Possible Reasons Why I Didn’t Get Asked In For A Second Interview

Your Monkey has been working the Help Wanted ads in an attempt to find a new position that is a better fit for his skills, tastes and financial considerations.

It is not an easy process, my friends.

In today’s highly competitive job market, going on a job interview is similar to being set up on a blind date with a very attractive member of the opposite sex.

He or she probably isn’t going to like you to begin with, and making even the smallest mistake could spell the end of your chances.

Thus when your Monkey had a phone interview for a new position the other day and didn’t get called back for a second round, he had to do some deep soul searching to see if there was anything he did that might have been off-putting.

After an exhausting night of self examination, he was able to identify some tiny faux pas that may have negatively impacted his chances:

So that you can avoid the bitter sting of rejection that has shamed your Monkey today, here are some things to stay away from during your next interview:

• Saying “like” a few too many times
• Being overly negative about your current work situation
• Pointing out the areas in which you are underqualified for the role
• Continuing to eat your lunch of carrots, apples and taffy when the interviewer rings in
• Sucking on cough drops for the rest of the phone call
• Bringing the phone onto the toilet with you (even if it is only to go onesies)
• Hinting that it would be “real cool” if they could be flexible on the whole pre-employment drug screening
• Asking if the company health plan covers anger management classes, gender reassignment surgery, and/or tattoo removals
• Pointing out potential loopholes in the company’s sexual harassment policy
• Asking the interviewer her cup size
• Saying “hopefully out on parole, or at least under a cloud of reasonable doubt” when asked where you see yourself in five years
• Inquiring about the availability of a whites-only water fountain

Update from Monkey Headquarters

The following incidents took place in and around Monkey Headquarters on Saturday, Nov. 26.

• Wake up uncomfortable and stiff in sleeping bag on the floor. Wonder again why floor seems better option at night than bed
• Suffer immediate harassment from dogs looking for food/walks/adventures outside
• Turn on television hoping to find English Premier League game soccer game on ESPN, only to be bitterly disappointed to find that it’s Trout Fishing Hour instead
• Watch an hour’s worth of trout fishing
• Finally give in to relentless demands of dictatorial dogs and take them to the dog park and fitness trail
• Return home only to head right back out again to get dog weighed at vet’s office. Have to negotiate through foot and reindeer traffic at town’s annual Santa Claus parade
• Rake outside for an hour while listening to concluding chapters of “Confederacy of Dunces” audiobook, thus concluding a deep immersion in the book’s unique language, worldview and characters
• Develop a sudden and intense interest in Dunces’ author John Kennedy Toole, who committed suicide decades before book’s actual release and success
• Feel a strange kinship with the alienated and paranoid Toole, who suffered literary rejections personally and underwent a rapid physical and mental decline prior to taking his life
• Spend a few scattered hours of trying and failing to complete a concrete task (buying a new car, finding a new job, charting a new song on guitar) before finally giving up
• Spend the rest of the evening deeply and thoughtfully contemplating inability to complete concrete tasks
• Decide once again to pass on the bed and fall asleep in sleeping bag on the floor

Things That I Could Live Without For A While

• Coverage of the Republican primaries
• The relentless, robotic optimism of Dancing with the Stars Host Tom Bergeron
• Holiday Traffic
• Weekday Traffic
• Parking Lot Traffic
• Jonah Hill (this includes older, chubbier Jonah Hill and new slim Jonah Hill, as well as the animated voice of Jonah Hill)
• The local news
• National cable news
• Twilight sagas
• Social media blogs
• “Copy and paste” form letter Facebook status updates expressing support for obvious causes (i.e. “re-post this if you don’t want puppies to be kicked”)
• That  Geico caveman (OK, the joke that was mildly funny to begin with has been beaten to death, resurrected, and beaten to death again). Just stop it already.
• Black Friday Sales (if you all want to line up like sheep at the buttcrack of dawn and elbow each other in the face in a desperate attempt to buy something at an artificially discounted price, be my guest. It’s gross and gluttonous behavior. I’ll be sleeping in.
• That being said, if you do go out on Black Friday and see a good deal on a flat screen TV, could you grab me one? Thanks!

