12/8/2010, 1:35 PM
Ev'ry time that I enter the site that a person enters in order to post another posting or to check on some other nonsense, I'm confronted with a gigantor, dull-red, full-screen warning that a "security threat" to my computer (which, for some, easily outranks 75% of appendages) COULD exist. One of the options given to me read, "Help Me Understand" (among the others: "Return to Safety"). Anywise, I didn't select it, because I didn't (and don't) want to understand that ilk of unwarranted arseness.
An exchange with whomever devoted any of his or her time to this rubbish would proceed thus:
----------------
ME: Hi there! How is everything going?
THEM: Hold on, sir... are you trying to tell us that you don't understand what COULD lie in wait for your computer?!!
ME: Well, no, because anything, ever, could be lurking anywhere, always. I just don't quite understand the urgency of your warning.
THEM: Okay, no. NO. This is a POTENTIAL THREAT!!! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT COULD OR MIGHT HAPPEN?!! THERE IS EVERY POSSIBILITY THAT THIS LEGITIMATE, ACTUAL, AUTHENTIC POTENTIAL THREAT COULD, IF IT WERE A REAL THREAT AND/OR IF IT SO CHOSE, DESTROY YOUR LIFE!!!!!
ME: I'm pregnant with cats, and I have no idea how the heck I'm gonna get 'em out. Help me understand.
---------------
In other news, I had a 10:00 telephone interview for the job of Technical Writer with a distant snowplow-manufacturing company. I wouldn't ordinarily consider myself to be a candidate for considering this position at all, and it was suitably awkward. The woman phoning me was entirely inoffensive but for this bizarre scoff that (a) resembled a giggle being stifled; (b) was never accompanied by any pardon-me display of manners; and (c) followed nearly every answer that I gave to her variably terse questions.
I was increasingly disconcerted by this tendency to laugh, with its sometimes erupting to interrupt and disrupt a theretofore-articulate answer that i'd be in the midst of giving and all. I have no way of knowing (and I will probably never know) if this was gauche or graceless or what have you, but after 15 minutes or so, I asked her: "Ma'am, are you laughing?" She wheezily responded that she was attached to an oxygen tank, but even that expenditure of air was a bit much for her, judging by the fits of "laughter" that followed. I was most embarrassed. The interview proceeded and ended like a helium balloon deflates over days, except in seconds.
Three telephone interviews, out of 300 best-foot-forward entreaties to facilitate my being remotely functional/economically independent. I suppose that I am grateful to have made it to the 1% threshold, and I've twisted myself into all sorts of shapes and sizes for maximal accessibility, but I'm thinking that maybe it's "things" that need to be different.
Ev'ry time that I enter the site that a person enters in order to post another posting or to check on some other nonsense, I'm confronted with a gigantor, dull-red, full-screen warning that a "security threat" to my computer (which, for some, easily outranks 75% of appendages) COULD exist. One of the options given to me read, "Help Me Understand" (among the others: "Return to Safety"). Anywise, I didn't select it, because I didn't (and don't) want to understand that ilk of unwarranted arseness.
An exchange with whomever devoted any of his or her time to this rubbish would proceed thus:
----------------
ME: Hi there! How is everything going?
THEM: Hold on, sir... are you trying to tell us that you don't understand what COULD lie in wait for your computer?!!
ME: Well, no, because anything, ever, could be lurking anywhere, always. I just don't quite understand the urgency of your warning.
THEM: Okay, no. NO. This is a POTENTIAL THREAT!!! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT COULD OR MIGHT HAPPEN?!! THERE IS EVERY POSSIBILITY THAT THIS LEGITIMATE, ACTUAL, AUTHENTIC POTENTIAL THREAT COULD, IF IT WERE A REAL THREAT AND/OR IF IT SO CHOSE, DESTROY YOUR LIFE!!!!!
ME: I'm pregnant with cats, and I have no idea how the heck I'm gonna get 'em out. Help me understand.
---------------
In other news, I had a 10:00 telephone interview for the job of Technical Writer with a distant snowplow-manufacturing company. I wouldn't ordinarily consider myself to be a candidate for considering this position at all, and it was suitably awkward. The woman phoning me was entirely inoffensive but for this bizarre scoff that (a) resembled a giggle being stifled; (b) was never accompanied by any pardon-me display of manners; and (c) followed nearly every answer that I gave to her variably terse questions.
I was increasingly disconcerted by this tendency to laugh, with its sometimes erupting to interrupt and disrupt a theretofore-articulate answer that i'd be in the midst of giving and all. I have no way of knowing (and I will probably never know) if this was gauche or graceless or what have you, but after 15 minutes or so, I asked her: "Ma'am, are you laughing?" She wheezily responded that she was attached to an oxygen tank, but even that expenditure of air was a bit much for her, judging by the fits of "laughter" that followed. I was most embarrassed. The interview proceeded and ended like a helium balloon deflates over days, except in seconds.
Three telephone interviews, out of 300 best-foot-forward entreaties to facilitate my being remotely functional/economically independent. I suppose that I am grateful to have made it to the 1% threshold, and I've twisted myself into all sorts of shapes and sizes for maximal accessibility, but I'm thinking that maybe it's "things" that need to be different.
