We Have Ways of Making You Crazy

Well, as expected, the test at the law firm was a total bust. But as completely unexpected, it went to hell before it even got started.

I got there and was ushered to a desk to begin with the vocabulary test and the grammar test, both of which I aced, of course. Then we came to the typing test.

Now, I have been typing since I learned on my mother's 1932 upright Royal typewriter, which weighed more than I did at the time. I have NEVER not typed. And I am a very good and accurate typist...as a matter of fact, I'm even an excellent statistical typist.

I wasn't even allowed to take the rest of the test because I scored - wait for it - 20 words per minute on this thing.

Let me explain. A typing test is either a sheet of paper with a couple of paragraphs on it, or sometimes it's onscreen and you type from that. The thing you type from when it's on screen is above, and you copy it below. All clear? Okay.

THIS thing was extremely bizarre (even my temp guy said he'd never heard of anything like it). The typing test is on screen in bright blue letters. You are intended to type each line below the one above it, like so:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy black dog.

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy black dog.

What you are typing appears in bright red, below the bright blue.

As you are typing, the lines you are typing from shift over (sort of - it's hard to explain), so that when you look back at them they're in slightly different places - i.e., the end of the line isn't the end of the line any more, there's a word or two from the following line tacked on. And just as an added extra attraction, you are allowed no practice time.

Imagine my surprise. I would dearly love to know who thought this piece of idiocy up, wouldn't look? I mean, when you are testing for a position, one would assume that you would be tested on things that are actually more or less relevant to the job, right? I don't know about anyone else, but I cannot think of ANY application this particular setup would have to anything. This is not a thing found in nature - in the nature of offices, anyway. Not to mention the fact that staring at those two extremely bright colors on a white screen gave me a blinding headache.

So I am now howlingly furious, because of course they wouldn't let me take the rest of the test, and I looked at it and actually could have done it! We are now merely adding insult to injury.

I am going to sit around and play solitaire and steam for a while.

Love, Wendy