The grand irony is that I work with a bunch of potheads.  It’s all topsy turvy, man!  Black is white, up is down!  Fortunately they’re all really cool people.  They were at my house last night, in fact, when I came home from Buffy rehearsal and found out a party was happening.  It was some dude’s birthday.  All I know is that I ate like a king!  If kings eat buffalo wings, at least.

It’s been probably a year since I really smoked pot, too.  The party at NORML doesn’t count because I was more drunk than anything.  But last night I had two hits and was reminded how much I don’t like smoking pot.  Chances are it was potent stuff, but I spent most of the night being quiet and relatively melancholy.  I wasn’t sad, just … fuzzy.  I felt fuzzy.  Which would’ve been fine if I didn’t have a throbbing headache.  So I was talking to people on AIM with a headache and totally high.  I didn’t like it.

I guess I just have to be in the right situation to enjoy myself.  Oh well.  I feel kinda bad because it works so well for my brother but to each his own, I guess.  I’m just glad I could do it cause there’s no drug testing for me in the immediate future.  Thank god.

But it truly is the end of an era for this blog.  I’m not quitting or anything, don’t worry.  It’s just that when I started this blog on blogspot I was writing tons of posts about my hunting for a job and now I have one!  So I have to alter my intentions!  It just feels so strange!

December is becoming a quiet month for me.  Things are falling into place everywhere.  Next year is going to finally feel like I live (and belong) in Portland.  I can’t wait.

And as I was talking to her I saw this:

click it for larger image

And this was my face:

So naturally I sent a resume.

Hey, before I begin though, just a quick favor to ask: if you like reading this blog, or going to my website, or maybe thinking of horrible jokes about me and my ridiculously orange hair, then I suggest you subscribe to my blog feed.  That way you can keep up with my posts, and I can get a semi-accurate number of how many people are reading.  And more people reading makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  Like when an alligator eats a bear cub.

There are currently two links to subscribe: one next to my blog title up top and one below it.  The former one kinda sucks, so I suggest you use the one below it.  It has a handy drop down menu, allowing you to choose what you want to save the feed with (like Google Reader, Blogger, something else owned by Google, etc).  Subscribing to blog feeds is essentially going to run newspapers into the ground, and I for one say good riddance!  The world needs more trees, less paper.

My site has been getting more hits/pageviews this month than ever before, and I love it, but I always want more.  I’m like Hungry Mungry.  You know what I’m talking about.  Shel Silverstein?  Anyone?  Come on, don’t be douches here, everyone knows who Shel Silverstein is.  Wrote A Boy Named Sue?  Anyone?  A Boy Named Sue?  Only one of the most famous Johnny Cash songs ever?  … Okay, Ring of Fire is probably more famous, you’re right, but still.  It’s about a boy whose name is Sue!  That’s kinda funny, right?

Anyway, Hungry Mungry.  Come on now.

What I’m Doing This Week!  READ ON!

MONDAY: Write this blog post.  Probably practice music for future open mic nights which I will be setting up sometime soon (read: when I stop being a pussy).  Quietly sob into beer.

TUESDAY: An event I call the Great 82nd Street Job Hunt.  I, armed with a man bag full of resumes and pepper spray (if necessary), am going to traverse up an down 82nd St in search of a job.  After a rather informative conversation with my friend Kira (who is awesome), I have now formulated a theory, and this theory is: Online job hunting does not work.  The reason is different from the usual (that I’m lazy), but rather because everyone else in the godforsaken world is apparently lazy because people who accept applications online get a bazillion of them.  I don’t know how much a bazillion is but I know it’s greater than a hundred, and that’s a lot.  So a lot of companies aren’t expecting the Wanderer, who just waltzes into their store and demands a resume.

Plus it’s Chrimmis time, and Chrimmis time means seasonal jobs, and by god if I can’t get a seasonal retail job then I should just shoot myself in the face right now and get my miserable life over with.

WEDNESDAY:  The Great 82nd Street Job Hunt (Probably) Continues.  The day is open, but at night I am going to see my good friend Jon Crocker play music at the Twin Paradox.  Jon writes good songs and he plays guitar upside down (and by that I mean left-handed), and the last time I saw him play it was him, me, and my future girlfriend (at the time) in a park for a show that no one came to except her.  Oh, memories!

