Thank you so much for your interest in learning more about the opportunity we posted to become our Marketing Analyst. We have been absolutely blown away by both the number of applicants that applied for this position and the quality of the responses we received. I can’t begin to express how delighted we are that so many incredibly talented people are so committed to saving the planet.
We were impressed by your resume and your experience as well as the effort you invested in writing a compelling cover note to highlight your candidacy. However, given that we were overwhelmed with candidates, we were forced to pick just a couple candidates whose education and background seemed to be a perfect fit for our current needs.
We are going to electronically store the resumes and cover letters we receive for approximately 12 months, so it shouldn’t be a complete shock if we contact you a few months from now to see if you are still interested in this or a similar position.
We really do appreciate you taking the time to apply with such a thoughtful note and we wish you the best of luck in finding a great opportunity to help save the world.
I haven’t actually applied to ANY jobs since accepting the job at Pee & Gee, which is how I know for certain that I did not apply to this specific job at Chevron Energy Solutions. Instead, I wrote them an e-mail asking if the position was still open, thinking that I would forward it onto one of my friends who is looking for work. It looks like someone at Chevron needs to hone her database filtering skills.
i’m just trying to figure out why my #fiestamovement tag isn’t working to feed my blog posts onto my agent site. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. i hate broken code.
and yes…back in the day i DID take a c++ code class at northwestern.
apparently there is still swirl in the blogosphere over whether the 100 fiesta agents are being “paid”. allen stern at centerworks insists that we are being paid, which according to him, somehow invalidates our objective experiences with the vehicles. in one of his comments, allen writes, “While we can assume that they can say positive or negative stuff, they are required to talk… and talk… and talk… ”
three things, allen:
1. i would be willing to align with you that the fiesta is a payment/trade in exchange for 6 videos (one for each mission), but i think that our alignment would hold little to no traction without a discussion of incentive systems.
there is no incentive for me to be dishonest about my experience with the fiesta or hide features that i don’t like. none. nothing. zero. one lucky agent doesn’t get to keep his/her fiesta after the 6 months. one lucky agent doesn’t get a job working in renewable energy/corporate sustainability for ford at the end of the movement.
in other words, there isn’t any sort of payment (current or future) from ford that would prevent me from giving an unbiased account of my fiestamovement experience. a few days ago i publicly noted (on twitter, flickr, AND my blog) that the roof of my fiesta dented in when i ran across it in a fit of impulsivity. the only feedback i got from ford was a question about whether the car needed to be repaired. no censorship. no steering. no reprimand. no nothing.
i am fully aware that some people get free products from companies and in exchange for the products, the people post glowing reviews. the more glowing reviews they post, the more likely they are to receive more free products. i am in complete agreement that those reviews (if tweeted) should be marked with a $ so that it’s clear they are paid reviews and those reviewers are incentivized to only mention the positive things about the products.
the only thing i have an incentive to do is to tell ford where i think the opportunity areas are for the fiesta so that as they’re building the manufacturing line they have the option to incorporate my feedback. why do i feel like i have an incentive to help shape the direction of the car? mainly because 4 out of the 5 friends who have ridden in my fiesta are now convinced that they want to buy one.
2. no need to assume that we can say positive or negative stuff. i am telling you straight-up that we can say whatever we want.
3. there is no requirement to “talk…and talk…and talk”. the only requirement is that each of us post a monthly video about whatever mission we go on. most of us, i realized at the training, just happen to be little chatterboxes.
i would ordinarily try to come up with tight ending for this post, but i got a wicked awful blister on the side of my foot and i popped it during my 11 hour meeting today. now for whatever reason it ACHES. i am in serious pain, despite the fact that i neosporined the hell out of the area and then covered it in 3M blister tape. 3M blister tape is the BEST BLISTER PREVENTING PRODUCT ON THE MARKET. it’s jaw droppingly good, no other brands of tape even come close, and no, 3M didn’t pay me to say that. $
okay, y’all. i feel the need to clear the air about the little (and i do mean little) incident i had with my ford fiesta this weekend. those of you who don’t follow my tweets might not know that i dented the roof of my fiesta in portsmouth, nh while i was running the length of it, from bonnet to boot (as they say in the UK).
