Lightwave Interview Part Two

After what seemed to me like an eternity of conversational babble mixed with free of charge bland and lukewarm cafeteria food everyone turned in their trays full of dirty dishes. We walked out of the dining area in a group following Tom to head back for Building 1 and some job interviews. It was about damn time. As we began the walk up long flights of stairs towards Building 1 I caught up with Tom and asked him point blank about the level 92 deal here in Lightwave. He said that management in the Lightwave division felt the work here was so much more complex than at any other department in the company therefore entry level 91 jobs were not appropriate. How arrogant, I thought. It takes an average of six years for an entry level employee to get a 92 job at Bill and Dave's company and here these people were just handing them out like candy. I seriously doubt the instruments they work on are more difficult skill-wise than what our people do in Micro, or in the Clean Rooms working on semiconductor wafers, or on more traditional instrument lines for that matter. And if this was such a simple explanation why didn't Tom or that goofy blonde just answer my question at the table in the first place? Ugh.

Once we were back in Lightwave's department Tom and the dingbat bleached blonde supervisor with him broke us down into smaller groups. Dingbat Blondie said there would be three separate one on one interviews with managers plus a panel interview with some engineers, technicians, and assemblers. I was under the impression the interview I was here for was going to be with one product manager and then I'd be out of here for the day so maybe I could go back to sleep before going to work. Didn't look like that was about to happen. This was going to be a long drawn out all afternoon production. Weak.

Dingbat Blondie got me first. She took me to her postage stamp sized cubicle that was temporarily made even smaller by a collection of a few dozen brightly colored balloons filled with helium. Maybe it was her birthday. Who cares. I sat down at the corner of her desk because there wasn't anyplace else to locate myself. She sat next to me and produced a photocopied script of questions to ask us interviewing for available jobs. That was when I started to notice her shaking. As she wrote down paraphrased sentences of my responses to her questions, her hands were trembling. It got worse as we continued. She didn't seem like she was nervous, it was more uncontrollable than that and she acted far too animated and speedy. I suspected she had covertly done a rail of crank or something.

The whole time I was talking, balloons were gently drifting into my forehead and bouncing off of me.

She obviously thought highly of herself, like she was a sexy blonde bombshell. She wore black hip hugger slacks and a long sleeve bone white top that was skin tight and very low cut revealing what little cleavage mother nature endowed her with. Her legs were crossed and she kept rocking one of her feet at me. She was wearing open-toed heels and she had chosen a deep mettallic blue nailpolish for her feet. I got the feeling she was trying to tell me, "I'm totally hot, mister." Dingbat Blondie didn't do anything for me, really. In fact, I found her down right annoying. She reminded me of what a person might look like if they had been hit in the face with a shovel at birth. This broad was not attractive. To make matters worse during our question and answer session, mullet wearing handlebar moustached white trash dudes popped in to interrupt us just so they could ask Dingbat Blondie questions like "Are we gonna party tonite, babe? Heh heh heh." It was all fun and giggles for her, she was having a grand old time. Idiot.

Upon completely filling out one side of an eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper with barely readable written versions of my answers to her scripted questions, she happily announced we were going on a tour of her instrument product line. Oh joy. We left her cubicle and I trailed behind her as she took point. Both of us crossed the main aisleway into a production area filled with employees wearing blue labcoats. She stopped in front of a gray metal shelf unit stacked full with small sized test instruments and turned to face me. She said, "This here is my instrument. We call it 'Bud Light'. Okay? And this here... is a FIBER OPTIC CABLE." As she said fiber optic cable she placed great emphasis on the words to impress me with the sheer gravity and awesomeness of the tiny yellow insulated flexible cable she held in her hands. I knew what a fucking fiber optic cable was for christ sakes. Moron. I can't believe they elevated this woman into a management position here.

And with that, my two minute tour of Dingbat Blondie's product group was over. I didn't get to ask any of her employees questions about what they did or what they liked about working here. She failed to show me their assembly area or demonstrate how their test process flow worked. It was overwith almost as fast as the tour had begun. I don't know why she bothered in the first place.

My next interview was to be with Tom.