Why would you test a 16-year-old job applicant?
My kids are in the process of applying for summer jobs. As part of this process, they have learned that
- an increasing number of companies are taking applications online (which is good), and
- most of them provide exactly one type of job application for everyone to use, no matter what they apply for (which is very, very bad).
Consider pages 15, 24, and 29 of a 37-PAGE online psychiatric evaluation offered by those who apply to Borders, even those who are only 16. You must answer the following with either strongly disagree, disagree, agree, or strongly agree:
- There are some people you really can't stand
- You do not fake being polite
- You show it when you are in a bad mood
- When things go wrong, it's hard to control your temper
- It bothers you when you have to obey a lot of rules
- You worry about saying the wrong things to people
- You like to take frequent breaks when working on something difficult
- You have plenty of self-confidence
- You are not interested in your friends' problems
- You do not like to meet new people
- You are careful not to offend people
- You think a lot about things that have bothered you
- You could not deal with difficult people all day
- You don't care if you offend people
- You pay close attention to people's feelings
I understand the necessity of asking the same question different ways on tests like these: it's one way to remove
the bias introduced by our natural tendency to lie to ourselves when we self-report. The problem is that most 16-year-olds don't KNOW the answers to at least half of these questions, because they have never been TESTED in such environments. So why would you make someone so young spend an hour to fill out a test like this, when they will not give you meaningful answers, and they won't earn more than minimum wage even if they are hired? This is just another business practice that leaves me scratching my head. And it's why entrepreneurs depend -- or SHOULD depend -- on face-to-face contact to answer such questions.
Oh, yeah: my son filled out a questionnaire from a company working through
deploy.com, and here's what we found out:
- If he wants to work at either of two sites, he must apply twice, filling out the 30-page questionnaire from scratch.
- He can either already be IN college, in which case he must have completed a full year, or he can be planning not to GO to college. There is no way to fill in "I start in the fall and I don't know my schedule yet."
- The survey doesn't work with FireFox. He fills out 20 of the 30 pages, saves the results for later, and the button that takes him back to where he left off (pictured above) is non-functional in FireFox. We had to reinstall MSIE -- the hated source of adware and pop-ups -- to get the survey to do what it is supposed to.
Another reason or three that face-to-face is better.
Labels: office space
Apologies and an Amtrak fiasco
Once, working for
GreyPilgrim Inc., I decided to save myself a three-hour drive from Trenton to their location at
NIST by taking the train. At the time (roughly 1997), I could get a round-trip
Amtrak ride from Trenton to Union Station in Washington DC for $75. It costs a fair bit more now. So this is a full account of what happened that fateful day.
A tornado passed through Chester, PA, south of Philadelphia, and
dropped a house on the track, so the train was delayed at 30th Street Station in Philly for almost three hours. (I found out later that the accident had occurred before I left Trenton -- if the Amtrak agent had told me, I could have saved a great deal of trouble.) So we were stopped on the track in a dark station, and as I looked around, I found my seat to be the only one in the car without a working overhead light. So I could not read. Plus, I was located in the front of the car nearest to the bar car, so I had to listen to passengers drinking and carrying on just a few feet away for the entire delay -- unable to read and with nothing to distract me from the noise.
I was to meet a connecting local train to Gaithersburg, MD, when I reached Union Station. By the time I finally got there, I was just in time to watch the last such train pull out, at midnight.
The stores and restaurants were all closed; the only thing in a vending machine I could get and still want to eat was PopTarts. So I got my PopTarts, and went to a large open area to sit, dead tired and starving, and eat them.
A security guard -- I could see him coming from several hundred feet away -- crossed the large open area to tell me the area was closed and I could not sit there. I told him I was tired and late and would be glad to move as soon as I ate my PopTarts. He told me I had to move now. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I refused to get up, and after threatening me with bodily harm if I did not move (this assbutt was literally prepared to draw his gun), his supervisor finally came and cooled him off. By this time my GreyPilgrim partners had driven down from Gaithersburg and picked me up.
I wrote Amtrak about this incident, saying all my troubles could have been avoided if either (a) I was notified about the delay before I left Trenton or (b) my seat were provided with an overhead light. I told them I would never ride with them again. So later comes their apology -- and guess what comes with it! A free $75 round-trip ticket. (I never used it.)
This very behavior -- the concept of giving free service to disgruntled customers by way of an apology -- was discussed in this month's issue of
Inc magazine (Wellner, A. "Making Amends") and was panned. I, at least, can think of six or seven other ways Amtrak could have addressed my grievance, and some of them would have worked. Typically, however, service businesses will tell you when you complain that they "value customer service" and will try to get rid of you the most painless way possible. $75 is the ticket's retail value, for instance, but for Amtrak it costs much less, as the seat probably goes unoccupied if they don't give it to a pissed-off ex-customer like me.