The Following Things Betrayed Me Today

• Genetics–Hey umm… RNA and DNA and chromosomes and Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin—-thanks so much for this unholy mess that passes for my physical appearance. I appreciate this little genetic code that you’ve sussed out. No matter how much I work out I just get skinnier and smaller and paler and more feminized.
• My Computer–all I want to do is apply to one f–king job and the thing keeps freezing up on me. Sure, I have a newer computer, but the old one has the Microsoft Word program that I need to type out the cover letter. Going on hour number two of staring at that cocksucking hourglass already.
• Drivers in the Breakdown Lane– OK, I know that you’re technically allowed to use the breakdown lane during rush hour, but do you have to use it if all the other lanes are working just fine? Driving in it “just because you can” is stupid and shortsighted and  creates a crowded and dangerous driving situation. No one thinks you’re cool because you’re using the outlaw edge.
• Genetics--Again, what is with this body? How can one person be so skinny and weak and spotted and pale, and not be classified as some sort of endangered bird?
• Judas Iscariot– Just kidding, big guy. You’ve never done me wrong and you give the most wonderful kisses on the cheek.

Beating the Heat

The sun scorched down today as your humble Monkey once again resumed pulling boxes out of his apartment and trying to get the move done. The sweat pooled down the front of his monkey chest, and covered his monkey brow.

“Hey,” the girl from the donut shop yelled up at him. “Where’s the puppy dog?”

Your Monkey could only smile and shrug.

“Too hot for her in the car today?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Wow. What a deft conversationalist your Monkey is. Words tremble beneath his powerful tongue.

A three-day holiday weekend is a good time to move from the perspective that there is not the usual amount of work-a-day traffic, but all that time off isn’t neccessarily a good thing.

Your erstwhile Monkey is climbing the walls at home already. The dogs are looking at him and expecting something, but what to do with dogs when it’s hot enough to beat the band out there? Dragging them through the streets doesn’t seem fair.

Sweating and working on the world’s longest and most pointless freelance copyediting project seems to be the order of the day.

While others will spend their fourth lazing by the pool, your Monkey will be locked in a darked room, wrestling with CERTAIN INDIVIDUALS who would make a mockery of English with their tripled adjectives “he saw a massive, huge and very big rock” and their wanton disregard for the past, present and future tenses.

Sigh.

Didn’t Post, Didn’t Die

OK, so perhaps your Monkey has already broken his relaunch promise of posting every day.

Perhaps he didn’t have anything good to post about yesterday and decided to take the day off.

Perhaps when he promised to post once a day every day, he was talking only about the M-F workweek, and not the weekends.

Perhaps he was too busy yesterday having sexy parties and romantic intrigues and simply couldn’t find time for a post.

After all, bloggers need lives, too. Right?

The truth is that your Monkey didn’t post. And he didn’t die.

It is not the end of the world.

It doesn’t matter who promised to do what and didn’t come through or who broke what New Year’s resolution.

We’re not here to name names and point fingers, are we?

This isn’t the 1950s, and your Monkey is no communist. (This isn’t Communist Russia, is it Danny?)

How Coverville Delivered One Monkey from the Workweek Blues

So here we are on Monday.

The two weeks of vacation that coincide with Christmas and New Year’s are over. School is back in session, traffic is back on the road, and your Monkey is back to being grumpy.

After three days of snow and quiet, it was tough to return to the direct marketing grindhouse and find the energy to deal with ALL THAT HAS TO BE DONE.

There is copy to write and pages to proof and concepts to develop and it all has to be done NOW NOW NOW.

There is no time to think or gather yourself, my friend. We must push ever onward toward deadlines and deliverables and measurable achievement.

The one saving grace in an otherwise grumpy day was catching up on a Coverville podcast from last month.

For those of you who don’t know, Brian Ibbott’s Coverville is a thrice weekly podcast that is all about cover songs.

Each year Ibbott hosts a Coverville countdown where he asks his listeners to vote on the best cover songs of the year.

Having done the countdown for a couple of years now, Ibbott has amassed enough of the top vote-getters to put together a Coverville Hall of Fame.

