4.2.1993

I had an interview at Bill and Dave's company today. I was nervous. I've never seen anything like it before. The interview seemed to go well, but I'm still not optimistic that anything is going to come of it. Part of the interview was a test to see if I could read instructions, follow them, and display good manual dexterity. The test was dopey. I had to build a Tinkertoy forklift by following an instruction booklet the Human Resources people put together. Each page was color coded and you had to build the forklift in sections in a certain order. Then you had to piece it together, again in a certain order. It wasn't at all like the instructions that probably came with the Tinkertoy kit. It was, weird. Anyway the time limit to complete the forklift was twenty minutes and I did it in seven. A Human Resources lady was watching me the whole time and taking notes. Before I started this test I asked the Human Resources lady a question and told her she didn't have to answer it if she didn't want to. I wanted to know if anyone had ever failed the Tinkertoy test. She said people have failed it often. That scared me because it was so simple to build. They must use this as some sort of screen to keep out people who can't read English.

After my initial interview and Tinkertoy test, someone came and got me for a tour of the facility. It is so god damned big there. It takes minutes just to walk from one building to the other. And it was really sci-fi. It's all high end electronics stuff and there's hundreds of people busily working in light green lab coats surrounded by tons of electronic lab equipment. People in the hallways generally seemed to be well dressed and all have name badges on. They took me through two departments and I got to meet some of the people working in both areas. One area seems to be all Micro electronic stuff, and the other one was all printed circuitboards. Both areas were massive and churning with activity. I don't know which area I might work in if I get hired here. Either one looks cool to me. I was real impressed with the overall layout of the site. They have a restaurant, a 24 hour gym, just about every kind of sports equipment you can think of, a basketball court, a baseball field, volleyball, and a soccer field. Some of the restrooms even have showers in them. It's amazing.

When I got home from the interview at Bill and Dave's I got a call from Joe. He accidentally left his glasses here at the apartment and he asked me to drive them over to him at his work. It was a couple of towns away but I didn't have anything else better to do so I took them. When I got there he took a few minutes to show me around the newspaper offices. Seemed like a nice enough place to work. It's a printing shop that has a skeleton crew on graveyard shift to design, layout, and shoot plates for the printing presses. Joe is still trying to get me a job there but I'm skepical it will happen.