Bump in the Road

The phone situation here in New York is funny: it can be perfect weather outside and you'll be making calls, no problem. Then sometime in the evening, your buddy will call you complaining that your number was unavailable all day. You even get situations like that of my girlfriend's neighbour, who only has home phone service every other day. And everyone just says "That's New York", and tolerates it. Bizarre.

This afternoon I was sitting here patiently waiting for my phone screen. Half an hour past the scheduled time, I figured I had better shoot the HR person an email to see if this was an anticipated delay. I got a terse response a full hour after our appointment, complaining that the interviewer had tried me phoning three times. Needless to say, I felt like a total dolt, and was none too pleased that they were thinking I had been unavailable on purpose.

I decided a brief response with appropriate apology was in order, and they agreed to one more try at a phone screen. So now the big day will be Monday next week. Hopefully by then they will be calm enough to look past the temporary glitch. In the end though, I'm actually glad that the glitch happened; it gave me a glimpse into how the company "tolerates" errors. And, in turn, I'll be on the look out for other such signs during the phone screen, so that I can get a real look into what working there is like. I'm remaining optimistic that despite today's episode, I'll still like what I see.