The Cool, the Nerve-Wracking, and the Office Tour
So, as some of you may have heard from Stardock's IRC channel, I recently applied for a job at Stardock as a programmer. This is my story of the process, from the moment I woke up, to the moment I got back from the interview. Full names will not be given away, in order to protect the innocent. Their home addresses and cell phone numbers will be posted, along with their high school transcripts, just for full faith and credit, of course. Exaggeration of the truth and the occasional total rip of anything factual is, of course, par for the course in my story. It's my story dammit, I can do what I want with it. Oh, and one more thing, ignore the change in tenses. Paragraphs will switch from physical descriptions of certain actions in the past tense, my thought process will happen in present tense, and any spoken dialogue will also occur in past tense. That's just how it's going to be. Deal with it.
[Friday, March 26, 2004 :: 10am]
Gawr.... Rawrwwwrwrr... Bah! What the hell was that dream about? All I remember is that one hot girl, and some people chasing us and... God dammit, forgot already. Shit! It's already 10am!? What the hell happened to my damn alarm clock? Another week, another instance of sleeping through Engineering 100. Oh well, it's not like I missed anything anyway, might as well go take a shower though, I smelled like that oh-so-pleasant morning ass. Or is that my roommate? Yeah, it's him.
I walked over to open the window, only to find that it was already open, so I just cranked the fan on to high and open the door to let the nice, rainy, humid breeze flow into the room. Soon after that, I realized that I had an interview to get to in about four hours, and that I still had not set-up for a cab to pick me up, gotten a hold of any decently respectable clothes (for some reason, I didn't think going in my trademark jeans and t-shirt would've impressed anyone too much), or even eaten any food... Which is to be expected, given that I had just woken up.
[Fast forward three hours - Friday, March 26, 2004 :: 1pm]
Well, at least the cab-driver is early. Hopefully I don't get stuck with some lowlife cab driver that can't tell his left hand from his right hand, not to mention the fact that he has a major chip on both shoulders. Granted, it would probably be apropos, given the circumstances. Well, hell, I'm leaving an hour early in order to make, what should be, a 15-20 minute trip, so even if the guy is the dumbest human on the face of the Earth, even he should be able to get me there on time. You know, he better not be one of those talk-a-lot cabbies that wants to know all about my past, present and future. I'm nervous as hell about an interview with an amazing company, I don't want to talk about my past to some stranger that I'm paying an obscene amount of money to drive me. And if he was one of those talkers, I would be too nice to tell him to shut up, so I'd just let him ramble. Damn me.
"You order a cab?" A pair of beady little eyes glared at me through a slit in the cab window.
"Yeah, you here for Tren--"
"Get in." He interrupted. So I got in, not one for smalltalk anyway, though letting me finish my question would've been nice.
"Where 'ya heading?"
"Livonia; to a place called 'Stardock.' It's on Farmington Rd., I should be able to find the place with no problem once we get there. The address is something like 12151," I said.
"So, off to Farmington Hills to Stardust..." He mumbled to, what seemed to be, himself.
"No, the place we're going to is called Stardock, S-T-A-R-D-O-C-K, and it's in Livonia," I was nervous enough just thinking about the interview, so patience with people who don't listen wasn't exactly one of my better qualities given the situation.
"Whatever," the cabbie mumbled to himself.
And, lucky me, the cabbie WAS one of those talkers. He wanted to know all sorts of stuff about why I was going to a place called Stardust, and how he took some guy to Southfield, and made a killing off the fare. While he was telling me this, we passted what appeared to be an exit off the freeway into Livonia.
"Isn't that where we're supposed to be getting off?" I asked. I mean, c'mon, I don't want to be late. I'm nervous. And my cab fare is already $30.00. Not to mention the fact that I just remembered I hadn't had any caffeine all day, which was very unfortunate.
"Naw, naw man. We're going to Farmington Hills like ya said."
"Erm, but I needed to go to Livonia; the ROAD we need to get to is called Farmington ROAD." I responded, rather calmly actually. I have a LARGE amount of patience for people, but not for people who don't listen.
"Oh, yeah, well, we can get off up here anyway, I know this place like 'da back of me hand!"
