Job interview

This morning I woke up very early to catch the train to the centre of Barcelona. Luckily, my closest train station is the first one on the line, so and despite the fact that there was loads of poor early commuters, I easily found a seat, which was very fortunate because after a few stations the train was pack to the rim. By the time we arrive to the last stop it was comfortably empty again so I didn't have to push my way through people just to get out of it. Nevertheless it took me 1 hour and 45 minutes to arrive to my final destination. That fact alone made me doubt about the job. I'm not that desperate that I have to do a 3 hours a day commute for a job.

I finally arrived to the World Trade Centre building (yeah... not a very fortunate name for a building, isn't it? at least this one isn't very tall) which is at the end of a pier (I've just spend 5 minutes trying to remember how to spell pier), near the Columbus' tower thus as far from my place as it can geographically be. Of course, I called them to let them know that I was late due to a miscalculation of public transport times.

By the way, Columbus statue is atop of a tall column, very much as the one in Trafalgar square. He's pointing somewhere and a plaque said that he's pointing to the Americas. But according to my internal compass he's actually pointing to Africa. I've to check this out. It'll be nice when you come and I take you there to try to solve this out.

The actual interview was long but nice. The only problem being that the interviewers were far too young. How can you take it seriously when a kid ask you silly questions such as "how'd your friend would describe you"?
(My answer was: "I'm the person that everybody want to be with in a crisis". Yeah, sure!)

The silliness of it all wasn't really a problem because I truly relaxed when I saw the kids, and the very well known and standard set of questions that they had. I'm usually good at test situations as shown when I passed my driving test the first try (unlike "the husband", who has to do it at least 4 times in order to pass, a fact that will be forever remembered for his eternal shame), but this time I was really relaxed as it became increasingly clear that I didn't want the job at all. The fact that the girl giving us all this info has English as her second language and that she has a thicker accent than me, only added to the silliness of the situation.
For the first 20 minutes of the interview (there was 5 other baby candidates in the room) we've been told about the job and given time to ask questions and the only one to ask was me, presumably the baby candidates were far too intimidated.
Do they have parking space for employees? No.
Childcare facility? No.
Subsidised lunch? Not for the first year, only a common room.

The job consisted on handling the rented car reservations in Barcelona for English speakers from all over the world. The centre used to be in Manchester but they're now here and it wouldn't surprise me if they outsource the job to India soon. The working time is also quite complicated, the centre is open from 8 to 11pm local time so the employees' working time rotates monthly and randomly. Meaning that the first month you work, let say, from 8 'till 2pm and the next one it could be from 2 to 11pm or Good knows when. You also has to work 2 weekends a months and you take 2 weekdays off that week. The salary is 15,000€ a year, which is far less that I could make if I keep on teaching.

Then they divided the group for a one-to-one interview. The interview was scripted and it was totally silly and you'd have to be a total idiot to fail that. For instance:
Interviewer"what was the best part of your former job?"
Me: the true: chatting away with Glynnis and Christa. The actual answer: "solving people's problems and giving the best service I can".
And my favourite.
Interviewer: "what was the worst part of your former job?"
Me: The true: I hated answering the telephone!!! I actually used to run away and hide between the shelves every time the phone rung. But there I was being interviewed for, basically, a calling centre job... so, my actual answer was: "oh, definitely, shelving".

The cheek of me!!!!

The final part of the interview was a role play when they gave me some information and then we pretended that I was answering the phone and I had to try to rent this guy a car and get all the information to and from him, such as properly spelled name, credit car numbers, time and place for collection, and so forth. The interviewer this time was actually a Brit with a thick Yorkie accent, I swear that I'm not making this up, it was hilarious. This was a bit trickier for me because the job was actually for native speakers, however, but by that time I couldn't care less.
At the end of the interview the Yorkie told me that I did pretty well, adding, to my eternal gratitude that I did better than some truly native English speakers.
He also told me that it take up to a week to get a letter telling me if I got the offer for the job. However, he said, the successful candidates usually get a call in the next two days.

I've already decided that the commuting alone was too much, but the experience alone was worthy it.

Latter on we talked with "the husband" and we agree that I'm better off keeping on teaching with its flexible hours and not too bad rates, until I can get a job that's truly better.