for the Orange, we smelled sulfur. Then the tunnel filled with smoke... and the train didn't come. I filed out onto the street with the other grumbling travelers and, laptop over one shoulder and garment bag over the other, caught a bus. A dear family friend Paula picked me up.

Staying with her was a blessing. She's a darling lady and fellow musician! Turns out, she's a cellist, and her daughter had left her violin at the house! I played some Irish tunes for her while she cooked dinner while her handsomely striped housemate, Mackie, a large, fuzzy tomcat, strutted and fussed at the woodchuck in the cozy garden. And Paula's house is as adorable as the inhabitants! But one thing she said was that it takes about 5 years to make friends. I verified this with people I met and apparently this is basically true. So Boston is an East coast Los Angeles; polite but unengaged, ridiculously expensive (Boston is 2-3% more expensive than LA!) and traffic is insane... see below.

The next day was intense. I was nervous about the job interview. Of course. Along with the usual stress of interviewing this one was a doozie. It was scheduled for 3 hours, with 6 people, one-on-one, back-to-back. Yikes!

But the interview itself was nothing compared to the ride there.

I felt overwhelmed at the prospect of figuring out the buses and trains to get back down to the Four Channels area, an hour and a half away, so I pulled up the Lyft app and found the rate was reasonable (I don't like Uber's business practices). Disappointment and stress ensued.

Two drivers stood me up. The first one cancelled the trip 15 minutes before he was due to arrive. The second one had the decency to call me as he circled the wrong neighborhood. However this was not his fault; I discovered a bug in the app. Thanks to many years of beta testing software, I quickly found it kept changing "Braeburn Road" to "Braemore Road", and devised a workaround.

The third driver was batshit crazy. Now, she did pick me up on time. Yay!! And she was very spiritual (but in a good way). Then the fun began. She ran at least 2 stop signs, nearly hit two people, and was nearly hit by three people. Annnd she had the mouth of a sailor. She hurled obscenities and Jamaican insults with impunity. "Mothafoka bloodclot!" By then I was laughing. It was crazy, I was powerless to do anything about it, and it was CRAZY. She got lost twice, and I ended up pulling out my GPS to navigate us to the office. To top it off, she nearly ran out of gas, and couldn't find her bank card. I suspect she was trying to get me to cough up for it.

Luckily I had planned for shenanigans, so I was an hour and a half early for the interview. I found a pub close by and had a nice lunch and relaxed. But not too much. The first 2 interviewers were fellow technical writers, the 2nd one was disappointed that after 15 minutes of looking over his shoulder, I wasn't fluent enough in the software to make profound, impactful value-added comments. I didn't get the job because I "wasn't able to articulate thoughts about the product." 0.o That's actually pretty funny. Guess I should have hauled out my sesquipedalian vocabulary.

The second reason I didn't get the job is that the 5th interview basically wanted me to be a Scrum master. He felt I didn't have the experience he wanted. But that's not the position I was applying for. As a tech writer, yes, I use Agile, but that's not a big deal - it's not even a main part of my job, and it's not difficult.

When I talked to the recruiter on Thursday, he said they were looking for something specific. I told him their expectations are unrealistic.

My trip home back to Baltimore on Wednesday was easy and uneventful. and I was SO glad to be back!! Baltimore is much more my groove, and cousin Patty, my 2nd cousin Piper (her son) and her friends are my kinda peeps!

Truthfully, Boston wasn't a wild goose chase. I learned that it's not a good match for me. I'm very grateful to have found this out before moving there for a job with cranky perfectionists.