Oh!  I might be auditioning for a part in a local production of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Episode “Once More, With Feeling”.  Doesn’t pay, but who cares?  They rehearse on Saturdays only and it’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer!  I was kind of wishy-washy with them regarding whether I could audition, but now I really want to and I hope they don’t shun me because of my flip-flop attitude.  Because I would be a kickass Xander.

THURSDAY:  I really have no clue!  Probably continue to look for work during the day, and maybe play an open mic at night, if I get the nerve.  Or the noive, as they say in 1930s gangster films.

FRIDAY:  Armenian bear wrestling.

SATURDAY:  Hopefully, rehearsal for that Buffy musical!  I must sound so gay right now.  Well I can’t help it, I’m in theatre and even straight men act a little gay sometimes!

SUNDAY: Worshiping the Lord.  By watching football.

Well that’s enough of that!

To be quite blunt, I, Josh Belville, have been on the internet Far Too Much.  It dawned on me today as I signed up for LinkedIn, yet another in a growing trend of social networking sites.  When I signed up for it, I didn’t know anyone on it, and had to use other social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook, to let people know that I had joined LinkedIn.  This broke something in my brain, and it melted.  My brain melted.

With that all in mind, I  just wanted to make a brief statement about what I’m going to do.  If you care, great.  If you don’t care, why the hell are you reading this in the first place?

National Novel Writing Month and National Solo Album Month are both in November.  I have signed up to do both.  Why?  Because I’m an idiot.  But having goals and deadlines is a good thing to have when most of your day is spent with four tabs open on your browser, each one on a different job website.  I feel like a vulture, circling an economy waiting to die for some scrap of food that will keep me going.  I mean, shit.  I went to an interview yesterday to recruit people to take surveys at movie theaters.  Surveys at movie theaters.  A monkey dressed like a human could do a job like that.  A mentally-challenged ostrich could do a job like that.  Hell, a mime could do it.  And yet they haven’t called me back.

This leads me to one invaluable-yet-surprising conclusion:  I have a terrible presence at face-to-face interviews.  Which is unsettling, and is something I have to work on.

But that’s not why I’m writing this entry.  I’m writing because I’m setting some goals for myself.  Primary is, as always, to get a job (preferably one I like).  The second goal is one 50,000 word novel and one 15-track album created in November.  And the third goal is No Internet.  No Facebook, no Myspace, no Twitter for November, and potentially for the rest of the year.  I think all I’ll do is write the occasional blog for this site, and update my website with NaNo and NaSo stuff, and regular music stuff like shows I might get.  That sounds about right.

I think I’m going to start this tomorrow after I promote Songs for Autumn.  I’m going to promote, promote, promote, and then it’s radio silence (mostly) for a month.

Yeah, that sounds good.

In short, the news is good.  Trying to find a job through Craigslist is kind of like navigating a maze, complete with dead ends, odd twists and turns, and the occasional axe-wielding psychopath.  The sad thing though is that it’s easier to navigate than CareerBuilder or Monster, which have become bloated, egomaniacal worthless shells of what they once were, and should be now.  CL is good because it just shows me jobs.  CareerBuilder wants me to sign up for things, or wants to recommend jobs for me because it thinks it’s better than me.  Well you’re not, CareerBuilder.  I am better than you, for I am a human and you are a program on the internet.

I’ve sent lots of e-mail replies, and in doing so have experimented with proper e-mail responses.  Too much information or too little?  Should I put my name in there as soon as possible, or just leave it at the end of the e-mail?  Should I tell them I’m not wearing pants?  Surely at some point in the sit down interview they will notice.  All of these questions raced through my head as I sent reply after reply.  To anyone.  From dishwashers to manufacturers to tutors and gardeners.  I tried not to send replies to positions in which I had no experience, but sometimes I get desperate.  I sent no replies to telemarketers or appointment setters, and none to sales.  The thing about these jobs is that they will always hire you, because they’re the worst jobs, in that they require you to manipulate people to buy things they probably didn’t want to buy in the first place.  And that’s just wrong.

At some point I got really fed up with this process.  Why, the fuck, on websites, do I have to upload a resume AND fill out an application?  Why?  Why Safeway?  Why Rivermark Credit Union?  Why Barnes & Noble?  Don’t you take my word for it?  Do you not see the resume I have graciously uploaded for you?

