This evening I went through on-line job listings.<\/p>\n
I saw an opening that looked interesting with a non-profit poverty relief organization. Hmm, said I — this could be cool.<\/p>\n
So I started their application process.<\/p>\n
Upload the resume? Check.<\/p>\n
Fill out contact information? Check.<\/p>\n
Then they wanted to test some basic reading comprehension skills. Hmm, said I — this is quite clever, and I wish I’d done something like this back at EB Games. Two screens, fifty questions later, I’m done.<\/p>\n
I move on to another screen.<\/p>\n
I read it. I read it again.<\/p>\n
It’s an “Oh, Shit” moment.<\/p>\n
I should have copy-and-pasted the text. I wish I had.<\/p>\n
This screen was their mission statement. A bulleted list of what they do and what they believe.<\/p>\n
Prayer. Jesus. Bible. Christian morality. Prayer. Jesus. Bible. Christian charity. Prayer.<\/p>\n
After reading this, it asked for an essay. How would I fit with their mission? How could I help them promote their values?<\/p>\n
I thought about this. I can fake it! said I. And so I wrote a paragraph on the tragedy of suffering in the developing world — famine, drought, the threat of war — and how these things concern me. All without citing anything religious or anti-religious. Instead, I wrote about moral imperatives, about society’s true measure being how they treat those less fortunate.<\/p>\n
Pleased, I clicked on to the next screen.<\/p>\n
It wanted personal references. These were on the second page of the resume, and I went ahead and did a cut-and-paste into the first two text boxes.<\/p>\n
Then I stopped and read the label on the third text box.<\/p>\n
“Pastoral Reference.” I haven’t had a “pastoral reference” since I was sixteen. That was over half a lifetime ago. Atheists don’t need “pastoral references.”<\/p>\n
Another “Oh, shit!” moment.<\/p>\n
In certain circumstances I can fake piousness the way I can fake being a drunken Irishman, but this was a circumstance where fakery would get me nowhere. So I was honest — “I have no pastoral references.”<\/p>\n
Well, this atheist probably isn’t getting called in for an interview there any time soon. \ud83d\ude06<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This evening I went through on-line job listings. I saw an opening that looked interesting with a non-profit poverty relief organization. Hmm, said I — this could be cool. So I started their application process. Upload the resume? Check. Fill out contact information? Check. Then they wanted to test some basic reading comprehension skills. Hmm,Continue reading “On An "Oh, Shit" Moment”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1113,4104,4093,4124],"class_list":["post-1598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-applications","tag-atheism","tag-life","tag-work","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}