Directionally Challenged

So, I was supposed to have an interview at 9 am. Which necessitated going to bed at a reasonable hour and getting up at one too. So I got up at 7 am and went to check my email for the directions to the place I'm supposed to be at 9 am.

Only to discover that no, they actually just didn't send me any. It strikes me as a teensy bit impossible to turn up to an interview when they never gave you directions or an address to get to the agency in question. It's also hard to ring them up and ask when you don't have the phone number. So ... yeah, so much for my 9 am. Which I suppose makes my life easier, but damn. I mean, now I'm up when I don't have to be, which is never good.

I just want someone to call and offer me a job, please. I'm waiting on hearing about a temp-to-perm PA role at Lambeth College, which should be fun if I get it. Big if, obviously, given my current track record.

I'm really getting sick of this.

One bit of good news, though, is that it turns out that the next FFXI update involves letting people select whichever server they want to start on. Which is nice because, hey, no more having to shell out immense amounts of gil for a World Pass. Plus it means that I don't have to deal with the nagging about whether or not I take dodgyhoodoo up on his offer to pay for my deathgnome's content ID until Thursday, when the money from Mum comes in.

Still might, though, if only out of boredom. I miss my deathgnome.

Job Storm

Today has been a huge mass of phone calls from agencies about jobs. It's like buses - you get nothing for ages, and then three come along at once.

First thing I get is a phone call from the agency that got me the interview at UCH - the cushy job where my interview was delayed by an hour and one of the interviewers walked out to answer her cellphone while interviewing me. This time he wanted to put me forward for a practice manager position starting tomorrow. This would have been great, except for the fact that the people at the private wing at Moorfields, the end-line employers, were being very tight-lipped on details for the assignment. Wouldn't say what the job entailed first off (I got a job title rather than a job description), refused to commit to a time-frame on the contract. They wanted me to take a job I'd never done before immediately, on no information and no guarantee I'd have a job at the end of the week. Um ... no. Particularly not when the temp they'd previously had in the post was leaving mid-week. That is never a good sign - temps don't let go of jobs mid-week if they can avoid it. So I told him I didn't think it would be a good idea for me to take that one; I may really need a job but there are limits to what I'll put up with.

Next I got a phone call from the agency that's got me most of my jobs of late. Agency lady informs me that there's a job going at ChelWest, clearing out a typing backlog. This sounds familiar; except it's General Medicine rather than Trauma and Orthopaedics, and given the insistence that I be able to handle a heavy workload and constant demands of "Is [x document] done yet?", I have a feeling that this one really is just a backlog clearing job. Which of course I can handle. So I take that one and suddenly I don't have to attend my 2:30 interview either. Yay me.

Anyway, then I get a call from the people who were offering me the job at Lambeth College. Sorry, nadriel; the College gave that job to someone at another agency, which is a pity because I really wanted that one. Anyway, they had a short-term appointment with a financial institution of some kind, so it was a good thing that I already had something lined up because banking and financial really isn't something I'd be any good at.

Then the first agency rang me up again. Yeah, they still hadn't found anyone on the books who'd take that job at Moorfields, and decided to give it one last shot with me, because they'd given me first refusal when the job came in and really wanted me in the position if they could get me there. But of course, I'd already committed to another job and if they couldn't fill a practice manager role within the private healthcare sector, this means that everyone else had the same bad feeling about the job as I did, so it's just as well.

Then I received a phone call from a whole new agency - I sent in a bunch of applications awhile back, and one of them was for a medical research company with this agency. Now, of course, medical research is not the NHS by any stretch, and the idea of using my medical secretarial skills while getting pay and benefits is very pleasing to me. So after some thinking about my schedule (Equus tomorrow, very belated birthday dinner with my mother on Thursday if she ever gets back to me with details), I arranged to meet up with these agents at 5pm Wednesday - I can take a short lunch and leave early that day.

So from weeks where I heard jack all from the agencies, I got all of that. The world is a very, very bizarre place sometimes. Of course, I am not complaining because it means I'm getting paid as of a week Friday, which makes me far less worried about things in general. Now fingers crossed for getting this medical research company job on a permanent basis, and I'm set, really.