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Super-Short Storytime: “Overheard”

Welcome to Super-Short Storytime, literature listeners and audio aficionados!  I am Eduardo Soliz, the composer and narrator of the splendiferously silly story that you are about to hear.

One of the more annoying things about working in a cubicle environment is the fact that you can all-too-easily hear everything your coworkers say.  It can also be one of the more hilarious things, and so I present to you this brief business brief that I call: “Overheard.”

It was another lazy afternoon at the office and so I took the opportunity to chat with the new guy.  Kenny sat a few desks down from me.  He is pretty stocky; dude looks like he used to play football in his younger days.   He seems to be a good guy.           

“Do you have any pets, Eduardo?”  Kenny asked me before taking a swig from a bottle of soda.

“Nah, I have a small apartment and I don’t think it’s big enough for a pet.  Yourself?”  I replied.  Somebody was walking by and I turned to see who it was.  It was Valerie, another new hire.  Like Kenny, she was also pretty nice.  I guess the company figured that one anti-social weirdo was enough after hiring me.

“My fiancé and I have two pugs.”  Kenny replied while raising two fingers with his right hand.

*groan* I hope he’s not one of those, I thought, letting out a small ‘hmm’ before asking: “Y’all don’t call them ‘baby’ by chance, do you?”

“Uh, no.  Why do you ask?” Kenny asked with a chuckle.

“It’s a test.  I’ve noticed that obsessive dog owners tend to call their dogs ‘baby.’  Personally, I think that’s a little nutty, but that’s just me.” I replied.

Unseen to the two of us, Valerie was walking back towards us with a stack of freshly-printed documents in her hands.

“Hey, don’t get me wrong, Ed.  They are our babies, but the nice thing is that I can tie my babies up to a tree in the backyard when they misbehave.” Kenny replied enthusiastically.

The sound of papers falling on the floor immediately followed and we turned to see a horrified Valerie looking at Kenny and exclaiming: “OH MY GOD, YOU DO WHAT TO YOUR BABIES?”

I smiled and exclaimed: “And THAT’S how rumors get started!” 

Kenny and I enjoyed a hearty laugh before he explained to Valerie that no, he wasn’t tying babies to a tree in his backyard.

Well, not people babies, at least.

The end.

I heard the babies Kenny tied up in the backyard were Valerie’s, but you didn’t hear that from me, Dear Listeners!  This has been Super-Short Storytime, for more mirthful monologues visit Eduardo Soliz dot com!  Thank you for listening!  Be Good, Take Care, and God Bless.

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300 Seconds Episode #115: “Fired”

NOTE: This is a transcript of a podcast for those with hearing difficulties, those that prefer to read, and those who would prefer to not hear the sound of my voice. 😉

Click here to listen to this episode! 

You are listening to ‘300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz,’ and this is episode number 115, “Fired!” so let the 300 Seconds begin!

Technical support is not an easy job to do, and when you work at a place that sucks, it makes it all the more harder.  My last full-time tech support job was at a school and it had been working out well, but I was laid off after my campus was closed thanks to the coronavirus back in episode number 107.  Six months and four episodes later, I would be hired on to a contract job.  It started out well enough for the first three months, but I was then transferred to another department where everything went to crap. 

There, I found myself dealing with some of the worst users that I have ever had to deal with in my ten years of doing technical support.  Now when I say that, I should mention that I spent time working for a company that made terrible software and had a monopoly on it so they never fixed anything, a cable company, federal and state tax departments, and yet somehow, those users managed to be worse.  Management treated them like children, and so they acted like children.  Funny how that works.  My boss in the department was also a lousy person who never once told me that things weren’t going well.  Instead, they let things accumulate so that they could dump a laundry list of complaints onto my boss in the IT department so that he could be the one to read me the riot act. 

On top of that, the administrative staff did this super passive-aggressive thing where they acted like I didn’t exist.  It was not unusual for me to be invited to a meeting fifteen minutes before it started.  Whenever special events happened in or out of the office, I was never invited.  I knew that things were happening because it was a small office and you could hear what everyone was saying, but no, they never invited me.  I don’t know that I would have joined them, but still, an invite would have been appreciated.  Finally, I had been sent to the principal’s office twice for bed behavior.  I was on the cusp of being fired, and so I decided that it was time for me to go.

I had planned on giving them one week’s notice, but a social media post changed my mind.  The morning that I was going to put in that notice, I saw that a guy that I used to work with had died overnight of COVID.  His name was Noah Villanueva.  He was a good tech, but more importantly, he was a good man.  Noah was a big funny guy, always smiling and joking in spite of all the crap that we all had to deal with at that place.  In fact, Noah was so nice that it would give us leads a little bit of grief every so often, but God bless him, we couldn’t be mad at him for very long. 