The same thing happened when AutoZone employees sexually harassed four of my students a couple of years ago. I went to the local AutoZone the next day to complain, and was told "we value
customer service" and the woman chiefly offended was given a $10 gift card -- which did not work when she tried to use it later. AutoZone, like Amtrak, has never learned the art of apologizing, and as a result I will never do business with them again -- and I have made sure to tell hundreds of people why, as I now do you.
Wellner's argument is that companies lacking the skill to apologize are afraid that if they do, they will be assigned legal responsibility in the event that
an angry customer sues. That's absolutely true -- if you don't know what you are doing. Wellner recommends a book called
On Apology, by Aaron Lazare. That one will be on my reading list this summer. Amtrak and AutoZone oughta do the same.
Labels: office space
The onset of stupidity
How do you know we are stupid? It's when we hear lines like these in a movie, especially a movie that's supposed to be a summer blockbuster:
I don't like sand, it's coarse and rough and irritating, and gets all over the place... not like you; you're soft and smooth.
-- Hayden Christiansen, as Anakin Skywalker, in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Anakin: You are so... beautiful.
Padme: It's only because I'm so in love.
Anakin: No, it's because I'm so in love with you.
Padme: So love has blinded you?
Anakin: [laughs] Well, that's not exactly what I meant.
Padme: But it's probably true.
-- Hayden Christiansen, this time with Natalie Portman as Padme Amidala, in Star Wars Episode II: Revenge of the Sith
...and we come back to the movies.
Labels: rhetoric
Dangers of working as a contract consultant
I once did a 33-day gig as a contract consultant, through Superior Design, for Lockheed Martin in King of Prussia, PA. Part of that contract was to involve the development of a simulation of a falling rocket with attached spacecraft, pictured. That gig was pretty sweet at first: I was there three days a week, as they could not afford a full-time effort. But it only lasted 33 days because they were "disappointed with my progress." The following table describes the major events:
| Day | Events |
| 6 | Completed falling spacecraft simulation for 2D case. |
| 7 | [Advisor] doesn't like work on spacecraft simulation; assigns something else instead. |
| 8 | [Advisor] told by an expert that falling spacecraft simulation "isn't easy"; [advisor] doesn't change his mind. |
| 9 | Code written in C++ by [advisor] is almost unreadable; I will be told not to change it, but I must document it anyway. Complete work on spacecraft simulation for all cases, prepare a set of simulation runs; [advisor] will not look at them. Given a copy of Mathematica to use at home, so I can be faster at work. But I must pay $200 out-of-pocket to register Mathematica before I can use it, and I refuse. I lay aside the disk, thinking it's not a real copy, but instead just an advertisement and never see it again. Later I find [advisor] thinks the disk is valuable and decides for himself I have stolen it. |
| 11 | Waste a day getting a Unix system password and logging on. I never log on again. |
| 13 | Waste a day at a meeting that does nothing to help along the work I am supposed to do. |
| 16 | Source code written by [advisor] fails under C++ 6.0, after I converted to this later version of C++ under his direction. His own programming is sloppy, by his own admission, but I wasted hours of time commenting on and compiling this code, then I'm told I have to revert to older versions with no comment. The unspoken message is that if I just ran his program and did nothing else we'd be further along with the project. |
| 18 | Told for the first time to consider the office Christmas party. Told for the second time that the office uses flex-time, and if I want to work 10 AM to 6 PM I may. I am already using flex-time, coming in at 6 AM and working until 2 PM, because the traffic on the Pennsylvania Turnpike is unbelievable otherwise. I'd spend an extra hour or two on the road each day if I worked 10-6. |
| 21 | I successfully compile and run [advisor]'s code under C++ 6.0. |
| 22 | I start having "spare time," and [advisor] is not available to work with me. |
| 24 | Cut a report's length by 30%. No word on whether that work will be used. |
| 25 | Told for the second time to consider the office Christmas party. Ultimately I will go, and I will waste my time. Nobody talks to the temp. We all know this. |
| 27 | Complete simulation runs with [advisor]'s C++ code, and [advisor] does not look at them. |
| 28 | I remind [advisor] about both spacecraft simulation and C++ code, and he goes about his business. He has a guest in his office at one point. I begin to suspect she will replace me. |
| 32 | Laid off. Told I will have two weeks to finish all reports. They said "we're disappointed with your progress," but they did not say anything to Superior Design about it. They claim they did, but Superior Design has no record of it. And I never heard a word -- I just found [advisor] unavailable to work with me for several days. Would things have been different if I worked 10-6? |
| 33 | Learn the two weeks were to start two days before I was laid off, and they intend to give my office space to my replacement at the end of the week. |
| 34 | I complete reports, and there is nobody available to sign off on them. I must come back an extra day, for ONE HOUR, just to get signatures. |
There are enough irritating points in the above history to keep me busy for days. But the top ones are (a) they suggested at one point that I might have LIED during an interview to get a job, even though I proved -- if one day later than they wanted me to -- that I could perform exactly the task they set for me; (b) they made such a big deal about a Christmas party when they must have known by this point that they were going to cut me loose. I can't explain either of these at all, even years after the fact. Here's what we learn:
- Make sure your contract explains in detail how your performance is to be evaluated, and how often, and (if you are working through an agency) what the communications structure is.
