Women's rights are human rights

On International Women’s Day 2019, I’ve got two things to share.

First, this memento of the Women’s March in 2017:

Second, Aretha and the Eurythmics singing this anthem:

New form of hell

If you’re not in a job search you may not know about the “video interview”. But it’s a thing.

No, it’s not a Skype session with a recruiter or hiring manager, it’s a series of questions posed to the candidate, who has to respond on camera—you give the HireVue application access to your web cam and your audio. If you don’t happen to like how you appear on camera or what your voice sounds like, it’s misery on a stick.

But it’s a cheap way for recruiters to screen out applicants while giving the appearance of caring. It's all handled by software, like their applicant tracking systems (ATS), so it's basically no cost. They put you through it before they even drop a dime for a phone call.

(Okay, there are mitigating factors—primary one being that everyone “invited” to the video interview gets asked the exact same questions, so everyone has the exact same opportunity to respond. There’s no human intervention on the recruiter side—distraction, interpretation, etc.—so there’s an equality in the process. But it’s disconcerting to answer questions in a vacuum, and on top of it to have to record yourself. Ugh.)

I actually bailed once on a job I was lukewarm about in the first place because they wanted me to do the video interview. This time, I felt I needed to give it a go. The invitation came on Monday, and it was good for three days.

I had a long conversation Tuesday with a friend and former colleague who now works for this company, and she talked me down from the ledge a couple of times. I researched the hell out of “HireVue” and “video interviewing”, as well as my usual on the company. I could have strung it out for another day, but I decided to just get it the hell over with.

Yesterday afternoon I resentfully put on makeup and “interview” tops—cashmere sweater and jacket—although I kept my at-home sweatpants. (They were all shades of grey, anyhow.) Because long ago my BFF had assured me that whenever one of her friends wore a scarf to an interview, she got the job, I added a scarf from Liberty of London. I set up with a neutral background behind me, whizzed through the practice questions and just bit the bullet.

The questions were not outrageous—why are you interested in this company, what’s your take on product management, what’s your proudest accomplishment, blah, blah, blah—I just would have preferred giving my answers to a human. (It occurred to me afterward that I could have invited a friend over, sat her across from me and spoken to her over my monitor. Next time.)

I pretty well ripped through them, hit Submit, then scrubbed the makeup off. It’s in the can, for better or worse.

Next.

Hog on the street

A while ago I came across this vehicle in the People’s Republic.

It’s interesting on so very many levels.

Par avion

I went to the Post Office yesterday to mail a packet to the UK. The USPS employee said it would take three weeks to get there.

Me: “I want it to go by air.”

USPS: “It will take three weeks.”

Me: “Is there something faster?”

USPS: “Three- to five-day. But that will cost around $70.”

(Note that this packet was in a medium-sized manila envelope. It weighed 4.8 ounces.)

Now, the fact that this is a Christmas present, which I’m getting around to sending the first week of March is my bad. Entirely.

But—I seriously do not know how it can take three weeks for something to go by air from Washington, D.C., to London. Is it riding a balloon? Do the Wright brothers have the contract? Is it going by way of Beijing?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Gratitude Monday: Power to the people

March being Women’s History Month, today I’m grateful for the women in both houses of Congress, who are making history. Women comprise 25% of the Senate (17 Democratic, eight Republican) and 23% of the House (89 Democratic, 13 Republican). It’s not a full representation of women in America, but it’s not only a start, it’s a major step forward.

(US News & World Report has given us photos of the women of the 116^th Congress, which I find fascinating—a vast range of ages, backgrounds, colors…)

In particular, I’m in awe of the freshman class in the House. Here’s a photo of that class:

You’ll notice that Republicans basically sent more of the same of what they’ve been electing since the Hoover administration. But the Democrats—whee doggies. They look like…America.

And those freshmen women are stepping up to do the job their constituents elected them to do. They are not standing around waiting to be asked, they’re digging in and getting it done. Just the public questioning of klepto-fixer Michael Cohen was inspiring. In her five minutes at bat (and in stark contrast to the screeching pearl-clutching and middle-school taunting of every R on the committee), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s focused queries elicited names and details that will keep phalanxes of state and federal investigators on the hop for months.

They’re brash and outspoken, these women, which royally pisses off the political old guard, who are, let’s face it, old, white, male Rs. You can’t go a single day without one of them shaking his old, white, male conservative finger at AOC or Ilhan Omar or Ayanna Pressley, who are irrefutably guilty of being not old, not male, not white, not Republican and even not “Christian”.

Yes, their youth and brashness lead to sometimes cringeworthy moments. But I’ll take them over those fossilized parasites any day. They give me hope, which is always something worthy of gratitude.