the big question i’ve been getting is the obvious one: why on earth did i think it would be a good idea to stomp all over the roof of my car? the honest answer is this: i was testing out an idea to make a super cool animated gif. what i would do is jump in place on about 12 spots on the car. i would get a pic of me about 1 foot in the air hovering over the car in each of those 12 spots. i would then blend them together and make an animated image that made it look like i was soaring upright over the car. it was obviously not a good idea, and i didn’t even have my camera in a smart place for my test run. all i can really say is oops.
i called my boyfriend when i got back from the coast, and i told him what had happened. like everyone else, he was thoroughly confused as to why i would put 150 pounds of pressure on one tiny part of the roof of my car and expect nothing to happen. i told him point blank that i had done it to all of my other cars and nothing EVER happened. it was at this point when nick filled in the missing piece of the puzzle for me. “bliss,” he said, “your fiesta is a SUB-COMPACT car.”
[long introspective pause]
quickly i thought back to all of the times i had done stunts on top of cars: ford escape, ford explorer, gmc yukon, toyota landcruiser. crap. even when teen wolf goes road surfing he does it on top of a van. it hadn’t even crossed my mind that a sub-compact would hold up differently to roof antics.
up until the fiesta, i’ve been a strict suv girl. my “starter car” was a ford escape, which i drove up and over curbs, onto grassy lawns (see video below, courtesy of scotty and fiddy from www.hitch50.com fame),
i sold my escape when i left california, and i ended up replacing it with a toyota landcruiser that i affectionately called, “the beast.” the roof of the beast could support the weight of me AND my friends.
basically, i’m pleading ignorance. i honestly just didn’t know better. i love cars, i love touching cars, and i wanted to be on top of my fiesta.
whoa. wait a second. that was a totally pervy thing to write, and i didn’t mean it in a pervy way at all. i DO like the way smooth metal feels, but i’m not an objectum sexual (someone who is literally in love with buildings and objects) by any means.
that guy in the video? i do not relate. i do, however, relate to being BFF with my cars. my early morning commutes with spongebob (my ford escape) in california were times when i could take a few deep breaths under perfectly controlled climatic conditions and get myself mentally prepared for each day. on quiet empty roads, we were warriors together. we could have taken on anything life threw at us, spongey and i.
my morning commute in boston is a 1.3 mile walk, so until my job moves (either to south boston or cincinnati) i only hang with plankton on nights and weekends. he’s more like my dirty mistress (dirty mister?) than he is my soumate. that said, he’s an awfully cute dirty mistress, don’t you think?
if nothing else, what slays me is his boot. it’s just so…BIG. it’s like OUT THERE. it must be one of those euro car boots. look at it. it looks…like a total…walk-in freezer [thumping rap beat kicks in here] I LIKE BIG BOOTS, AND I CAN NOT LIE. you other packrats can’t deny, when a car fit into an itty bitty space and shoves a huge boot in your face you get SPRUNG…
end note: if you find objectum sexuals strangely compelling, you really need to watch “married to the eiffel tower” parts 1 and 2. they’ve been pulled off of most video sharing sites for copyright infringement, but if you can find it it is completely worth watching if not just for the scene of the woman smearing ferris wheel grease all over her face after she “has sex” with the amusement park ride. yes, you just read that correctly. don’t hate the playa’, hate the game.
first off, my most hard-core apologies to my boyfriend nick who HATES it when people blog about their haircuts. oops?
i jolted out of bed this morning with one thing on my mind: i MUST get my hair cut TODAY. i hate it when this happens, because i don’t have time to find a good salon, make an appointment, and blah blah blah. i initially intended to just get 2″ chopped off so that i could continue to grow my hair out, but then when i went to supercuts (shut your mouth, you snob) and it wasn’t where googlemaps said it was, i started to fly off the handle, and as a result, i decided i needed something a bit more severe.
