The Interview That Wouldn't End

I had an interview this morning for a job which I am only marginally interested in.  In fact, the job itself sounds pretty tedious, and it is located in Santa Monica, which would make my commute about an hour each way.  The reasons I would consider it are: (a) they are very dog friendly, which means I could have my dog with me all day every day, and (b) I need a more stable job with benefits if I am serious about becoming a mama.  So, I rented myself a zipcar and drove to Santa Monica for what I thought would be a simple 30-60 minute interview.

I get there and begin the interview with a young attorney.  In fairness he does warn me that he has a lot of questions for me.  However, I am totally baffled by the inanity of most of the questions. Here is a sampling:

1.  Looking back to the time up through high school (HIGH SCHOOL!), tell me who was most influential on your life.
2.  What did you like about high school?
3.  What did you not like about high school?
4.  What were your career ambitions when you were in high school? [SERIOUSLY, I GRADUATED HIGH SCHOOL 22 YEARS AGO, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING]
5.  Same questions repeated for college and law school.
6.  With respect to your first job out of law school, what did you like most about it?
7.  What did you like least?
8.  What were the strengths of your supervisors at that firm?
9.  What were the weaknesses of your supervisors at that firm?
10.  What were your strengths at that job?
11.  What were your weaknesses at that job?
12.  What was your starting salary at that job? Ending salary?
13. Repeat same questions regarding every job I've had since then.
14.  What are you most interested in about our company?

And on and on and on.  That conversation lasted at least 45 minutes. 

Then I met with the head legal guy, who was really nice and talked to me like a normal human being, though he was relatively long winded.  At this point I was getting nervous about the time because I had to return the zipcar by 11:30 and still had an hour's drive to get to the return spot. 

The kicker was that at the end of that conversation, he put me in a room by myself and made me review and revise a contract for 30 minutes as a "test" of my abilities.  WOW, this is one serious mother-effing interview.  At this point I finally looked at the time and it was 11:23am.  I realized I would be late returning the zipcar but I didn't want to whip out my phone and call them in front of everyone. 

Long story short about the zipcar, I returned it an hour and a half late, and spent almost $100 (including the late fee) on it.  And I didn't get to work until after 1pm.....all for a job that I really don't want but kind of need.

I don't know why, but the "test" really annoyed me.  I understand why they did it, but honestly I was caught pretty off-guard about how intense this process would be - it's a first interview after all, from a job listing on career builder.  When I left I was panicked about the car thing and annoyed at the length of it all and the inanity of the questions about high school.  C'mon, you can tell from my resume that I'm over 40 - can't you at least try to tailor your questions to my experience since law school?

The good news is that I feel like I have done something on my list for today.  I am continuing to get out into the world, meet new people and have non-ttc experiences.  And that is worth something to me right now.