I just shrugged it off. I was already building up a sweat from the mere thought of an interview. Or maybe it had something to do with the incredibly warm and stuffy vehicle I was in. Either way, it wasn't fun. Well, to make a long aggravating story short, the cabbie did not know the place well, and it took until 2:05pm to get me dropped off in front of Stardock's office, with a nice little cab fare of $85.00. Was I angry? You fucking bet I was, but I also wasn't in the mood to argue. I just paid the cabbie, ran away from the cab like it was about to explode, and prayed to the Eternal Kitten of Life (TM) that I would never have to see that man again.
[Friday, March 26, 2004 :: 2:05pm - 5 Minutes Late for the Interview
Walking into Stardock was like walking straight into a den of spiders (I have a major case of arachnaphobia). Not because the people were scary looking (they were all incredibly nice), or because the building was all cob-webby (it was actually pretty "home-y"); but because I felt I was walking into an arena of impending doom where I was bound to show off my own idiocy by just opening my mouth and saying something stupid (which, given my personality, had a 100% chance of happening). I was just praying that the first thing I said wasn't "RAWR!", "Meeeeow!", or "IN SOVIET RUSSIA, BUSINESSES ARE A COMMUNISTIC REGIEME THAT SUCK YOUR SOUL AWAY FROM YOUR VERY BEING!" Thankfully, that didn't happen, I just came up with some line like "Hi........ I'm... uh........"
"Are you Trent?" A nice lady asked.
"Uh, yeah... I think so, anyway."
"Alright, come right into this room, I just need to gather up the team." The team? Dear god, I'll be having the whole team interviewing me?
At that very moment, I heard the door slam behind me. Turns out my confidence made a bolt for the door, and left a little yellow post-it on my brain telling me to meet it out in the parking lot after the interview was over. Well, fuck. That's kind of shitty; knew I should've gotten an electric fence around my body.
While I was going through my own demise inside of my brain, my body had the intelligence to keep on walking until it ended up in what looked like a conference room. Soon afterwards, four foreign bodies had invaded the conference room that was, until that moment, a private sanctuary for me to gather what residue was left from my confidence's quick escape. Unfortunately, the amount of residue was just enough for me to not fall flat on the floor and break into tears screaming something about bunny rabbits invading my mind.
[Friday, March 26, 2004 :: 3:30pm]
Oddly enough, the next thing I knew, the four people that looked to be my interviewers were getting up, and offering to give me a tour of the office, as soon as they had, what sounded to me like, a pow-wow discussing how the interview went (WHAT?! WHAT INTERVIEW? WHAT HAPPENED?!). While they were out of the room, I attempted to call a cab company to arrange for a pick-up in about a half-hour, only to find out that the company didn't do pick-ups in that area (well, you know, they could've told me that when I got out of the cab). So, I had to ask for a phone book from whoever was going to be giving me the office tour. While I was waiting for the interview-crew to return, the components in my memory bank were starting to piece together about what occured during the hour and a half long interview. Turned out that I got a nice introduction to the interview, got to talk about my gaming preferences, and my programming history, and then was grilled on programming questions for a half-hour straight (at which point I realized that I had, evidentally, been sweating like a stuck pig for the last 90 minutes), then was given another easy-question break, had to talk about transportation (which is still an issue, that I'll discuss later), then was launched right back into another half-hour programming question grill-fest.
Then some guy in a white shirt, who I later found out was Nakor from IRC (which would've been great to realize at the time, as I would've felt a bit more comfortable) gave me a tour of the office. The office was definately one of the coolest offices I have ever seen. Everyone was incredibly friendly, and it was just a very nice environment. I didn't get to meet Brad, unfortunately, but I did get to meet some goofball named Larry Kuperman who instantly rejoiced in pointing out my worn tennis shoes. Overall, it was a very refreshing chance of pace from the tough interview, and made me even more interested in the job (which I really wanted from the get-go, and really wanted even more after the whole interview/tour process).
[Friday, March 26, 2004 :: 4:30pm]
Thankfully the cab-ride back was only a mere $40.00, and I had an amazingly cool cab driver. I got back to my dorm to find out that I indeed did get the job as an intern, but first I had to ensure that I could get reliable transportation to and from the office. Which is still an unresolved problem that I am still looking into.Overall, I think the interview went well, and the people at Stardock were as nice/cool as I had imagined them being.
Hope you enjoyed my little story.