If It Sounds Too Good to be True...

It's been an emotional roller coaster of a day.

Yesterday, I responded to an ad I found on Monster.com which had been placed with our local newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal. The ad was looking for a Customer Service Manager, no relocation required. The ad was placed confidentially, no information other than a telephone number. "What do I have to lose," I thought and called the number.


The recording I reached said the position was for a respectable U.K.-based cruise line looking to start up in the U.S. Customer Service experience was required and management experience was preferred -- the person who got the job would be managing a large staff. Pay would be between $950-$1,250 weekly. If I was still interested, I should leave my name and contact number.

Within a couple of hours, an older-sounding gentleman returned my call, ran through the spiel about the company again, its "AAA" rating, and how the cruises it arranges aren't open to the general public, only to the rich and elite. He asked me a few questions about my background -- very few, I thought, and then said I should expect a call the following day (today) between 9:30-10:30 to let me know if I was going through a complete telephone interview or if they decided to look elsewhere.

Today, I waited anxiously and finally the call came. The same guy called, asked me most of the same questions he asked yesterday, along with one or two more. He again gave me the company background and told me he was going into a meeting where they would decide who to fly out to San Diego for face-to-face interviews. Was I willing to commit to an interview if they picked me and would I be available next week? Hells yeah! Dude said he'd call me back after his meeting, around 11:30 a.m.

(Keep in mind, I haven't been asked for a resume, proof of eligibility to work in this country, nada. Feeling suspicious? I was, just a bit.)

I was way too nervous to sit around the house and wait, so I packed up the pooch and headed to WaterWorks Park. Sitting at a picnic table in the shade, I got the call. They had narrowed the field from 17 candidates to five for interviews. I was one of the five. Would I still commit to taking a day to fly to San Diego in the morning and back at night? Of course! The guy on the phone said he hoped that all five candidates would work out because that was the exact number they needed to hire and they were already two weeks behind schedule. He would arrange flights with "the home office" and call me back in an hour with details. "Make sure you have pen and paper," he said.

I was ELATED! A decent-paying job and it was practically mine if I didn't screw up the interview too badly! The whole chain of events was moving so quickly -- I was just overjoyed to have someone finally interested in giving me a real, honest-to-Goddess job.

Jake and I walked to my friend Mike's house, borrowed pen and paper and awaited the call I knew would change my life.

Long story short: the call came, after much story-telling, the guy on the phone told me that I needed to pay half my airfare ($249) which would be refunded as soon as I arrived in San Diego and was met by Regional Vice President Stan Ellison. This was their corporate policy, implemented because so many people didn't show up when the flight wasn't on their dime. He needed to ticket the five fares today; was I still in or should he move on to one of the "backup" candidates?

Now, I've been unemployed for just over six months. That kind of cash doesn't come easily these days. One tiny little voice in my head started going over ways to get the money together -- after all, it was just for a few days. Luckily, another little voice said, "there's too many red flags here."

"Move on," I said, defeated.

The phone dude said he'd call me back on the 15th to let me know if one of the other candidates didn't work out and if I was still interested. My hopes, so recently resurrected, were now dashed.

Still suspicious, when I got home I did some research. When I couldn't track down the cruise line or V.P. Ellison, I Googled "employment scam cruise line." What I saw made me glad, just this once, to be poor. According to Snopes, this is an old con. Here's a link to the page detailing the swindle and how it has been separating dupes from their cash since 1992: Airfare Scam.

Well, I feel a lot better about losing out on "the interview." But man, did it feel nice to think I was on the brink of gainful employment! That's the problem with roller coasters. After you get off the ride, the giddy, hey-I-survived feeling doesn't last.

Kev in the Dream Zone

Brief bursts of updates today...

My friend Tim is visiting today from Chicagoland, and I have to clean like a whirlwind, in addition to doing laundry, mowing the lawn before it rains and making a trip to the Post Office to drop off an eBay sale. Egad. So nothing lengthy!

Somehow, in May I managed to miss blogging about the 4th anniversary of writing this blog. Where does the time go? Back in May of 2005, I was talking to my friend Doug about the ending of the musical Wicked and he said, "get a blog." So I did. And I still do.

Last night/this morning I had a wonderful dream about this guy:

In the dream, we met at a convention appearance of his, hit it off immediately as friends and did some cool stuff together. I remember waking, looking at the clock, pushing myself back to sleep and using my sole superpower, lucid dreaming, to go back to the dream. In the rejoined dream, it was winter and Kevin and I made ice dummies resembling he and his wife. I dunno... go figure a dream. There was more, but the details are already slipping away. Curse me for not starting this earlier!

I came away from the dream with warm, positive feelings about Mr. Smith. Of course, I've always had warm, positive feelings about the man -- I've hung out on his web board for over a decade and met him many times in person. But somehow, my dreams made him more real to me. More human? Dunno. But I like it.

Crap. It's getting cloudy. Time to hit the lawn.