Listen, employers: this is ridiculous, redundant, and really annoying.  If someone uploads a resume to your application process, they should be able to skip your application process.  They should be able to put “see resume” on there, just like they do on paper applications.  Stop being thoughtless jerks.  The last thing I want to do is memorize phone numbers for jobs I don’t work at anymore, for the sole purpose of not shooting my brains out after typing them in the nth online application.

Anyhoo.  So after a month of job surfing, I finally got a response.  A good one, too.  I think my reply was probably one of my “late stage” replies, which consists of me not giving a crap about my response, which ironically increases my appeal to employers.  Something about being suave, or … I don’t know.  I don’t care.  If I think about it I’ll jinx it.

(For the record, I have three stages of e-mail replies to potential employers: 1) Early Stage, which is where I am chipper and quick; 2) Late Stage, where I am long-winded and somewhat cynical; and 3) Dead Stage, where I say “Hey, I am interested in your job, here’s my resume” and that’s it.)

The job is with an online bookseller.  It is not Powells.  They, I think, buy books from people and sell them used.  Either way, they must’ve liked my e-mail (and now that I look at it in my glorious, glorious Gmail account, I was quite confident, almost to the point of cockiness).  I got a call for a phone interview, which was this morning around 11:30.  I bumbled my way through it, I thought, but the whole thing sounded exactly like the Hastings interview I did two years ago, so I knew what I was expecting.

At the end of the interview the lady said, “Well, we’ve got a couple more days of interviews, so we’ll get in contact with you,” which I expected.

Then, fifteen minutes later, she called back for a face-to-face interview on Wednesday. This I did not expect.

… Okay, I expected it a little bit.

Plus, in her e-mail to me giving me directions to the place, she wrote, “I enjoyed our phone conversation today regarding the Part-Time Shipping Associate Position”, which I’m pretty sure means that she’s into me.  Since I’m considering the phone conversation to be our first date, I think I’ll take her to a movie.  Maybe see some Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

(If you’re reading this, bookseller lady, I’m just kidding, and your bookstore looks like a great place to work.  Also, do you like pasta?  You do?  Great.  … What?  Oh, I’m just curious.  No, I’m writing something else completely unrelated to pasta into this notebook.  It’s a … uh, a note.  For a friend.  Who likes pasta.  I mean doesn’t like pasta.  I mean has nothing to do with pasta.)

Anyway, that’s it.  I plan on going to this interview on Wednesday and knocking some socks off, whatever the hell that means.  Wish me luck!

Right now I am hunkering down and bracing myself against the economic fallout that is currently happening. I’m lucky, I suppose, in that I didn’t lose my job, because I didn’t have one to begin with. And my brother and his wife have jobs that aren’t likely to disappear any time soon. Plus I’m not totally unemployed — the play I’m in will pay (though I don’t know how much), but that’s in a few months. I need work now, and all the good jobs are on hiring freezes until the economy gets better. Add to that all the spamjobs on Craigslist, CareerBuilder, Monster, etc, and you can see the predicament I’m in. Fortunately, this time it’s not just me. Thousands of Americans are feeling the hit from this crisis, and instead of mellowing them out, it’s making them paranoid. This is a bad trip, my friends. A bad trip indeed.

I have a lot of music to prepare for an album. I think the Songs for Autumn EP will be first, since those are relatively easy to record. Also, my brother has a camera set up for YouTube videos, so I may record some music videos (not as good as L’il Jon’s, though, sorry) and upload them in the next week or so. See, I’m busy with stuff that doesn’t make me any money. This is my problem.

Speaking of that, I ought to go write some songs.

God, that show is just really well put together. I’d delve into it more specifically but I don’t want to ruin any plot points for those of you who haven’t seen it. Get it on Netflix or buy it or whatever. It’s good. Even the voiceover is good, and I hate voiceovers. The only time voiceover works is when the character says one thing while the opposite is happening on screen, and thankfully that happens a lot on Dexter. It’s very good. Plus the second season has Jaime Murray in it (she plays Lila) and she is a hot, hot English woman and she’s naked or almost naked most of the season. It’s great.

The third season starts in like two weeks! I’m excited.

