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Before any one becomes concerned about me counting up negative experiences in this city, I would like to state that I fully intend on writing notes about good experiences in Boston, too. The hope is that the good ones will far outweigh the bad ones. :)
So, to begin.
I have been applying to jobs through the BC staff employment website, which is, to say the least, rather pitiful in the technologically-up-to-date arena. In addition to not accepting my first attempts at uploading my resume, once it uploaded, I think the hiring managers were unable to access it. :\ However, they fixed that problem with a system upgrade, which meant I had to re-submit my resume. Fine.
And.. I applied for a few more jobs which opened. Cool.
Then, yesterday I get a call from one of those illusive hiring managers requesting an interview!! How exciting! I had only applied for the job Monday and they called the next day! The lady had scheduled the interview for today at 2 pm, gave me the address and her office number in case I needed to contact her. She also mentioned that her building was an off-campus building, which BC leases, 1280 Boylston Street. That's cool too.
But.. little did I know, that there were THREE 1280 Boylston Street addresses in the Boston area (not the CITY of Boston, but "Boston" in the same way people say "Seattle" to mean all those little cities outside and around Seattle). Our GPS wasn't very informative on that point, so we took the T all the way out to the Back Bay area (near Fenway Park) looking for "1280 Boylston St, on Rt 9, across the street from Legal Seafood," which is exactly what the lady told me.
Now, normally, if our GPS had found a place that was not near BC, I'd wonder. But the lady had said it was off campus, and that BC leases the building.. so we went our merry way.
There was no 1280 on Boylston street out in the Back Bay area. It was a McDonald's parking lot.
There was no Legal Seafood on that block either. There was one on the 800 block, which we walked to, couldn't find, asked around about, found, and checked the building across the street to see in there were any BC offices in the building. Nope.
We checked the map--perhaps the address was 1280 E Boylston, or W Boylston, and we were just on the wrong side. No... Boylston only goes up to the 300s on the other side of the street.
Meanwhile, I've called the lady at the number she gave me three times, and left a message for her, "Hi, Marylou, I'm terribly sorry, but I must have heard the address wrong, since I can't seem to find your building. Please give me a call back... yada yada yada"
Finally.. after determining that there are NO BC offices ANYwhere in the neighborhood, I get a call from the lady. I'm 45 minutes late--without having successfully contacted anyone I'm inconveniencing. Amid my profuse apologies for being stupid and not finding the office, she tells me
"I'm at the doctors office." so that's why she didn't answer her phone.
"My colleagues have been waiting for you all this time." DUH! Why didn't you give me a phone number other than yours?! I would have called them, I WANTED to call them! I would have been embarrassed, but at least they wouldn't have had to wait so long! GAH!
"I though that, since you applied, you knew where the office was." Well, no, actually, since the building was off campus, the only "location" listing in the job post (which was all the info I had) was the Human Relations office, a building ON campus. Grrr...
I told her that I was very sorry, and that if they didn't want to re-schedule, I completely understood. She told me
"We'll have to straighten this out tomorrow." Yeah.. there goes that job. :Þ
So lessons learned:
--Always ask for the zip code when using a GPS. One of the 1280 Boylston addresses is in Boston (proper), another is in Chestnut Hill, and another is in Newton. Sheesh.
--Always get more than one contact number, such as the secretary's number (oh wait, that's the job I applied for--maybe they didn't have one?)
--Always Praise the Lord. As much as this was a frustrating experience, I can't say I'm driven to tears or violence at the potential loss of opportunity. I seem to have a gut feeling that I'll still get something. :) God has a plan, right? Hopefully, I didn't just blow it!
In the picture, you might be able to see two blue upside-down tear drop markers. The one of the left is where we were supposed to go. The one on the right is where we did go. Oops!
--Always get more than one contact number, such as the secretary's number (oh wait, that's the job I applied for--maybe they didn't have one?)
--Always Praise the Lord. As much as this was a frustrating experience, I can't say I'm driven to tears or violence at the potential loss of opportunity. I seem to have a gut feeling that I'll still get something. :) God has a plan, right? Hopefully, I didn't just blow it!
In the picture, you might be able to see two blue upside-down tear drop markers. The one of the left is where we were supposed to go. The one on the right is where we did go. Oops!
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