Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Whorehouse Experience Needed!

Awhile back, I posted about Mrs. Nitmos’ job in the human resources profession. The entire post came about because of a client who checked the “Spreadsheet” box under computer skills because he had once worked in a hotel maid service…spreading sheets. It seemed so unbelievable to some that, in the comments (and besides all of the usual personal attacks on me), there was mention that the anecdote sounded “apocryphal”.

Of course, at first I thought she mistyped something. That’s not a word right? Turns out, it is…and it means “of questionable authorship or authenticity” or “erroneous”. In other words, I think I was being called a liar. It took me 16 months but I finally got around to looking the word up in a dictionary. I’d post an indignant response to the commenter but I believe her blog has disappeared. Way to run off and hide from the sharp wordsmithing you knew would eventually come your way!

Well, if you didn’t believe that one, you are not going to believe this one so get ready to get your apocryphal on.

Mrs. Nitmos receives resumes by the bucket full. Clearly, most people don’t bother to spell check or match a subject with a predicate in a sentence. Or wipe the brownie smudge off the paper. Or change their professional email from sextool666@hotmail.com to something less…suggestive. They must be too busy finding work to waste time with these little details.

Within every bucket is a peach of a resume. She recently received a resume, several pages in length, from a fellow that decided to use some sort of online resume building tool. You know, the kind where you enter answers to questions and then it spits out a neatly formatted resume at the end of the process. Sounds like a good idea…if you follow the directions. Instead, this gentleman decided to print every page shown on his screen including the computer prompted question with his answer typed into the response box before moving to the next page. Yep, that sounds good. Print.

But that’s not the worst part. Since he clearly didn’t make it to the end of the instructions, he failed to review his final, formatted resume for spelling and content. Why bother right? He already had all of the page prints. Just staple them together, send ‘em off, and wait patiently by the phone with drumming fingers for that V.P. of Marketing position sure to come calling.

The call came in from Mrs. Nitmos’ office. But it was to follow-up on one of his resume response questions.

Mrs. Nitmos: I’m just calling to confirm some of your responses on the resume we received.

Client: Yes.

Mrs. Nitmos: Under skills, you responded with “extensive whorehouse experience.” Was that your intended response?

Client: That’s not a skill? BOO-YEAH, just kidding. No, seriously, I’m a sex tool.

Okay, I made up that last response by the client. Instead, he was embarrassed and horrified...that he had made that mistake in two different places on the page print resume. He meant “warehouse” but apparently some other spelling was on his mind.

Then, there are the names. Mrs. Nitmos received a resume from a woman with the first name “De-a”.

Mrs. Nitmos: Hi, is this “Dea” or “Dee”? I’m sorry, I don’t know how to pronounce your name.

De-a: It’s pronounced “Dedasha”.

I’m not kidding. The dash wasn’t there for window dressing.

I’m proud of Mrs. Nitmos. She’s fighting the good fight in this tough economy. She’s on the front lines trying to find unemployed people work after the greedy bankers have turned them out of their homes. If an employer needs a person with extensive brothel experience, she has someone for that. If an employer requires a person whose hyphenated name is meant to be phonetically pronounced, she has someone for that also. She has someone for everyone.

And I’m not being apocryphal.

Happy trails.
________________________________

The choking chest phlegm would only allow for 2x800 @ 2:50 pace with an extra 400m at 1:18 thrown in. Six miles last night. Nine for tonight...if it ever stops raining.

10 comments:

C said...

Sweet baby jesus, Mrs Nitmos is truly amazing. I would have been fired from that job two seconds in because I wouldn't be able to hold back the snark.

The Boring Runner said...

Nothing is better than misspelling inconvenience with incontinence. Which, I am sure is the dirty bankers fault too.

Ian said...

I think I shall officially change the pronunciation of Half-Fast to HalfDashFast.

Oh, and greed makes the world go round. It's a beautiful thing.

SteveQ said...

I once typed up a resume and added filler for blocking to be corrected later, but didn't notice I'd left in work experience as drummer for Spinal Tap. Yep, I'm an idiot.

The best resume I ever received included under education: "2 years, Stillwater State." Sounds good, unless you know that's Stillwater State Prison.

B. Kramer said...

Holy moly! There are others? Someone was recently telling me about a girl whose name was "La-a" ... pronounced Ladasha. Don't these people know that's a hyphen? It should be Dehyphena and Lahyphena ... and Halfhyphenfast.

Lauren said...

Wow that's pretty intense. Crazy what some people do.

Adam Culp (Crazy Floridian) said...

These are awesome. Had a good laugh about these. Thanks for sharing.

Al's CL Reviews said...

D works with someone whose name is D-Andray (DdashAndray) so Dedasha doesn't surprise me. Maybe they are related.

Jess said...

Wow Mrs. Nitmos' job probably gets a billion times more enjoyable when the economy is in the crapper.

mr loser said...

Funny stuff, except for one minor problem: the Teamsters taught me it's spelled wherehows, not warehouse. And, as you know, you don't argue with Teamsters.