does anyone else have this problem with googlemaps? it consistently puts markers on maps for stores that closed down 5 years ago on it. i don’t know why i haven’t learned to cross-check their mapped store locations with the actual store websites. grrrrr.
back to my story. i’m in a tizzy, i’m freaking out about my gnarly stringy ends, and i’m convinced i left my straightening iron on and that i will come home to a pile of ashes. i am so freaked out, in fact, that as i walk home i take my ipod buds out of my ears so that i can hear the sounds of firetrucks that might be driving toward my building.
i get home.
i check my iron (it was off).
i eat a magically delicious fruit rope.
i consult twitter and yelp for hair salon advice.
i find a place called floyd’s that is walkable and reasonably priced ($38).
i set out on my way.
i had decided that i wanted a pob (a posh bob…named after victoria beckham’s signature hairstyle before she pixied it all off). i brought my laptop to the salon and showed my stylist two pics, and told her i wanted something in the middle:
i definitely needed something asymmetric at the very least. she seemed to understand what i wanted, but i ended up with this:
i’m wishy-washy about the cut. it’s not asymmetrical enough. the short side isn’t short enough. i don’t have bangs at all, which i kind-of wanted. basically she went for the long pob and i wanted the short pob. i decided that i would just let it slide since that gives me time to book an appointment with a true hair artiste for my next (shorter) pob (thanks @jannygirl for the recco).
two days later, however, i was in love with it, and it was so fabulously flippy that i was given the nickname feathers.
my main concern: will my hair go well with my new car? i’m thinking yes. lime green (the car) and asymmetry (the hair) are both muy 80s. awesomesauce.
also, and i feel like i need to call this out in the name of honesty, there’s a slight chance that i’m just dissapointed i didn’t end up looking just like posh when i got off of the chair. sometimes i indulge myself in magical thinking and when i stumble back to reality i end up drastically disappointed. her jawline. her legs. her husband. sigh.
now that i’m a fiesta agent and random strangers read my blog, here is my plea:
someone out there PLEEEEEEEAAAAAASE offer my boyfriend a job in boston. i beg of you. nick and i have been dating for one year and two months and we have never lived closer than 800 miles apart. CUT A GIRL A BREAK.
if you know me then you know i would not date anyone who is short of jaw-droppingly amazing. nick is brilliant, hilarious, creative, tech savvy, agile, and has a killer eye for design. he could also star in his own version of this old house and totally SCHOOL bob villa when it comes to handyman skills. BFA in electronic media/photography? check. currently employed by apple? check. knows multi-syllabic words and uses them? check. a thick head of hair that is always nicely coiffed? check. LEED certification? in progress. and yes, he can start immediately. here’s a little bit about him, straight off of his resume:
Highly innovative marketing and design professional with proven success conceptualizing, developing, and implementing unique brand experiences in marketing/communications, in advertising and in print/collateral executions. A collaborative team player with the ability to articulate the benefits of the creative approaches, internally and to clients.
if you don’t know of anything in boston, please feel free to offer him a job in boulder, portland, san francisco or san diego. i can find a way to get to any of those places. note to any of my coworkers who might be reading this: i’m not going to quit my job. instead, i’m going to put my foot down and insist (with tears) i be given a location-free role. my company always stress that a person must be happy at home in order to do a good job at work, and i am NOT HAPPY WITHOUT NICK. i also kind-of think boston is the pits and would be psyched to leave it behind, but shhhhhhh…
in other news, my sisters and i hope that your easters were all magical and carrotastic.
if you understand the title of this blog post, then you were likely just as addicted to texas instruments’ speak & math as i was back in the day. as strong as my foundation is in math, i started to shut-down once i hit limits in calculus-land. let’s be honest…i don’t like limits in general. confines make my teeth itch, and boundaries make my skin crawl. i avoid limits at all costs.
and then i was selected to be a ford fiesta agent.