- If your abilities or ethics are ever called into question while on a contract job, contact the agency immediately and get a resolution.
- Make sure all terms are defined up front, and on paper. In my case, "flex time" meant "work 10 AM until 6 PM because it's convenient for [advisor]." I am used to "flex time" meaning "come in during some two- or three-hour window in the morning and then work your eight hours."
- Make sure your duties are clearly defined and on paper. If they change the duty assignment, call the agency immediately.
I don't hold Lockheed Martin or Superior Design responsible for the carelessness shown by its representatives while I was on this job, but in my mind their carelessness was the problem here. They had expectations that went unstated, even after it was clear to them that I would not meet them. I never knew how I failed them.
And I learned two other valuable lessons from them, which I apply whenever I work as an engineer:
- You only go conservative when you don't know what to do.
- The fact that it's never happened before cannot be taken as indication that it never will happen.
Labels: consulting
The genius of fireworks distributors
An article written in the Trenton Times by Darryl Isherwood on 06.07 talks about fireworks laws in Pennsylvania. Get this: it is legal for fireworks distributors in Pennsylvania to sell their stuff to anyone who can prove they live in another state. It's illegal to USE fireworks in Pennsylvania. So it's no accident that major distributors line up their outlets along the borders. Sky King Fireworks (pictured) is in Portland, Easton, and Morrisville to "service" New Jersey; they're in Erie and Hillsville to do Ohio to the west. Spartan Fireworks (also pictured) similarly has a location near the New Jersey border and a couple near Maryland.
But the fireworks are illegal in New Jersey too! So my well-meaning but shady neighbors, who want sparklers to entertain the grandkids on the Fourth, can't buy 'em here in NJ, and must go across the border to Morrisville and smuggle the booty back in. I read the article on the Times on Wednesday, went to work, then came home to find big old ads from Sky King and Spartan (both mentioned in the article and contributors of the images used here :-)).
I gotta tell ya, this is no way to run a business. The guys who run these distributorships must know their markets are living on borrowed time under this setup. Even if NJ and PA don't work together to lower the boom on fireworks through law, you can't market to an only out-of-state audience indefinitely unless the bulk of your sales are online and through the mail. Sky King and Spartan, at least, don't sell that way. And no wonder: in most states, you can't BUY 'em that way.
I guess what I'm saying is that it's not the kind of business you'd want to start just now. (I do like the way Spartan nicks up Sky King with the line in their ad about "buy one get one free pricing," though. Nice touch.)
Labels: rhetoric
Rocker Sheryl Crow invents time machine!
Rocker Sheryl Crow (pictured, holding what might well be the prototype) has invented a time machine, but instead of keeping it secret -- as the government would -- she has published a brief description of test results:
[...] every time you hear the rolling thunder
you turn around before the lightning strikes [...]
This is the only information Crow has released on what could be the find of the 21st century, leading this observer to believe the time machine either is still being tested, or only works in the presence of a thunderstorm -- which suggests a large power draw, perhaps
as much as 1.21 gigawatts (Great Scott!), making it prohibitively expensive to operate.
This device also appears only able to send its user to the very near past -- within seconds -- making it somewhat less than useful on a wider scale, and creating a strong risk of such paradoxes as present-day Crow meeting ten-seconds-ago Crow. Excessive use of a machine like this could risk the unraveling of the entire continuum.
Obviously, the advantage of Crow's design is its small size, allowing its user to hide it in plain sight on a shelf among books, trophies, and
tawdry bric-a-brac.
:-)
Labels: diversions
Storad responds!
Besides introducing me to
his own Web site, "Top" Storad had this to say:
[...] I surely can't quit my day job... yet. Writing books can keep you busy, but it is the visits to schools that really keep you hopping. To date, I've visited more than 600 schools and probably have presented to almost 600,000 kids and teachers in nine different states. It's lots of fun... and energy draining. I have more respect for teachers today than I ever had. I'd love to visit schools in your area any time. Please share my web site info with any librarians, reading specialists, or literacy coaches that you know. Since January, I've visited 60 schools and libraries and talked to at least 50,000 students and teachers and parents. Still gotta find time to get this day job done. But they all mesh together. What I'm really all about is promoting science literacy, and love of reading, and literacy in general – through my books and the magazines I edit here at ASU.
I was disappointed to find on a recent visit to my local Barnes & Noble that, while they listed all of Top's titles on their computer, they didn't have a single one on their shelves. What? Is New Jersey so much of a Garden State that our people have no interest in desert life at all?
Labels: diversions
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