He left us to work at one of the cool companies in town, and I was happy for him when that happened, because he deserved better.  Noah was a damn good guy.  And now he was gone.  Except for the occasional exchange on Facebook, we hadn’t really kept in touch a whole lot, but I wept at my desk as I read the outpouring of disbelief and sadness from his coworkers and friends.  I tried to get back to work, but I couldn’t.  God help me, I couldn’t stop thinking about him and I couldn’t stop crying.  Hell, I’m sitting in front of a coffee shop crying as I type this.

Meanwhile, everyone else in the office went about their business as usual; I mean who cares about that guy crying at his desk, right?  He’s only a contractor.  Maybe if someone had asked me what was wrong, I would have stuck with my original plan.  Just one kind word might have been enough for me to put up with their crap for one more week.  I instead decided that these jerks didn’t even deserve that.

And so I packed my things.  I wrote an email to The Boss that said: “I am resigning my position effective immediately. Thank you for the opportunity.”  I clicked Send, tossed my badge on to my desk, and left the building, never to return.  This wasn’t the first time I had quit a job, but it would be the first time I would do so with a good plan on what to do next.

And what would that be?  Two words: Career change.  Stay tuned.

This has been 300 Seconds, the next episode will be posted after I update about a dozen job board statuses to “Not Looking for Work.”  I am Eduardo Soliz, if you’d like to hear or read more of my wonderfully weird words, visit Eduardo Soliz dot com, and I thank you for listening!  Be Good, Take Care, and God Bless.

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300 Seconds Episode #114: “My Coronavirus Story Part 6: 99.9 Degrees”

NOTE: This is a transcript of a podcast for those with hearing difficulties, those that prefer to read, and those who would prefer to not hear the sound of my voice. 😉

Click here to listen to this episode!

You are listening to ‘300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz,’ and this is episode number 114, “My Coronavirus Story Part 6: 99.9 Degrees,” so let the 300 Seconds begin.

Since starting my new job last October, I had settled back into my typical office-job routine.  Get up, go to work, fix things, go home.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  It felt good to be working again, and of course, the money didn’t hurt either.  Of course, there were now a few pandemic-related changes, like making sure to bring a mask to work every day and having my temperature checked once I walked into the door.  Going out for lunch on Friday now involved getting something from a drive-thru and eating in my vehicle, but otherwise it was more or less the same old song and dance. 

Things were going well until I didn’t feel good one Friday.  My stomach felt lousy all day at the office and it still didn’t feel right that evening at home.  Late in the evening, something came to mind:  I hadn’t gone to the bathroom all day.

Well, poop.  Or rather, I couldn’t poop.  Now, I’m not one to reach for medication right off the bat, so I started drinking more water and had some fiber-rich cereal to try and get the plumbing moving.  Unfortunately, things were still on hold when I went to bed, but I held out hope that things would, shall we say, get going in the morning.

I woke up hot and sweating a few hours later.  Naturally, the first thing I did was check my temperature.  It was ninety-nine point nine degrees, so I was running a slight fever.  I took some acetaminophen and went back to bed.  I woke up the next morning feeling slightly less lousy than the night before, but still lousy and I still had a fever.  Even though I didn’t have any other symptoms, the thought of ‘oh crap, maybe I caught the coronavirus’ popped into my head.  I let my roomies know I wasn’t feeling well and stayed in my room all day because one can’t be too careful.  I also started wearing a mask whenever I left my room. 

If there’s one thing that really sucks, it’s being sick over the weekend.  Granted, I didn’t have any big plans for that weekend, but still.  My temperature was almost normal on Sunday morning and I felt better.  I even managed to go to the bathroom again, and let’s just say everything went as planned.  Even though I didn’t have any other symptoms, out of an abundance of caution, I got a quick coronavirus test that afternoon.  Much to my relief, the test came back negative.  I have to say that having to administer the coronavirus test on your own is kind of crappy.

On Monday morning, I let my boss know that I had been sick over the weekend.  I was told to work from home for the day and call HR.  Now, I don’t know if they were busy or just being a typical HR department, but it took quite a few calls before I got in touch with somebody, which was annoying.  Once I finally got through, HR told me to get a lab test and get back to them with the results.  I did a lab test that afternoon, but as they take two days to process, I was going to be working at home for the next few days.  At this point, I was completely over my fever, so I was pretty sure that all was well, but there was still a little nagging thought sitting in the back of my mind, certainly enough for me to keep wearing my mask at home.  Two days later, the test came back negative, and HR told me I could return to the office on Thursday.  I found it just a little odd that they didn’t have me work from home for two weeks or even one, for that matter, but at the same time, I wasn’t going to argue.