and then the folks at ford’s marketing agency told me to write a bio in 300 characters or less. THREE HUNDRED CHARACTERS OR LESS? are you KIDDING ME? do these folks have any inkling of an idea of who i am? i am not a novel, i am a collection of short stories. i am not a meter stick, i am a drawer full of mismatched rulers of various shapes and sizes. i am not a victorian mansion, i am a small brick house with 12 add-ons, each made out of different building materials. i can not reduced to 300 characters while still captuiring the essence of who i am.
or can i?
a girl of many projects and little time, i attempted to outsource the project. my friend jeremy threw a bio together for me while she was sitting in a waiting room somewhere in california. a few back-and-forth edits later, here is the bio i ended up posting to the fiesta agent website:
BIO 1:
Bliss drives a hard line between silly and uproariously ridiculous, and is a brilliant and scathing judge of everything. In fact, she rides all 3 of those converging trains while pretending to trainjack the conductor of each. Bliss’ hobbies include losing her keys, stripes, and knitting wonky hats.
i wasn’t convinced that the bio said a whole lot about me, but i liked it. pithy. sassy. spunky. it made me feel cooler than i actually am.
then the game changed. ford said, “oops…we didn’t mean 300 characters…we meant 300 words.” godjesuschrist. should i change mine? should i leave it? honestly, it seemed like all most of the hip agents (aka the peeps i would be friends with irl) had initially kept their bios to 300 characters while some of the more lackluster agents broke the rules (or just didn’t read the e-mail correctly) and wrote bios that rapidly rambled nowhere about nothing.
ford gave all agents with 300 character bios the chance to upgrade to 300 words. i knew i didn’t want 300 words, but this was my big chance to put a little bit more of myself into my bio. i like hilary’s bio. i feel like i read it and instantly understand what drives her at a visceral level. i like becca’s bio. i read it and i think, “wow. i’d like to spend a day playing yahtzee! with her.” i like davey’s bio. in four short sentences i am left believing that he is the chuck klosterman of the fiesta movement.
i was determined to re-do my bio. i had jeremy’s help with bio 2, i wrote bio 3 all by myself, and my boyfriend crafted bio 4. it’s voting time, boys and girls. i need your help. please leave a comment and let me know which bio to use, be it 1, 2, 3, or 4. if you’re feeling particularly motivated and you don’t like any of your choices, please feel free to write a new one. i am truly mentally gridlocked, and i’ve lost the ability to tell the difference between fabulous and crapulous. bios 2-4 are as follows:
BIO 2:
A non-linear polynomial with complex coefficients in a world of dull integers, the absolute value of Bliss and the fractal kaleidoscope bubble she surrounds herself with may never truly be known to the masses. That’s okay though… Some things were never meant to be quantified.
Whether it’s knitting wonky hats or adding to her stripe collection, Bliss always has her hands in 7 pots and her feet in the clouds. Bliss was voted “most likely to turn her Fiesta into a mobile grilled cheese sales unit,” and feverishly dreams of a recurring role on The Electric Company or Sesame Street.
BIO 3:
Invite Bliss over for tea party at your house. When she finally leaves, half of your house will be aflame, a litter of teacup pigs will be mulling about in your bathtub, your forks will be AWOL, your basement will have been rented out to a stranger from craigslist who swears those plushies don’t belong to him, your deepest insecurities will have been unearthed, and you will be left wondering how you ever lived without her.
With a knack for the obscure and a flair for the obscene, Bliss is a shimmering kaleidoscope of laughter, ridiculousness, and whimsy. On any given day, you might find Bliss:
1. Using her double environmental degrees to teach the world about global warming, renewable energy, and California’s energy-water nexus
2. Digging into her Tickle Trunk for a boisterous game of dress-up
3. Drooling over anything and everything striped, including, but not limited to zebras, crosswalks, nautical sweaters, rainbows, and 7 layer dip.
