Please fill in the oval completely

Let me tell you a story. You are, of course, already on the edge of your seat.

I am basically unemployed. Basically. I have a steady 5 hrs/wk job at school, a still-forming assistant type relationship with two different photographers & some magazines on eBay. Money in the bank as of yesterday, Monday morning: $8.03. So, I've been looking. I spent 5-6 hours before the ol'laptop computer checking out every job site in the Boston area, typing "photo, photography & photoshop" in search fields repeatedly. Not much was coming my way. I emailed several people, including one lady from craigslist interested in paying a couple of people $150 a piece to help move her couch to Brooklyn.

Towards the 360th minute of my search I came across an ad for Verizon looking for a "Splice Service Technician". I clicked on it & read the description. Totally uninteresting except for the part that mentioned that, upon hiring, you'd be paid to attend Line School (learn phone wiring or something) AND Pole Climbing School! You'd get paid to learn how to climb poles! Not a single pre-pubescent dirty joke entered my head. I actually thought, "Wouldn't it be funny to get a job at Verizon & go to Pole Climbing School?" So I signed up for a test. You have to take some test that will tell them whether you're smart enough to be taught how to repair phone lines (and climb poles). I went down there this morning in the ugly weather & waited with 50 other sad looking people while Tom & Dana the test-givers sharpened pencils & sorted Scantron sheets. After everyone was seated they explained to everyone how use said Scantron sheets & reminded us not to begin until we were told to do so by them, the test-givers. The morning portion (yes there is an afternoon portion) of the tests consisted of insanely basic reading & mathing plus my favorite section, Spatial Comprehension (or Awareness or Something Like That), in which you were presented with an isometric view of some arrangement of blocks & asked to choose the figure which would best describe the top view. Along with the aforementioned reading section, it was the only one I finished. Really. The math section, which actually started to get a little more difficult ended just as I filled in my 45th oval. The 45th of 125! I wanted to steal the little test printout to show people but they had the security on full lockdown. They even took the scratch paper, which is probably for the best because I don't need anyone to know how pathetic my attempts to remember how to divide fractions were.

After lunch at Subway, we got our results. I passed & was eligible to take the Line Technician Test Module I & II or whatever it was called. It was at this point that I had the first urge to split. What was possibly funny seemed like maybe way too much work. But then I stayed and took the second set of tests. These involved reading & rereading a packet of information (The History of Telecommunications, Types of Cable, What is Attenuation?, How to read a Work Order Receipt Claim Check Form Sheet (a W.O.R.K. Sheet as it's called)) & then having the packet taken from you & replaced with a blue test booklet. I finally got to put my free after-school PSAT prep class skills to good use. I took those tests like Goldfinger took Fort Knox. (Sorry). I was actually nervous when they were reading the names & semi-disappointed when I passed. "So what happens now?" you ask. After passing all their tests & sitting in a semi-comfortable chair for five hours, me & six other guys (no ladies but the only one there were applying for some other job I think) sat at a conference table while Tom explained to us how to fill out each & every one of the 16 pages of the application. The application! I started & stopped writing several times in ten minutes before I got my jacket & left. I told the lady at the desk that I'd changed my mind & she was all shruggy-like, "meh...". And then I was out, on the street, a free, still unemployed young man, walking in the pea soup in our fair city that passes for late May.

Meh.