I was actually a little sad upon being told to come back to the office; Working from home over those three days had been kind of nice. The experience even got me thinking that maybe working from home full-time might not be a bad idea after all…

This has been 300 Seconds, the next episode will be posted after I check my temperature just one last time.  For more wonderfully weird and witty words I’ve written, visit Eduardo Soliz dot com, and I thank you for listening!  Be Good, Take Care, and God Bless.

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300 Seconds Episode #111: “My Coronavirus Story Part 5: Back to Irk”

NOTE: This is a transcript of a podcast for those with hearing difficulties, those that prefer to read, and those who would prefer to not hear the sound of my voice. 😉

Click here to listen to this episode!

You are listening to ‘300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz,’ and this is episode number 111: “My Coronavirus Story Part 5: Back to Irk,” so let the 300 Seconds begin!

After being laid off from my job back in April, or a few episodes ago, as the case may be, I started looking for a new job online, and, as many of you Dear Listeners are aware, the pickings in 2020 are pretty slim.  As in-person job fairs are out of the question right now, I attended online virtual job fairs which were just as virtually terrible as the real-life ones, so score one for consistency.

From May to September, I had a total of three interviews including one of those awful virtual ones where you awkwardly record answers to questions into your webcam.  Fortunately, the third time was the charm, and thus, I started a new contract-to-maybe-there’s-possibly-a-chance-you-might-just-could-be-hired gig a few weeks ago.  It would be an understatement to say that I’ve had to make just a few life adjustments in going back to living a nine-to-five life.

The biggest and most immediate adjustment I had to make was to my sleeping habits.  In my effort to lose weight, I had been waking up early in order to go for a walk in the mornings.  But as the Texas summer got hotter and hotter, I shifted to walking in the evenings which of course, meant sleeping in.  According to Google Maps, my new office was about thirty miles away.  That meant that I had to wake up pretty early to make it to work on time.  Funny thing about me:  I don’t have trouble waking up early.  Once I hear my alarm, I’m up.  No problem there.  But as a night owl, going to bed early is something of a challenge.  So while I might be up at five-thirty in the morning, I won’t exactly be “up and at ‘em.”

Thus, a morning commute became a thing again, and of course, with a commute comes traffic.  I had to drive from one side of San Antonio to the other, so my commute was going to be thirty miles of suck regardless of which route I took.  I eventually settled into taking the route that presented the most opportunities to stop for breakfast along the way.  Being stuck in a traffic jam is much easier to deal with when you have a Breakfast on a Bun from Whataburger along for the ride.

My new job has me working in an office, so that means I have to ‘mask up’ every day.  Since my pandemic travels up to this point were limited to the grocery store and the occasional drive-thru window, I had been making do with a few cloth masks, or the occasional shop towel mask whenever those were in the wash.  I now needed enough masks so that I could wear a different one each day.  I also had to get masks with solid colors or patterns that would be office-appropriate.  Of course, in the process of doing so, I ended up buying one or two that fit too tight because I have a big head.  Another fun big head thing that I have to deal with was that some masks would begin to irritate my ears after several hours of wearing.  Fortunately, I improvised an ‘ear saver’ using a rubber band and a pair of paper clips.

If there is one thing that I definitely need at work, it’s coffee.  I rarely drink it outside of the office, but when it’s provided by the company, then I am more than happy to partake.  When working from home, I would enjoy an occasional cup of Nescafe to keep the neurons firing.  I don’t know if this is how the new office works or if this is a virus thing, but there isn’t any coffee available at the office.  There aren’t any vending machines where I can grab a soda, either, and at the risk of being ‘that guy:’ I CAN’T WORK UNDER THESE CONDITIONS. 

Where there’s a will, there’s a way, but Will’s not here so I have to solve my own problems.  I happen to have a mini-fridge that holds six cans of soda.  I’d purchased it during my days as a field technician, but that’s a story for another time.  In any case, problem solved!  Almost.  In the interest of watching my budget, I bought generic diet cola.  I quickly began to notice that I wasn’t feeling the caffeine boost that I was accustomed to getting from a soda in the afternoon; my metaphorical tail was still dragging after chugging one down.  I randomly checked the ingredients on the can one day and discovered, to my horror, that generic soda contained less than half the caffeine of the name brand stuff.  I guess that’s why it costs a buck and a quarter for a six-pack!

This has been 300 Seconds, the next episode will be posted after I set my alarm.  For more witty words written by me, visit Eduardo Soliz dot com, and I thank you for listening.  Be good, take care and God Bless.

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300 Seconds Episode #109: “My Coronavirus Story Part 4: The New Sort-of Kind-of Not-Quite Normal”

NOTE: This is a transcript of a podcast for those with hearing difficulties, those that prefer to read, and those who would prefer to not hear the sound of my voice. 😉

Click here to listen to this episode!

You are listening to ‘300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz,’ and this is episode number 109: “My Coronavirus Story Part 4: The New Sort-of Kind-of Not-Quite Normal,” so let the 300 Seconds begin!