BIO 4:
Pacing nervously your palms begins to sweat, not to mention you’re wearing a hole in that brand new Fükenügly rug from Ikea. Last time Bliss came over she was dressed head to toe in mismatched stripes dragging a costume trunk behind her. Promptly after arriving and without even having time to object, Bliss was in a pirate costume and you were emptying out your fishbowl to complete your astronaut outfit. You woke up the next morning with blisters on your fingers from hours of RockBand and your Flickr account somehow reached its limit. Palms still sweaty… double check to make sure the fishbowl is hidden… DING-DONG!
i sure love an awful lot of things. i often cite my love of stripes, tea parties, forks, mathematics, adventure time, the song green and grey by virginia coalition, costume parties, etc. i rarely, however, bring up one of the things i love the most:
i love people and things who look like they should be one way, and in reality are another way. see also: mashups. i love things that are 2-in-1 and don’t make any sense if only given a superficial glance. my latest mashup obsession is gary vaynerchuk. gary vee (as the kids call him) is a wine junkie. it’s ridiculous. the kidult knows ANYTHING and EVERYTHING about wine. why is he a mashup? he’s a mashup because he’s a huge jets fan, rocks a hard core bro groove, and looks like he would be more into scotch and miller high life than bordeaux and malbec. i just found all of this out last weekend, when i finally clicked on a twitter link to his wine tv episode on march madness wines. i was hooked in under 5 minutes. i know a good mashup when i see one.
i actually saw links and references to gary vee on twitter and facebook for over a year, but refused to click through. wine people generally give me the creeps. they’re highbrow, enjoy bicycling through vineyards, and typically cheat on their girlfriends. legit. all of those were good reasons for me to avoid clicking on gary’s links, but there was actually a larger issue at play.
wristbands.
2 years ago at SXSW all of my san francisco friends began flickring pics of them wearing wristbands with (what i thought were) cute little swimming sperm on them. i love pervy stuff. i NEEDED sperm wristbands, and i needed them yesterday.
i dropped some vague hints about how i wanted sperm wristbands, but no one brought any back for me. i was devastated. some friends. hmph. i later found out that the wristbands were actually lightning bolt wristbands given out by gary vee himself. i believe i twittered about how much i wanted some…i might have even @garyvee’d my tweets but honestly i can’t remember and i don’t feel like checking. the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, and i probably should have just direct messaged him and asked him if i could buy a pair, but i didn’t and i remained resentful. and remained resentful. and remained resentful. if only someone had told me that he was a jersey boy (i was born in the jerz) i don’t think this one-sided battle would have ever had to take place. i would never fight with someone from my home turf.
i have no idea why i finally clicked on a link of his. maybe it’s because people like @geechee_girl are always touting his praises. maybe i just got tired of just not knowing. either way…i’m now strongly considering becoming a vayniac. gary is great. gary mentioned in his april 3rd wine tv post that it was the 2nd anniversary of good people day (a holiday he had created the previous year to celebrate good people). gary was honoring his sister, and he encouraged all of his viewers to blog/vlog about a good person in their lives. well…
congrats, gary. you’ll never know you were my good person, but *i* know, and i’m sending good vibes in your general direction.
i just have to throw in something unrelated. well…i mean…my brain graphs in scatterplot, so it actually DOES relate, but it would take way to long for me to explain the relationship to you since it’s non-linear and involves complex dynamic multinomial variables. exactly. here’s the news: i got new boots!
stripetastic, huh? here they are on my rickity-rack:
when is good boot day? i’ve got a great candidate in mind… two of them actually.
if you know me then you know i would not date anyone who is short of jaw-droppingly amazing. nick is brilliant, hilarious, creative, tech savvy, agile, and has a killer eye for design. he could also star in his own version of this old house and totally SCHOOL bob villa when it comes to handyman skills. BFA in electronic media/photography? check. currently employed by apple? check. knows multi-syllabic words and uses them? check. a thick head of hair that is always nicely coiffed? check. LEED certification? in progress. and yes, he can start immediately. here’s a little bit about him, straight off of his resume:
