Cell phone interviews: a tale of what wasn't

A long, long time ago (yesterday), in a land far away (my office), I was preparing for my second round of phone interviews for a position in Chicago. On Monday the woman I had interviewed with the week before called me again to set up an interview with her boss, the SVP. "Yippee!" I thought. The position is one I'm definitely really excited about, and I'm glad that I made it to round two. We scheduled the interview for Tuesday at 3pm central time (that's 4pm eastern time), and I even left my French class early to make sure I had time to compose myself and not speak broken French when I picked up the phone.

I had booked a conference room in our office (actually, it's more like a closet, which is why it was open, because no one uses it except for phone calls.) I went in, shut the door, checked the "bars" on my cell phone (there were 4) AND my blackberry (also four) and sat down with my notes in front of me.

And waited.

And waited.

I surfed the internet on my blackberry.

I called M on my blackberry (not wanting to use my cell phone in case she called), asking him what I should do. Wait, he said. Awesome.

At this point it's now 4:30 my time, and I'm starting to think that maybe she had said 4 Chicago time. So I decide that must be what happened and I'll keep waiting.

So I wait.

And wait.

I happen to check my gmail on my blackberry. And there, looking up at me, is an email from the woman who was going to interview me. It said something about "sorry we couldn't connect today so let me know your availability Friday." Reader, I have no availability Friday...I'll be on a plane to sunny Florida!! My heart sank. Awesome. "Unfortunately I don't have any availability on Friday but am still available now if you are" I type back, thinking it's sort of the nail in the coffin for this job. I call M again, about to cry, and then slowly sulk back to my desk.

As I complain to my co-worker (everyone knows I'm leaving) about what happened, my phone vibrates. What? Voicemail??? I quickly walk into a semi-private room and listen to the voicemail. It was her. At 4:15 my time, just 15 minutes late, apologizing for being late and asking me to call her back. ARE YOU KIDDING ME???!!!!! I HATE MY PHONE!!!!!!! Apparently it likes to pull on my heart strings by TELLING me that I have full service when in actuality I have NO service. The call never showed up on my call log, and I got the voicemail AN HOUR LATER!!

I call her back, apologizing profusely, explaining that my phone decided not to work (how lame is that?) and asked her to call me back if she was available either at the number I gave her or my blackberry number. I also emailed her back, apologizing for so many emails, to see if we could set something up for Wednesday or Thursday.

Thankfully the story has a happy ending, in that we'll be talking this afternoon. But for about an hour there, I thought I was done for. I thought about suing my phone company for false advertising (I won't say which company, but it begins with an A- and ends with a -T&T) about how they have so many bars in so many places, except for those places that you actually need them, like your office which is in the middle of downtown in a major city. But since I'm such a loving and forgiving person, I decided not to take it up with them and will instead just blog about my frustration. And cross my fingers that it doesn't happen again.

Here's hoping the story ends in living happily ever after with a new job in Chicago.