The week after the office I worked at closed, the city of San Antonio went on lockdown.  Thus, I had to adjust to not only working at home, but also to being at home nearly all of the time.  I am a bit of a homebody, so being stuck at home wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was still annoying to not be able to go anywhere. 

One of the first things I did was to designate the dinner table as my home office in a feeble effort to keep some division between my home and work life.  For the most part, it worked fairly well, since my dining room table had not been getting much use anyway.  The only problem that came up was that I quickly learned how uncomfortable it was to be sitting on my unpadded wooden dining room chairs for several hours.  I eventually abandoned the dining room table for a cubbyhole in the apartment, which, while offering less desk space, did have an office chair that was much more comfortable to sit in.

Like most folks, I didn’t own any masks when the pandemic started hitting home.  I figured that if nothing else, I would have to eventually go to the grocery store, so I thought it would be a good idea to get some masks and be a responsible member of the community.  Additional motivation was provided by the fact that I have a few boxes checked off on my ‘if you catch this, you’re in deep trouble’ bingo card.

After doing some searching, I ordered some masks online from independent makers, but I needed something to tide me over while those got made and shipped.  My first attempt was the ‘cut up an old t-shirt’ method.  That ended up being a spectacular failure because I have a big head topped with a mass of thick curly hair.  Even working with a size double-XL shirt, I was unable to get it completely around my 23 and a half inch melon.  I’m also not the best with scissors, so there’s a pretty strong chance that I cut the pattern the wrong way.  I eventually found a bandana from high school that worked until I bought a roll of shop towels and made my own with staples and rubber bands.  Eventually the masks I ordered did arrive, and yes they did have animal prints on them.

Naturally, I have to mention the toilet paper thing.  Holy cats, if I live to be a hundred years old I will never understand what the hey that business was all about.  Fortunately for me, I live alone and my digestive system is fairly regular, so I don’t use too much, I don’t think.  That said, I didn’t want to be caught off guard, so I started keeping track of how long certain things, like toilet paper, lasted.  Originally, I was concerned with how long a roll of toilet paper, a bottle of hand soap, and a tank full of gasoline would last.  Gasoline wouldn’t have come to mind, but San Antonio flipped its collective lid back in 2017 and caused a shortage after Hurricane Harvey out of self-induced hysteria.  I was pleased to discover that a roll of toilet paper and a twelve-ounce bottle of hand soap each lasted about three weeks.   I was also happy to discover I was getting two months to a tank of gas in my Honda CR-V because I was only driving to the grocery store.  At one point I did have to hunt for toilet paper for a friend who was running low.  Lucky for her, I was fortunate enough to find some and save the day. 

A nice habit that I picked up during this time was walking to the nearby dollar store to pick up things in between my main grocery store trips.  At first, the pleasant weather of late March and April made for some nice afternoon walks, but as the Texas summer started to do its thing, those trips got pushed further and further into the evening until eventually I would wait until after sundown to head out.

Of course, once I was done with work, I had to do something for entertainment, so I’ve been watching movies from my DVD and Blu-ray collection, and even picking up a few new ones to while the evenings away.  I’ve actually been keeping track of what I’ve been watching, and I’m up to about eighty movies so far, not counting repeated viewings of Casino and Goodfellas.  I’ve also gone through all the original cast Star Trek and the first series of Batman movies.  I think I’ll try Star Wars next, but I’m not sure how far I want to go with those.  I recently reactivated my NetFlix account and have enjoyed the new shows that my friends have been talking about, like BNA, Beastars, and Warrior Nun.

Except for going to the grocery store or to restaurants and fast food joints for take-out, I spend all my time at home.  As I’m sure many of you will also attest, the days began to blur together.  Weekends suddenly became meaningless, because there was nothing happening to look forward to.  No comic cons, no camping trips, no local theme park visits, no casino trips, not even a trip to the mall. Instead, Saturdays and Sundays became the days that I didn’t sign into my work laptop…yippee.

And, as fate would have it, not long after I got settled into that new normal, it was thrown out of the window after I got laid off.  If you’d like to hear the gory details, you can go back two episodes.  Suddenly, instead of sitting at my work laptop hunting for trouble tickets to work on, the better part of my day was now filled with absolutely nothing!  

This has been 300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz, the next episode will be posted after I mail back my work laptop.  Subscribe via your favorite app, and visit Eduardo Soliz dot com for more wonderfully weird words written by me!  As always, I thank you for listening! 

Be Good, Take Care, and God Bless.

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300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz, Episode #107: “My Coronavirus Story Part 3: Laid Off”

NOTE: This is a transcript of a podcast for those with hearing difficulties, those that prefer to read, and those who would prefer to not hear the sound of my voice. 😉

Click here to listen to this episode!

