Straight Face

Let me tell you about this one time I got yelled at.
It's a true story.

So you know that interview I talked about in my post The Digital Page with the guy who wanted to be snarky about my awesome typing skills?
Ok- so this is one of the on-campus interviews and so it is heavily regulated by administrative people to make sure that students show up on time and that we don't tick off firms that want to hire our graduates.

For the record: my interview started 45 minutes late. But that is just an aside.

So the day before this interview, I get a call reminding me that I have this interview with Barley, Hooplah and Smash, Inc. at 3:00 pm the next day.
(That's not actually a real name for a firm, but accounting firms always have the goofiest names. Sometimes they have the most difficult to pronounce names, so they shorten it to an abbreviation like everything else in accounting. But wouldn't it be awesome if there was a firm with the name Barley, Hooplah and Smash?)

And they leave a voicemail after my adorable, "Hey, this is Allie J, you know what to do" message, of which I'm sure all of you have encountered at some point.
They left a message about the interview but then they also yelled at me by including this pithy "reminder" about how students should have "professional" voicemail messages as to not send firms the "wrong impression".

I don't see what's wrong with it.
There's a greeting, an identification of myself, and concise instructions that follow.
Plus, it kind of rhymes (Hey ~ J), and that's snazzy.

But I guess they were looking for the runathemill,
"Good morrow. You have reached the telephonecular device of Allison Bernard J. Please leave your name, your phone number, the last four digits of your SSN, and a brief message explaining why you have called this stately number and why I should reply post hence. Have a beautiful day and may the fairy godmothers bless sparkles upon your souls."

Then the Verizon woman feels it is her place to chime in, 'If you would like to leave a call back number, press 5 now!" etc.

And it's like 18 minutes before you even get to leave a message. By then, you're too distracted with fairy godmothers to even remember what you have to say.

So I don't dawdle.
"Hey, this is Allie J, you know what to do."
It mirrors my personality: I don't mess around. To the point. Straight-forward.
No flowery BS, but mildly humorous.

I've also had a friend complain that it was too short and that he didn't have enough time to think about what to actually say in the message.
(then why did you call me???)

Anyway, I decided that I wasn't going to change it to please conforming personnel.
Any firm that wouldn't hire me based on my voicemail message is probably a firm I wouldn't want to work for anyway.

But remember: the difference between fooling around  and science is writing it down,
TWS