Sunday night, I was worried about not being able to iron a shirt. Turns out I was worried about the wrong thing.

Okay, so I had an interview yesterday. Same company, but this was for a manager position. About ten people were interviewing for two spots, giving me at worst 5:1 odds. (A co-worker said that there was rumored to be six manager spots opening up, giving me 3:2.) I found out about the interview last week, but only did some formal prepping on Sunday night with some coaching from my godfather, a career counselor. (My college habits come back to bite me in the ass...)

I thought the interview itself went okay. My three biggest shortcomings, in my mind:

• Too much verbal filler.
• Not having any experiences applicable to the questions being asked, causing me to do the whole "if it were to happen, this is what I would do" routine.
• Saying "when do I start?" towards the end. (In my defense, this was a tactic recommended to me by my godfather.)

In asking my boss today if he'd heard anything, he told me that I didn't make the cut for 2nd interviews, and immediately gave me pointers for how I should prepare for any future interviews. Honestly, I wasn't prepared for feedback right then, so right after he finished, I went to the place where I usually do most of my thinking during the weekdays, the middle stall in the men's room.

As I started my car to head home, the local rock DJ implored me to turn it up, as he was starting a block of Pantera. I immediately flipped the volume knob to the right and sped out of the parking lot for a few seconds of anger-letting. After turning the sound back down, my mind began to wander a bit. I actually thought back to a line from the football movie I saw a couple of weeks ago. "We're gonna praise God when we win, and we'll praise Him when we lose," the coach in the film told his team.

"Dear God," I started sarcastically, "thanks for not letting me advance in my career. I understand it is Your will for me to deal with angry clients all day. Praise be to your infinite Wisdom that would see me fail at something. Amen."

Further down the road, I thought back to words spoken by a great American, "There is no failure, only feedback."

"Yeah," my inner monologue said, "but feedback only requires ONE Tums tablet, no?"

Okay, so the fact that I could even be considered for a managerial position 25 months after my hire date should speak well of my record there so far. The bad thing is that turnover rate for the Pope seems to be higher than that of team lead spots at my company, and that competition for them (as I've found out now) is fierce. If nothing else, this may give me a chance to take stock of where I am now and where I want to go.

Or just give me another chance to bitch...