If you are looking for a professional voice to represent your business, your organization, or yourself, send me an email at edsoliz@gmail.com.

And now, on with the show:

You are listening to ‘300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz,’ and this is episode number 107, “My Coronavirus Story Part 3, Laid Off,” so let the 300 Seconds begin!

April the 30th of this miserable year of 2020 was just another day at home in this weird time that is both very interesting and yet uninteresting at the same time.  The company I work at had closed all of its offices back in mid-March as the nation started trying to come to grips with the pandemic.  My job, as a deskside technician, was to be the ‘boots on the ground’ in the San Antonio office, but now that the office had been closed, my workdays consisted of sitting at my dining room table on my work laptop hunting through open incidents for something to do.  Thanks to the lock-down, the number of remote techs working from home had multiplied five-fold, so the pickings were very slim.

A fellow tech had posted a ticket into our group chat asking for help, so I seized the opportunity and raised my virtual hand. I had been hired in December and there was still a lot that I didn’t know.  Thus, I began searching through the knowledge base so I that wouldn’t be flying completely blind when I got in touch with the customer.

I had barely started to read the first article when the message: “Do you have time for a call?” popped up on my screen.  I frowned at my dumb luck.  Of course, the boss has to ping me the one time that I actually had something to do.  But, you know, he’s the boss, so I replied:  “Sure, I have time.” 

“Okay, I’m sending a meeting request.”

I logged onto the video chat to find my boss and two other people that I had never met before on my screen.

My Spidey-sense started tingling.  The first thought that popped in my head was:  This is it, I’m being let go.  In my mind, the two newcomers were the online equivalent of someone bringing a security guard with a cardboard box to your desk.

Once my boss introduced the pair of morose-looking gentlemen as being from Human Resources, my internal estimate of whether I was about to be let go from my job went from ninety-nine percent to one hundred.   The only question now was going to be whether I was going to be laid off or fired. 

The HR guys introduced themselves; one of them said that he was sorry we were meeting for the first time under these circumstances.  I almost cracked a joke about this being the last time we were meeting, too. I kinda wish I had.  Maybe it would have lightened the mood a little.  Then again, it may have also made the unfortunate proceedings about to happen even more awkward.  I chose to be a professional and held my tongue, which was probably the smarter thing to do.

After introducing them, my boss pretty much let the HR guys take over the meeting.  He didn’t even bother looking into the camera, which was off to the side of his PC.  I later found out that I wasn’t the only person to be let go, so perhaps he was setting up those meetings as well.  I can’t say I envied him having that job, but at least he still had one.

Having been fired before as well as having been part of a mass layoff, I knew what was coming.   We’re very sorry it had to come to this.  Business needs.  This wasn’t planned in advance.  Blah blah blah.  The only part I was interested in was whether I was being laid off or fired.  I did a Mr. Spock eyebrow-raise at what I thought were some questionable statements, such as:

This is about business needs, which translates to: This is about saving money.  That statement would have gone over better if I hadn’t had to sit in on an hour-long presentation with our CFO just the day before where he mentioned that the company was doing fairly well in spite of the lockdown.  Yeah, that definitely does not computer.

This wasn’t planned in advance: Yeah, I don’t buy this for a second, especially given that it was a large company.  Large companies never do anything quickly.  It had been a month and a half since the office had closed down, and I wonder if there was some threshold they were waiting to hit before dropping the axe.  If that statement was true, a company that just drops people at the drop of a hat isn’t the kind of company I want to work for.  Granted, that issue seems to have taken care of itself, but still. 

There were also a whole mess of things involving health insurance that I won’t go into here because this is 300 seconds and not 600.  For those interested, the gory details of that mess are posted on my blog at Eduardo Soliz dot com.

Near the end of that whole sad affair, I was told to not mention anything to my coworkers, because others were going to be let go as well.  Sure.  A box would be shipped out so that I could return my work laptop and charger.  I also had an access card for the office and a skeleton key, so I offered to get in touch with my local manager to return those items to her.  I was told: “I know it sounds silly, but put those things in the box and mail them over to Milwaukee.”  In my mind I thought: That doesn’t sound silly. It sounds stupid.  But, I didn’t fight it.

The meeting done with, began to clean up the improvised home workspace that would go back to being my dining room table.  I quickly discovered that my work access had been revoked, so score one for efficiency.

I sighed, logged out of my work laptop for the last time, and then came to an unfortunate realization:

I had forgotten to reassign that ticket.  Oh well.

This has been 300 Seconds, the next episode will be posted after I visit the job websites.  For more witty words written by me, visit Eduardo Soliz dot com, and I thank you for listening.  Be good, take care and God Bless.

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300 Seconds Episode #98: “Job Search Blues- Recruiters and Staffing Agencies”

Listen to the episode here!

