Job Opening- Instrumentation Work, California

[Begle1]

We have an opening at my position in my company, I rewrote the job description for our HR department though.
If I refer somebody that stays for half a year, I get $400. I'll split that with you if you refer somebody.


We are a small, (re)growing company with several years of guaranteed business and have an opening in a field service position. The main responsibility is to travel the country troubleshooting, installing and servicing buzzing electronic boxes and complicated pneumatic gas sampling systems. While traveling you must also act as a salesman, engineer, trainer, politician, legal aid and janitor.

Prospective employees must:
1. Have a thorough understanding of electric and electronic theory. Must know what all the settings on an electrical multimeter do. Must know how to work with 110 volt wiring. Must be able to use a wrench and a screwdriver.
2. Have a rudimentary understanding of chemistry, but be able to convince others you have an in-depth understanding of chemistry. Must be able to pronounce terms like "pulsed fluorescence", "chemiluminescent", "tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy" and "Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy" with confidence and at a high rate of speed to avoid making it obvious that you have no clue what you're talking about.
3. Be good with computers. Must have a basic understanding of networking principles and personal computer hardware. Must be competent with word processors and spreadsheets.
4. Be willing to relocate to Orange County, California. Rent prices start at $1000 a month for a hole in the ground with a cardboard box over it and a sock to poop in, and you're going to be commuting at 25 MPH every day, unless you get lucky and get to work on a weekend, which will happen frequently. Anybody from anywhere else in the country will assume you live next to reality TV stars and are a hippy when they find out that you live here.
5. Be willing to fly somewhere most every week on several days to several minutes worth of notice, and stay there from anywhere between a few hours and a few months. Expect to spend half of your nights in hotels. The majority of these hotels will be in the middle of nowhere (but will be nicer than the hole in the ground with the sock). This means you must be insurable to drive a rental car, and must not be on any no-fly lists. Must be punctual, independent and dependable. Having a passport and ability to get a visa also helps.
6. Be able to take qausi-sensical direction throughout the day from an irate Irishman, aloof engineers and a grumpy long-winded old man, while keeping them all happy. Typically this means you must fit four hours of talking on the phone and ten hours of work into one eight hour day, and if you go into overtime you need to spend another hour on the phone with the angry Irishman explaining why.
7. Be capable of working on something you've never seen before and have only a vague understanding of, while convincing somebody over your shoulder that you're an expert on it.
8. Have the mental capacity and fortitude to troubleshoot complicated systems that refuse to respond to logic. You will encounter phenomena that exist in dimensions apart from the rational universe, and you must either embrace or ignore the mystical to solve the problems. There may be millions of dollars (and your job) pending on your quick and effective resolution of the supernatural. Afterwards you will need to use well-reasoned words to scientifically explain the impossible things you've just experienced, and you'll probably look stupid regardless.
9. Be willing to answer tech support calls at all hours of the day from people that have no idea how their system works. (You'll usually have no idea how their system works either.) Often these support calls come from coworkers, and occasionally they come from your bosses.
10. Be able to read and make sense of a Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) written by a Washington bureaucrat. Must be able to teach an 8-hour class on such matters.
11. Be physically capable and willing to climb up to 400 feet of vertical ladder. Can not be afraid of heights. Can't be claustrophobic either.
12. Have the psychological integrity (or a thorough-enough insanity) to spend up to 14 hours a day in a small room, completely alone, surrounded by buzzing boxes.
13. Have good customer service skills. This means something along the lines of being an alcoholic and gigolo after working hours.
14. Able to pass random drug tests that are vaguely random.
15. Have the self-motivation and political and safety savvy to navigate a gigantic oil refinery or chemical plant, during turnaround, without getting kicked off site for any reason, while trying to coerce seven different contractors to work together and hook up three pipes and two wires and flip a breaker so you can go home on time.

Pay depends on previous experience, but base pay likely starts between 40 and 50k a year. If you become an expert at all the above items you might find yourself getting journeyman-level wages one day, although you're more likely to get head-hunted and poached by somebody else first. Typically we're looking for young, smart, common-sense people with some sort of electrical experience that we don't need to pay much. Veterans with military training in electronics, depressive intellectual loners that build fighting robots in their garage, engineering/ chemistry college drop-outs and people with nigh-worthless tech school degrees tend to fit the bill. If you know what a "CEMS" is you are likely to get hired on the spot. Respond if you're interested.

[AHineman]

Do you work for Teledyne?

[Tacoclaw]

Don't tell him, Begle!! He's trying to steal your identity so he can have Ms. Sanchez all to himself. If he cracks the password to your tumblr account, it's all over.

[AHineman]

Nah, more like just wondering if he had ever been to the plant. We've got a crap load of CEMS equipment.

[Tacoclaw]

Whatever gets you to sleep at night, Hineman.

I already applied for this job over on CompD. It took me 6 tries to pronounce spectroscopy...

Anyways, Begle, how are the Kardashians(sp?) treating you?

[Begle1]

No, I don't work for Teledyne.

They pay better.



I'm quite infatuated with Ms. Sanchez, but she resists my efforts to bait her into conversation.

She's much more attractive than any of the Kardashians.

[BILTIT]

Lol, Sounds just like my last job!!

[Tacoclaw]

Sorry to hear it, Begle. Considering the job offer, it seems tailor-made to a man wanting to start a lasting, loving relationship.

Maybe you should offer to introduce her to the irate Irishman.

[Begle1]

Maybe you should offer to introduce her to the irate Irishman.

I'd never introduce any girl to that womanizer.

[Tacoclaw]

That's perfect!

We've got a dredge operator where I work we appropriately call "Crazy". Take the girl there, let him talk with them a while, and as far as she's concerned you're the best representation of a male specimen she'll ever see again.

It's foolproof.

[Mark Nixon]

.....We've got a dredge operator where I work we appropriately call "Crazy". Take the girl there, let him talk with them a while, and as far as she's concerned you're the best representation of a male specimen she'll ever see again.

It's foolproof.

Damn, I'm game!
Now to find a gal who'll even have the guts to go with me to meet him.

Mark.

[Tacoclaw]

That's the beauty of the plan, Mark, the less likely she would be to go there in the first place the better it works out.

[PToombs]

Where's Alex? Sounds like a good job for him. He's up at all hours, likes driving all over, and can say chemiluminescent too. Just don't ask him to spell it and you're ok.

[Tacoclaw]

That depends, Pete. If he can't work in bare feet I don't know if he'll even be interested.

[PToombs]

Nah, that's Andy you're thinking about. The hippy redneck fella,