Right now I’m listening to the new Calexico album and I really enjoy it. It’s called Carried to Dust and it’s a lot more Latin feeling than their last album. I wasn’t a huge Calexico fan before but I think this album will be listened to a lot.

ummm, that’s about it right now, really. I’m still job hunting. Oh, I have an audition for a play in a week or so! It’s a new play by local Portland playwright Helen Hill. She was kind enough to send me a copy of the play to read before the audition and I have to say it’s pretty good. I think it could use a polish or two with regards to dialogue and scene stuff, but that might get fixed in rehearsal. And even if it doesn’t it’ll still be a good production, hopefully. It pays well enough. Assuming I rock the audition. It’s about eugenics in the 1920s through the 60s. The play primarily takes place in 1934 and is about a doctor who sterilizes poor, “feeble-minded” people so they won’t reproduce. It raises some interesting questions, primarily about the morality of eugenics and a somewhat elitist take on “survival of the fittest”; namely, the question of what it means to be the “fittest.” The script right now to me seems a bit too dry and presentational but it can be limbered up in rehearsal. I think it’s a solid premise though, and none of the characters are too obtuse or two-dimensional, with the slight exception of the doctor, who doesn’t really offer any good human explanation for why he cuts out poor women’s ovaries other than that they’re a blight on society (poor women, not ovaries). Again, if given the opportunity to discuss the play in a development session, I will bring this up, but other than that I just want to act and get paid for it, honestly. I think it’s a good show and I think people will like it.

My only problem is that I left all my playbooks in Boise. The only play I have here is The Glass Menagerie. Why I have it, I don’t know, but it looks like I’ll be pulling out a Tom monologue with some Shakespeare backups. Boy oh boy.

(Seriously though, it would rock if I got cast in this show, so send some good vibes if you got ‘em)

The job hunting still sucks. I have sent resumes to tutors and people who want someone to teach guitar to middle school kids for a couple of weeks, and receptionists, and etc etc etc. I really don’t want a shitty job and I feel like I’m in a good place to pace myself a little bit (not a lot, though, but at least my brother and his wife aren’t really living paycheck to paycheck…). Hopefully something good and achieveable will come up soon. Again, more good vibes!

That’s all for now!

I sure hope businesses appreciate my candid candor.

I’m writing about my job. It won’t be as bad as I have set it up to be, but as we’re all too aware these days, anything written on the internet can and will be read by the people you don’t want to read, and either you give up your right to free speech and force yourself into the corporate cog that millions of Americans have already done, or you say, “Fuck you, I get the right to vent,” and do just that.

I am a telemarketer. For the record, telemarketing and the fast food industry were the two careers that I have refused for a long time to take part in, mainly because they both appear to be soulless life-sucking jobs that require you to either manipulate others for the sake of the almighty dollar (telemarketing), or that manipulate you and rob you of your sense of individualism and creativity (fast food). The case can be made for other jobs and their lifelessness (with the exception of, say, rock climbing, but that’s not really a job, it’s just badass), but telemarketing and fast food just exude the reality of the despair inherent in the American Dream — this idea that one must endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune willingly, so that they may achieve, what?, a tremendous amount of money when they’re sixty? A solid retirement that you get to spend in the childlike malaise that is being old?

That’s another topic of discussion, though.

So anyway, I will be a Good Boy and not tell you for whom I work in particular (that was some good grammar there, wasn’t it?), but I’ll just describe the atmosphere. I’m sure several of you have been in this situation a million times before, or are there now, but part of the charm of humanity is our ability to identify with others, so let’s do that now, shall we?

I got my interview notification in e-mail form, which I loved, because it means that I actually got a job through the internet. They say that only 10-20% of jobs come from the internet, so I was lucky, I suppose. I won’t rant on the disadvantages of the internet here, since I already did that, but I will say that I personally don’t like talking on the phone that much, so it’s nice to get an e-mail for an interview. Of course, it’s an e-mail for an interview for a telemarketing position, but hey, what the hell.

I went in … well, okay, I rode my bike to this place because it’s only a few blocks from where I live, which is a great thing because it means my sold car was not for waste. I descended the staircase wearing a t-shirt and the only pair of shorts I own and Danny, at his computer, said, “You’re wearing that to your interview?” And then he snapped his fingers like a stereotypical Sex and the City gay man. Well, okay, he didn’t really, but it would’ve been funny if he did. But it goes to show my general lack of knowledge about formalities, especially job formalities. I just don’t want to impress people by wearing nice clothes, you know? Nice clothes are one of several ways people hide who they really are. I’d rather impress people by being smart, witty, quick and kind and courteous.

