I'm back! Though you may think I secretly relish writing the stories of past defeats, I think I've actually dreaded typing these upcoming tales of woe. The sunny days and warm temperatures haven't lent themselves to reminiscing on past slights. But hey, sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do.

Yes, I've probably detailed this one before, but for the sake of continuity and completeness I'll go over it again.

While whiling away the days as a phone drone at Fitzsimmons I kept the Internet red hot with resumes. I had sent a few to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for various jobs, and one day I got a call! I turned out to be for a job as a customer service representative in their classified ads department, which I didn't recall ever applying for, but oh, well, it was a foot in the door.

On a cold January evening I went down to once again meet destiny. There were about 40 black people in the room, including the managers, a Mexican-looking girl, an Indian and me and one other whitey. A rather nice looking black girl sitting next to me looked custom-tailored to report from the scene of a warehouse fire on the evening news, and we compared resumes. She said she had just moved to Atlanta from St. Louis after getting a Master's in Communications and doing a White House internship. She said none of those credits had turned any heads in St. Louis so she was hoping to have better luck in Atlanta. I told her I'd been trying for 12 years so good luck (always a beacon of encouragement).

We took a typing test. Back in the waiting room a guy said he hadn't even made it off the first paragraph. I'd typed the whole page once and got halfway through doing it again. Suddenly a woman burst in the room looking for someone. "This guy got a 98% in accuracy on the typing test! Who is this?," she was saying. The black guy who said he couldn't finish the first paragraph raised his hand, comically, but she said, "No, we know that wasn't you! Who's Art?" That was me! I had killed the typing test! They couldn't believe it!

This lady interviewed me. She seemed impressed that I also interviewed indifferent antique store owners who probably sold meth out of their back office for their holiday shopping special. She asked me if I wanted to do a second interview that night, and I said as long as I wasn't keeping anyone from dinner, and talked to a second guy who detailed the job a little further. I would hear something in a couple of weeks, they said.

A couple of weeks went by and I didn't hear anything, and I grew concerned. I followed up, and fortunately maybe another couple of weeks after that, I got a interview with the Big Boss Man! More on that...tomorrow? The next day? Oh, we'll see.

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