You are listening to ‘300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz,’ and this is episode number 98, “Job Search Blues: Recruiters and Staffing Agencies,” so let the 300 Seconds begin!

I will start off by saying that I’ve dealt with a bunch of recruiters over the course of my career.  Some good, some bad, and of course, a bunch in between.  Naturally, I consider the ones that got me a job “good ones” but at the same time there were a few that did a great job, even though ultimately, I didn’t end up getting the job.  Of course, I’ll be focusing on the more sucky ones because, well, that’s more entertaining, and after two months of being out of work, I’m starting to get just a little stir-crazy, so on with the show.

I’ve established that looking for a job online kinda sucks and job fairs kinda suck too.  Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone!  There are companies and people out there that will be more than happy to help you find a job…sort of.

Oh, recruiting agencies and their recruiters.  If you’re online, you have have a pulse, and your work history is longer than five days, you’ve likely been e-mailed or called by a recruiter at some point in your career.  These overly enthusiastic people will talk to you like they’re your best friend.  Many are genuinely friendly, but at the same time, a lot them sound like car salesmen.

After introducing themselves, the recruiter will then ask if you are looking for a job.  If you answer yes, then they’ll tell you about position and requirements, and where it’s at, how much it pays and all that wonderful stuff.  Often, they’ll also send you an email with job details, and ask you to send back a current resume in response, and then you never ever, hear from them again, which kinda sucks.

It’s a lousy thing to do, it’s unprofessional, as well as a bunch of other mean things that I’d rather not say.  I need to say that I don’t know how these people work.  For all I know they’re calling fifty people a day and don’t have the time to call all them back to say ‘sorry, we don’t need you right now.’  I get that.  At the same time, I’m pretty sure there is some kind of computerized system keeping track of all this stuff.  If that computer would just send me an email saying : “Sorry, it didn’t work out,” that would be great.  On the rare occasion when a recruiter DOES keep in touch after the fact, I make sure to let them know that I appreciate their professionalism.  Sadly, that’s more the exception rather than the rule.

One thing that always throws me off is when I get multiple calls from different people at the same staffing agency within the same week.  Once again, I don’t know how things work at those places.  I don’t know if potential hires are assigned to a specific recruiter, but when that second guy or gal calls from the same recruiting agency, in my head I’m thinking: “Waitaminute, isn’t the first person already working with me?”  The conversation usually gets a little bit awkward after that.

It’s also fun when they don’t bother to check if you aren’t already in their system.  Had a fun talk with one of those lately.  What made that situation even more maddeing was that I had actually WORKED for that agency years ago.

Equally annoying is when the recruiter does not read your online profile and tries to submit you for a job that you are clearly not qualified for.  I have some interest in being a technical writer, so if an entry-level opportunity were to come about, or if someone was willing to give me a shot…HINT HINT…I’d take it.  I have to wonder, though, about a recruiter that submits me for a tech writer role that requires years of experience, even after I send them my resume that indicates very little actual tech writing experience.  Again, I don’t know how these people or these agencies work, so I wonder if they’re just trying to meet some quota when we go through those motions.

Lately, I’ve been getting a bunch of calls from recruiters that are from, to put it politely: “out of town.”  I’ve been contacted by so many of them, at this point that I could set my watch to the routine:  First, a phone call comes in from some random state.  I tend to not answer out-of-state calls, so after about a minute or so, I find a voicemail waiting for me.  Upon listening to the voicemail, I can very easily tell that the caller, to put it politely again, does not speak the language.  I will confess to taking particular delight at how these people stumble over and completely mangle my name.  I’ve gotten used to the gringo pronunciation of ‘Edwardo’ by now, but folks from a certain part of the world have no idea what to do with it.  By the time I have listened to the voice mail, and deleted it, an email will have popped into one of my accounts from that same person featuring poor grammar and a position I have absolutely no interest in.

I then block the phone number, report that email address as spam, and wait for the process to repeat itself.  Sorry guys, but no thanks, and I’d rather you not come again.

This has been 300 Seconds, the next episode will be posted after I add another phone number to the block list.  I am Eduardo Soliz, check out Eduardo Soliz dot com for more podcasts and short fiction, and I thank you for listening!

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Books, BUSINESS, Computers, CREATIVE, Eduardo Soliz, JUST SAYING, Nine to Five Lives, Podcasting, PODCASTS, Super-Short Storytime, TECH, WORDS, WORK, Writing

Super-Short Storytime: “The Pit of Success”


Welcome to Super-Short Storytime, lovers of literature and fans of fiction!  I am Eduardo Soliz, the author and narrator of the fantastically frank tale that you are about to hear.