However, I did go upstairs and change into long pants and a dress shirt. No tie, though. Fuck ties.

Came back downstairs, Danny gave me a reassuring head nod, and I hopped on my bike and began my ride. For exactly one block, and then my chain fell off the gear. I went down to put it back on and realized that I had a chain guard on the bike, which meant I couldn’t fit the chain on because it was, well, guarded. And I didn’t have any tools to take the guard off. So I walked home, gingerly trying not to get my grease-stained fingers on my nice white shirt or new pants. The good news was that the interview was not at a specific time — she just said to come in “between one and five,” so I had plenty of time. But it was also hot out, and I was sweating, and the last thing I wanted to do was come in there with sweat dripping off of my face. Unfortunately that’s exactly what happened.

I go in, meet a couple of people. A former classmate and friend, Michelle, was working there, which was surprising but probably helped me get the job. I was handed an application, which I did not expect. I had to fill it out using my memory rather than having a resume with me to copy, so I might’ve forgotten a couple of phone numbers. After the application I was given a copy of the script they use to telemarket with (I don’t think that works properly as a verb, but it’s too late now) and told me to go home and call them and use the script and all that. That made me a little nervous because my phone is currently disconnected but I figured I could borrow someone’s at home, so I hopped back on my bike, script in back pocket, and rode in increasingly warm weather back to my house.

At six I called and did a very good job, if I say so myself, and I was hired on the spot. I’m glad, too … I didn’t go to college for five years studying theatre to give a bad reading, after all. I was scheduled to work the next day. “Hooray!” you’re all saying. “You finally got a job, you lazy bastard!” Well, first off, stop being such jerks. And secondly … yes, yes I did get a job.

Telemarketing is like getting an acting role, but the role is the same goddamn thing over and over and over, and instead of getting to play someone cool like Hamlet, you get to play a jerk who interrupts people living their lives. Constantly. I only work for four hours at this place and it’s a little excruciating, if only because each call lasts from five seconds to a minute, max, and after every call you take a look at your watch to see if any time has passed, but it hasn’t, and it never will. The atmosphere is very laid back and cool, and the people are great, but calling people out of the blue just sucks. Let’s be honest. Nobody wants to do it, and nobody wants to listen to it, and half of the time you’re fibbing just a little bit to get people to not immediately hang up on you. Plus the telephone age is dead, in terms of telemarketing. I don’t understand why we don’t post things on Craigslist or send e-mails to businesses rather than call them. Calling is interrupting people, but employers can always open an e-mail at their leisure. I guess this is why I hate telemarketing, because I don’t have that sense of urgency to sell things like other people do. It’s not make or break for me. I have no passion for commission. Money doesn’t really drive me. However, I am good at calling people, I’ve found this out. Years of vocal training have actually done their job, and I can shift the tone of my voice in ways so subtle it makes grown men cry. Well, okay, that’s a bit of a stretch. But on my first day at my job I set two appointments, which is a Good Thing apparently because you get paid a commission if you set an appointment; otherwise you get paid minimum wage. At least minimum wage went up from being $5.15 a couple of years ago. God this state is ass-backwards.

I worked this morning, too, and I was exhausted because I didn’t sleep very well last night. Combination of heat and a racing mind, I guess.

So in the end, the good news is that I am good at my job, and it
pays decent enough, and it’s only four hours long (though they said I could move up to full time if I wanted … not sure if I do, honestly). The bad news is that I disagree with the entire idea of telemarketing. Oh well. Sometimes you just gotta put your feelings aside and work.

A couple of years ago I applied to work at Hastings (your entertainment superstore). Hastings is one of those places where they sell books, movies, CDs, video games, and various kitschy shit that no one seems to buy. I was told to apply there by my friend Adam, and so I did. Part of the application process was of the general sort: name+address, education, former jobs, references. I was fine with that. While my resume is filled with more holes than swiss cheese, I figured that Hastings wasn’t the kind of place that would look down upon me for getting my college education and not worrying about working as much.

