105
After losing a year in the hands of my first vocational
rehabilitation counselor, I was very impressed with my new counselor,
'Greg'. Using his partnership with the University Of Colorado group,
they had scheduled an appointment for me and a few other clients to
be presented at 'Rocky Mountain Telecom'. RMT was one of the big
winners with the break up of the national Bell Telephone company.
They went from being a small regional telecommunications carrier to a
full-on national long distance competitor. With their explosive
growth they had recently taken over an abandoned IBM complex and not
only made it their own, but were actively expanding it to house many
more employees. Of the computer related jobs in Colorado, I saw this
as the Brass Ring of success. If I got a job there, it would surely
put the across the hayfield grocery store owner's wife's curse
to rest: That I would end up as nothing more than a hot dog
vendor.
The meeting set, we were to arrive at the VocRehab building a half
hour before hand to be confirmed as being present and then taken to
the facility in a van. Oddly enough I had been to the complex a
year before as one of my old writers' group cohorts had landed the
job of managing the building drawings as part of the takeover by RMT;
he had given me and Jeff a tour of the then empty complex explaining
the changes that were going to be made and the estimated number of
people who would eventually work here. Pulling up in the van I
could now see the front parking lot full of cars and the previously
empty foyer now tight with security desks and electronic gates. We
signed-in and then waited for our host to come and greet us and lead
us to the conference room where we would meet with a selection of
managers. To my surprise, the room wasn't more than a few hundred
feet from the foyer and we were sat as a line behind a row of tables
with the various RMT managers and lead employees scattered at the
individual tables before us.
With no formal choreography to the proceeding, the University Of
Colorado adviser introduced the representative of Vocation
Rehabilitation who gave a quick speech of 'helping to find jobs for
capable, if physically challenged, people and thus bringing success
to us both'. Then he decided to have us introduce ourselves, briefly
describing our physical challenges, and note our job goals and
relevant experience. When it came to me, it turned out I didn't have
to describe my physical challenges all that much as my stuttering was
on full display. Normally in unusual circumstances I forget to
stutter but perhaps sitting at a table rather than standing at a
podium made me too comfortable and therefore the back of my
mind was in full control of my attempts to talk. Still, I eventually
got out my safety line, ''I'm sorry, I stutter occasionally,'' with a
sheepish face and then talked briefly of my intestinal problems and
of having recently recovered and looking for a computer programming
job with near a decade of experience under my belt. I
neglected to note that most of that experience had been unpaid
volunteer work.
Once the rest of us had given their introduction we were asked a few
questions... very few questions, and then the meeting
was formally over and we could mill about with the employees in the
room. Very few had questions for me, I hoped it was more a case
of they were put off by my stuttering rather than concluding I
wouldn't be a capable addition 'to the team'. Finally, on the
way out of the conference room, one of the lead employees pulled me
aside in the hallway and told me of her battle with Multiple
Sclerosis and how supportive the company had been for her and it
would make a great place for me to work at as well. Acknowledging
this I got around to the question of if she had any jobs that might
be a good fit for me. It turned out she had no role in the hiring
process and had just attended the meeting based on her identifying
with the topic given her own health issues. She was actually
interested in talking to me more but they were loading the van and I
was the last one to be rounded up. In retrospect I should have
asked if I could stay and have her give me a tour of the building
and, possibly, bump into coworkers who were
involved in hiring. I could have taken the bus home on my own
once done. But I didn't think of that idea and just did what I was
told and returned to the van.
On the drive back, the University representative and VocRehab
counselor thought it went well and expected callbacks for many, if
not all of us, for job interviews...
As the subsequent weeks went by, no calls came.
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