Like other folks who fashion fiction, inspiration for my stories often comes from real life. This particular tale was inspired my time spent in the corporate jungle. This story is part of “Nine to Five Lives,” a free e-book which can be downloaded from eduardosoliz.com, this big business brief bears the title of: “The Pit of Success”

Alan was particularly glad to be at work today. After months of working overtime, finishing projects ahead of schedule, and just a little bit of schmoozing, he had been deemed worthy to be promoted to work in “The Pit.” The Pit was a special area where the best of the best worked on secret projects that represented the future of the company.

As he struggled to hold up a cardboard box that held his personal items, Alan held his badge above the doorknob to the entrance to the Pit as he had been told. It was a nondescript door that he had walked by every day without ever thinking about what was inside. A click sounded as the lock released. Alan balanced the box on one hand and used his other one to quickly open the door.

He entered the room and closed the door behind him. But for a single light that was above him, the room was completely dark except for some blinking LED lights scattered about. A voice suddenly came from the ceiling. Alan recognized it as belonging to the supervisor that he had conducted a phone interview with the week before: “Leave that box by the door, Mister Johnson. You will not need those things here.”  It said.

Alan did as he was instructed. He nervously looked around for somebody, but the office appeared to be unoccupied. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw rows upon rows of cubicles, just like in his previous office.

“Please proceed to your new cubicle, Mister Johnson.” The supervisor’s voice said. A small light turned on in the room. Alan started to make his way towards the light. As he passed by the other cubicles, he noticed that each one contained an egg-shaped pod just large enough to hold a person. Alan recognized a few of the names on the name tags as former coworkers that had been promoted before him, much to his chagrin.

“You have gone above and beyond your peers in your devotion to this company, Mister Johnson. You will now become a part of the company as you had desired. Take your seat and join us.” The voice said. Alan peered into the interior pod and hesitated.

“This isn’t what I had in mind. Does everyone have to sit in these…things, here?” Alan asked, looking up at the ceiling.

“It is necessary to make you part of the company. You are free to return to your previous position if you wish. We can always find somebody else to fill this position.” The voice answered.

Hell, no. I worked too hard for this. Alan thought. He climbed into the pod. The leather seat within was surprisingly comfortable; he relaxed as he settled into it. Without warning, the pod closed above him. A screen built into the pod’s wall lit up and a keyboard and trak-ball slid in front of him from the side. Well, this is kinda neat, Alan thought as he logged into his terminal and started to work.

Alan noticed an odd flicker occasionally coming from the screen. It annoyed him at first, but it eventually became oddly comforting. He continued working and quickly discovered that he could do everything inside the pod, even attend meetings. He only left the pod to go to the bathroom and eat lunch.

Hours later, the clock on Alan’s computer screen indicated that it was time for the workday to end, but he had no desire to leave. Alan barely overheard his former coworkers leaving through the hallway and thought about his home and family for a moment, but the thought was quickly squelched by the messages that had been delivered to him by the hypnotic series of flashes that he had been subjected to on the screen.

YOU ARE PART OF THE COMPANY.
THERE IS NOTHING ELSE.
THERE IS WORK TO DO.

“There is work to do.” Alan softly said to nobody as he typed away. A message flashed on his screen: technicians would be coming in an hour to make him one with the pod so that he would never have to leave at all.

Alan smiled.

THE END.

This company definitely brings new meaning to the term ‘human resource,’ and this is one future that I hope never comes to pass. This has been Super-Short Storytime! Visit eduardo soliz dot com for more stories and free e-book downloads, and remember listeners, always keep that work-life balance!

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300 Seconds Episode #97 – “Job Search Blues: Job Fairs”

Listen to the episode here!

Leave the real world behind for a few minutes by listening to “Super-Short Storytime” at EduardoSoliz.com/podcasts or find it on your favorite podcast app.  And now, on with the show…

You are listening to ‘300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz,’ and this is episode number 97, “Job Search Blues: Job Fairs,” so let the 300 Seconds begin!

I spent the last episode talking about what a big pain in the posterior looking for and applying for a job online can be.  Fortunately, there is a place where you can go to shake hands, speak to a real person, and get that personal touch.  The job fair, which is in itself a different level of hell.

I should start out by saying that my experiences are colored by the fact that I am looking for a job in Information Technology, and in general, job fairs tend to suck for IT jobs.  At a small job fair, I’ll consider myself lucky if just ONE of the businesses is looking for any sort of IT position.  If more than one company at a job fair is looking for a technical support guy or a programmer, I’m thinking that I need to buy a lottery ticket because it’s my lucky day.

Unfortunately, when companies do drag their IT guys out of the basement and put them in front of people, they get to experience how socially inept they can be.  I’ve had multiple awkward moments at job fairs with IT people, possibly because I’ve been told by people I’ve worked with that I sometimes come off as intimidating.

One person refused to look me in the eye after I let him know what I thought of their pay rates.  Another one froze up after I handed my resume to him and introduced myself.  So yeah, my people skills might use a little fine-tuning.