Most of the application, however, was a big long personality assessment test. I believe it was something like fifty questions or so. And so I took it. And having never taken a personality assessment test prior to this one, I had no idea what I was in store for, and so I answered honestly, because in most tests of this sort (the Kiersey and the Jung – Myers-Briggs, for example), honesty is key in determining what kind of personality you have. I could spend another blog post just talking about these tests in general, so instead I’ll just reiterate that when I took the test, I was honest. And when I submitted it, I felt pretty good. Now, I thought, the employers will really know what kind of person I am.

A couple of days later I called Hastings for a follow up. “Hi,” I said, “I’m calling because I sent you an application…?”

“Right,” said Karey (the assistant manager). “We got it.”

“Good. So … are you still hiring or …?”

“We are,” she said, “but unfortunately you failed the test.”

“The what,” I asked.

It seemed that I had failed the personality test. At first I was confused — did this mean I had no personality? Or that my personality was not my own, but rather someone else’s? And then I realized, I was not the right personality that Hastings wanted. And that sort of bugged me. I mean, I had been honest, after all. I told them how I felt. Isn’t that, in a way, better than lying and pretending to be someone you’re not? Apparently not.

So I asked Karey what that meant, and she said,

“It means you can just take it again, and if you pass that time, we’ll interview you.”

Now I was just irritated. I had to reapply and retake that stupid test, using an hour of my time that could be better spent looking for other jobs, just so I could lie so that I could get the job. I didn’t express my irritation with Karey; instead I said thank you, hung up, and took the test again.

So now the question became: was I lying this time? I looked more carefully at the questions presented to me. “I think I am a good person” — agree or disagree. “I like being in big crowds” — agree or disagree. I do think I’m a good person, and I don’t like being in big crowds. But how should I answer? Hastings obviously would want me to think I’m a good person. If I thought I was a bad person they might be afraid that I would blow up the building or something. But what about big crowds? What was the importance of that? And what answer would get me the freaking job?

I noticed that some questions were duplicated, or rewritten, later on in the questionnaire. Why? To prove that I was a liar? What does it matter when you’re manipulating your answers just to get a job?

Either way, I redid the test, altering my answers to fit what I assumed Hastings would want to see. And I got called back for an interview. Why? At this point, you act like you know everything about me! Why would you want to talk to me when the internet did that for you? I went to the interview and did very well and I got the job. Hooray for me.

My point, if you haven’t grasped it already, is that the personality tests you force us to take on your big corporate websites are useless. No, they’re worse than useless — they’re detrimental to the hiring process. You think that by having people psychological evaluate themselves that you’ll weed out the good applicants from the bad ones. But all you’re really doing is forcing applicants to manipulate their answers to best serve you, and that will ultimately harm you. For example, I’m a pretty good guy, I work hard, I hardly ever take breaks at work, I’m friendly and kind to both customers and coworkers, and yet I failed that test, probably because I said one too many times that I prefer being alone to being in a large group. So you’re betraying the entire reason you’ve set up the system — you’re not getting to know me at all, you’re getting to know the avatar I’ve created for you.

Meanwhile there are tons of people who are terrible, arrogant, selfish pricks who do the exact same manipulation to those tests and get in because they passed. And they go on to be terrible, arrogant, selfish pricks at work. Hastings had some pricks, I’ll be honest. They had a lot of really good workers, and some people who were lazy as all hell, and some assholes. Seems normal for a job setting, doesn’t it? Well if that’s the case, why have a personality test? Why not just interview them instead?

At this point, Big Corporate Employers, I know what you’re thinking. “We have to put the test in there because there are so many applicants! We can’t judge the personalities of all those applicants ourselves!” And this may be true, but I don’t think it is. I think this is where the Hiring Manager comes in, or others like him. Obviously there is someone who must interview these people. And I also understand that even the interview process is somewhat manipulative, in roughly the same way that a first date would be manipulative; trying hard to impress someone, whether it be a boss or a potential love, tends to make people act in ways they normally wouldn’t act. But either way, the interview process is there for a reason, and it’s a much better reason than online tests. Online tests won’t look you in the eye. Online tests don’t get a feel for you based solely on the pressure of your handshake. Online tests are only programs that will filter answers through a matrix and make a decision it was programmed to make. People don’t do that.

All I’m asking, I suppose, is that it takes an hour to fill out these damn tests, and that could be an hour better spent shaking your hand and saying hello. Selling myself to you, essentially.

With that said, I have to go fill out an online personality test. Wish me luck.

Your pal,
Josh