Thursday October 21, 2004
The sequence of events for getting the job
Friday: We met up with a neighbor outside as we were leaving and he was coming home. We sort of knew him from school but still don’t know his name. I asked where he worked, he said Boeing, and we jokingly asked if he knew whether or not they are hiring. (We knew he was also a recent computer science grad, so we knew he worked in the same field). He said he didn’t know, but he was a contract employee from a company in KC. I asked if it happened to be the same one Zach used to work for? It was. Small world. We called them up and sent in an updated resume.
Tuesday: Zach called in the morning to let them know he was sending in an updated reference letter (letter of recommendation from one of his profs.) and the guy asked if anybody had called him this morning. He said that if they didn’t call in two hours, to call him back. The guy called and wanted to interview Zach at 3pm that afternoon.
Now for the funny part – Zach went to try on his suit since he hadn’t worn it in a while. The pants were too small. We started scraping together money from both of our billfolds and from our change jar to get together some money to buy some pants. Whirlwind shopping trip to Kohls we found some pants. It was so close to all of our money that we were commenting that he better get this job or we aren’t going to eat unless we return the pants.
Anyway, interview at 3 pm – he was hired, filled out paperwork, and took the drug test. WOW. If we would have been able to locate his birth certificate, he could have started Wednesday. (certainly wasn’t for lack of looking). Mom loaned us her credit card to order the birth certificate and have it fedexed ($50 wowzaa!).
Thursday morning: Fedex at our door at 9am, Zach told to come in that afternoon to get his security badge. Zach leaves for his first day at 1pm. At 1:30 I get a call. He should have been there for a bit by then but he had not even made it quite half way yet. Our car was leaking oil so bad it was leaving a thick trail behind him and every time Zach stepped on the brake oil just poured out of the car. He was stopping every few blocks to put more oil in the car. He drained our bank account and dug through change to buy oil along the way. $26 worth of oil. That is a LOT of oil. He did finally make it back at about 2:20 and turned around in the Olds (the “crappy” car) and made it to work. Thank goodness he wasn’t on a specific time schedule.
Whew! Much drama, but more good than bad.
