Are you ready to do a demo today?

Sit down, relax and pull a chair to read this funny entertaining story.....

(side note: I am not a doctor, lawyer, nor hold an MBA..my background is administrative, executive secretary, PA (personal assistant) etc. My college major International Business. Don't knock us secretary, PA types, we are actually the ones runnin' thangs...)

So I go to the first interview yesterday, a school, near to my home.
I meet Mrs. S. and she asks me, "so are you ready to present a demo today?"
I was like... "a what, a demo for??"
She says "you are applying for the English Teacher position..."
"No I am not. I was applying for Executive Secretary."
"Oh" she says. "Well then, please email your CV, then you can meet with Mrs. K"
"You don't have my CV, I emailed it to you?"
"No I do not." Okay how did she contact me via phone then?
I was in and out in less 10 minutes.... So I can say they were definitely NOT organized and did not make a good first impression on me to say the least...SCRATCHED from my list of possible employers.

Okay, so my second interview was even better! I had this one as well yesterday at 2PM. I left the first interview about 12:30Pm, then we had to drive to downtown Cairo, terrible traffic, took us about an hour to get there. We finally found it. My God! Traffic, I cannot even begin to describe to. Parking, LOL.

Well, there was this little underground-ish garage. We pull in, and the pavement where you would drive to find a space, had cars parked, so you couldn't get into the garage. They said just park it and leave your keys. We were like, okay how will we exit, you will move all cars when we're ready to go? They said dont worry, yes. We were laughing so hard, but didn't have much of a choice, so we parked and hoped for the best. My husband went to office (what we determined was office anyway) asked for some sort of ticket, proof, that we were leaving our car. The man told him we usually leave ticket in car, but okay, here you go. (as he hand wrote something, probably our license plate number...)

So we had some time to spare, before 2PM came around, didn't want to be too early, so we walked the streets of dowtown Cairo at noonday, wow, filled with people! Air conditioners dripping on us as we walked from windows high above, horns blaring all around us, quite an experience!

We found the buliding I was going to interview at, asked the building guard what floor and off we went. On my way up, I called the guy I was going to meet with on his mobile phone, told him I was going to his office now, he said he'd be here in 20 minutes. So the office boy (very common here, all offices have one- he serves drinks, does errands, etc. but paid VERY LITTLE) led me to the guy's office where I waited. And waited. And waited some more. After approx. 45 minutes in strolls this dishelved man, about 40-ish I guess, faded blue jeans, super wrinkled white linen shirt and sandals. ( not cool in anyway, i mean, not stylish jeans or linen shirt that is) He immediately starts speaking to me in Arabic, I told him I understand English better and he switched to his broken english. He kept saying "yeaaah, yeahh" to everything I said. I had to keep myself from laughing. Not professional at all. Under different circumstances would he have been cool to me...NO, not a chance.

He kept saying how he trades millions of dollars per month, blah blah blah. Was not impressed.
The funny thing is, he has offered the best salary yet. Too bad, I rather take less than work as his Personal Assistant. Just a feeling, not only that he was a total loser, well that helped my decision/feeling of course, but I did not have a good feeling about his company. Then when I called him today, he was like, "its your choice, thank you very much" CLICK. Thank God thats over.

Now for the nice, pretty interview.

Went to another school by my home. 10Am interview with the Academic Director of school. That alone worried me, I was thinking, do they think I am applying to be a teacher too? I asked the receptionist to verify, she said they knew I was not applying for a teaching position. Backing up a little bit, from the first time I called this school, I was impressed. Very friendly, very professional. And today I met that nice friendly voice, what a cute, nice girl!

So I am led across campus to the office of the Academic Director. Very nice guy. Ph.D. , professional and very respectful. We had good repoire from the minute we met. He said he was very impressed by my resume from the first time he saw it. So we chatted alittle, asked me how long I'd been living in Egypt, etc. etc.

Before I met with him, they had me fill out a simple one page application, same info as CV, the last question was required salary.

So we he got to the salary part, said he could not afford that. What was my bottom line? I did not give him an answer. I said I would call him back later today after i thought about it alittle.

I called him earlier this afternoon. I have to say I am very proud of myself, what I said to him.

I told him I was impressed with his school, i liked the way everything felt and that I would be delighted to work there. Instead of giving a bottom line, I asked if he could discuss what they could offer me, being reasonable and then make me an offer I could accept. I told him if salary was main issue I could go work somewhere else for teh salary I requested. So its not just salary, but it needs to be fair. He asked me to give him until tomorrow AM, i said absolutely.

So i think, whatever they offer me, as long as it is reasonable, I will accept it. It seems like a nice place, its SUPER close to me, like 6 minutes by car. It just feels right. You know that feeling you get...that good feeling? Well i got it being there.

Anyway, so I will let you know what happens tomorrow. Thank God i don't have to give any demos, not sure what I'd do......