These inductees will no longer be eligible for the annual countdown so that other songs can have a chance to shine.

But if you haven’t heard Coverville before, this hall of fame list is a great place to start.

Here is a link to the show.

And the song below is a live version one of this Monkey’s favorite Coverville discoveries.

(This version is OK, but you should really hear the recorded version. The Coverville show is a great place to get it).

The Man at Work Who I Hate

There’s a guy at work that I hate.

He sits right next to me and talks my ear off from the moment I get in until the moment I leave. He crowds my personal space, interrupts my work,  and compromises my productivity.

I try everything I can to get him to stop his relentless yammering. But on he goes. “This job is pointless.” “This place stinks.” “What are we doing here anyway?” “Why do we bother to get up in the morning?” “I’ll never amount to anything.”

I try everything I can think of to block him out. I glare. I shake my head. I roll my eyes. I turn my back. I put on headphones and try to drown him out. But still he keeps talking.

It’s like this every day from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. This guy never calls in sick, he never takes a vacation, and he never has a day when he just doesn’t feel like talking.

How am I supposed to work in an environment like that?

I know, I know. I should pay a visit to human resources, or talk to my supervisor, or ask to switch seats.

We all have work to do, and it’s not fair that I should have to put up with a constant stream of abuse all day.

I mean, this is the 21st century.

We have codes of conduct and standards and ethics that we have to uphold.

We cannot verbally harass our co-workers.

There is no gray area here.

I am in the right.

There’s just one little problem, however.

That guy is me.

10 Minutes of Grumpy Monkey Fiction

In which your Monkey narrator, finding himself uninspired by real life, tries his hand at 10 minutes worth of fiction.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a time for copywriting Monkeys in gray suits with chips on their shoulders and black coffee in their veins.

The Monkeys would shuffle into work each morning in v-formation like a gaggle of gray geese. Their  office typewriters started up the moment they sat down and they would clack clack clack all day long.

The Monkeys were hulking and brooding and sullen and they pounded their keyboards with a masochistic fervor that made the secretaries uneasy as they walked up and down the rows with files and files of copy to be written.

At lunch the Monkeys would gather by the elevator and nod grimly to each other without saying a word. They’d sit at a bar on Seventh Avenue and drink banana daiquiris while munching on fried plantains.

Sooner or later one of them would pull out a dusty copy of Atlas Shrugged and they’d take turns reading aloud, their hoarse monkey voices turning warm and smooth from the bananas and rum in their drinks.

And then it was back to work, the office once again coming to a halt as this gang of gray Monkeys shuffled back in from the elevators and wordlessly took up their typing again. And so it went until 5 pm, when their typing would come to a sudden and severe halt.

The silence that fell over the office was broken up only by the squeaking of chairs, the shuffling of papers, the rustling of gray trenchcoats and the clicking sounds made by a half dozen briefcases snapping shut.

And then the elevators would come and the Monkeys would leave, heading home to their wives and their lives and their thoughts of Ayn Rand.

Forget it Monkey, it’s Chinatown

There is a scene near the end of the movie Chinatown where the morally bankrupt millionaire Noah Cross (John Huston) tells private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) that deep down inside, most people are capable of some pretty rotten things.

Your Monkey is not quite as corrupt as old Noah Cross.

But he had a similar revelation recently after he took a long hard look at himself and discovered that he’s not just bad at writing cover letters, but downright terrible at it.

Of all the cruel ironies in a world filled with cruelty and irony!

To be a writer who can’t write a cover letter must be the worst of all.

Sure, your Monkey is OK at writing other things, but when it comes to cover letters, it is a jumbled mess of run on sentences, warmed-over cliches, and half-baked ideas that don’t speak at all to the specifics of the job or his personal accomplishments. No wonder human resources types are nauseated by his every entreaty.

How is anyone supposed to give this Monkey a chance when his first foot forward is a horribly awkward one?

A writer who can’t write a cover letter is like a dentist with a mouth full of fillings, a personal trainer who smokes, or a doctor who can’t stand the sight of blood.

It just doesn’t work.

And thus,  sadly, neither will this Monkey. At least not at any job he has to write a cover letter for.