And then there are those instances when the IT guys can’t be dragged out of the basement and so I get to spend a few minutes trying to talk shop to a HR gal or a supervisor that has no earthly idea what I’m saying.  Those conversations often end with the company representative telling me to go to their website and apply there…which completely defeats the point of the job fair.

I also love it when I walk up to a company’s table and the representative just starts blabbing away about their wonderful company and how wonderful it would be to work for them and how much they love it there and blah blah blah.  After their delightful speech, when I’m finally able to get a word in, I let them know that I’m looking for a computer job.  At that point, the air gets completely sucked out of the room when they sheepishly say: “Oh. We aren’t hiring for computer people.”  So maybe you should ask me what kind of job I’m looking for   before you give me the sales pitch, guys, I’m just saying.

Job fairs are a good idea in general, but for folks looking to hire computer professionals, they don’t seem to work as well as they should.  Or maybe it’s just me.  It definitely wouldn’t be the first time!

This has been 300 Seconds, the next episode will be posted after I register for the next job fair.  I am Eduardo Soliz.  For more podcasts, and short fiction, and my blog, visit EduardoSoliz.com and thank you for listening!

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300 Seconds Episode #96 – “Job Search Blues: The Internet”

Listen to the episode here!

A quick note before I begin: This episode was written prior to my being hired at my current job. And now, on with the show:

This is ‘300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz,’ and this is episode number 96, “Job Search Blues: Job Hunting on the Internet,” so let the 300 Seconds begin!

Complaining about one’s job is practically an American tradition, and I am certainly more than happy to let anyone within earshot know how I feel about my nine-to-five. I am currently in between jobs, and since I don’t have a job to complain about at the moment, I am going to spend the next few episodes complaining instead, about the delightful process of finding a job in this here 21st Century.

On the surface, looking for a job should be a breeze these days. Instead of flipping through want ads in the newspaper, we now have an overabundance of job websites out there that will be more than happy to take your resume and shoot it away to the four corners of the Earth. Instead of driving to an office and leaving a resume at the HR department, each company now has their own website that is more than likely is run by someone like Taleo or workday. Hooray for progress.

Monster.com, indeed.com, careerbuilder.com, dice.com…to see their advertisements, you would think that they all have the job of your dreams waiting for you. Just set up your account, upload your resume, and the job of your dreams will soon be yours!

As someone once famously said: Don’t believe the hype.

On paper, a job board is a Good Thing: It’s a place where, thanks to the Power Of The Internet, you can now search for an exact job title with an exact salary, within an exact number of miles from our home and find exactly what you’re looking for…maybe. I’ve done some programming, so I do know how dicey sorting through a database can be, but there’s gotta be SOMETHING in these algorithms that says: “Hey, this person has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and over a decade of IT experience: Maybe they aren’t terribly interested in construction jobs.” Or how when I look for ‘technical support’ jobs, I get job listings for pharmacy technicians and veterinary technicians. Forget “artificial intelligence,” we need “artificial common sense.”

Since the job boards kinda suck, instead you decide to skip the middleman and visit the website of a company that you would like to work for. If you’re lucky, there will be a link that says “Careers” on the home page that takes you directly to a page with a link that takes you to the job listings. If you aren’t lucky, you to see get a webpage full of stock photos of happy people that probably don’t work at the company at all. This page will list all of the departments, the cities, the benefits, the descriptions of jobs and maybe one or two testimonials from real employees. Also: Real attractive employees, companies don’t want you to think they hire ugly people. You will then spend at least a minute trying to a link to the actual jobs.

Once you find the specific job that you are looking for, the fun part begins: The Application. Step one is always straightforward: Your personal information. Cool. Step two: Upload your resume. Okay. Now type in your work history, that is, all the information that is on your resume. Yeah. Even though you’ve just sent them an electronic copy of your resume, they want to you hand-type all of that same information into their system. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that larger employers don’t have their own job sites, instead they use a third party like Taleo or Workday, and they both SUCK. They suck because if you apply to multiple companies that use one of those third party sites, you get to re-type in the same information FOR EACH FUCKING COMPANY. At this point in my career I have probabl about a dozen Taleo profiles and a half-dozen for Workday. How hard would it be for those guys to let me enter my profile ONCE and just re-submit it to different companies? I’m just sayin.

Of course, after you have checked every box, selected every option, filled out every field, and clicked ‘Submit,’ then there’s the waiting. And along those lines, this is the end of the epsode

This has been 300 Seconds, the next episode will be posted after I type in eighteen years of job experience into an application website…again . I am Eduardo Soliz, if you’d like to hear more 300 seconds subscribe via your favorite podcatcher and check out my website at Eduardo Soliz dot com for more. Thank you for listening!

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