Oh, The Irony!

This morning my husband mentioned to me that he needed to leave for work earlier than usual.  Being so thrilled that he has a job to leave the house for I was not even going to ask why but he volunteered the information anyway.  I wish he had not.  Apparently, he was off to have a networking meeting with someone he had met along his journey to employment because this person wanted to know how...wait for it...he landed his current position with this particular company so quickly.  "Quickly?," I said or perhaps shouted.  This was quickly?  Let's review and you make the call.  Three years ago he started applying to this company and over the course of those years he applied for 20+ positions and asked quite a few of the company's employees whom he knew for assistance.  Apparently, it is next to impossible to get into this company without help from the inside.  Your resume needs to be accompanied by solid recommendations from current employees to move forward, for the most part, so if you don't know anyone who works there, your resume had better be freaking amazing or you need not waste your time.  After multiple interviews, we then waited a grueling few weeks for a response which to some may seem like a short period of time. However, for those who have waited countless weeks only to find out that you were the front runner who lost out to an internal candidate or that the scope of the job had changed and you were no longer being considered, these weeks were inescapably long and anxiety-filled.  So, I think 3 years of applications, putting yourself on the line with friends, multiple interviews and the killer wait to the decision do not 'quickly' make, do you?

My daughter always mocked the fact that her older MS brother consistently forgot to bring home his gym clothes and would always need to take a fresh pair from home.  She could not understand how something so seemingly simple could present such a problem for him...until she got to MS herself this year.  Apparently, she suffers from the same ill as her brother and cannot remember to go get those gym clothes.  When I asked her about this she told me that she had not realized how hard it could be to remember to go back to the gym before leaving school and that she had been wrong to laugh at her brother. It seemed like an easy thing until she had to do it herself. She also went on to tell me that she was only 11 years old and that she had plenty of time to remember the lesson about not judging a person without walking a mile in his shoes.  I hope she does.  Quickly, huh?  I think not.