Hi World,
I came across an interesting article about Google the other day. Google is looking for a few good people. According to the author, Google generally hires Ivy League graduates with high GPAs. In other words, don't bother, state school slackers.
Chicken is not deterred. Chicken kind of likes the questions that Google is asking. They are a welcome change from "What are your qualifications?". I'm more of a generalist. I have no real qualifications.
I've linked to the article here, but I know most of you won't go there (fellow slackers), so I've also printed them down below. There are 15 questions and I only answered half since I still have dinner to cook and laundry to fold, and neither Bobby Flay nor Joann Mannix are anywhere in sight to help, even though I promised wine if they would help me just this one time. Joann was all, like, "No Chicken, I love you, but laundry hurts my feelings and I have a book to finish", and Bobby Flay said, "What? Who wants me to cook their Chicken?", which really turned me off.
Anyway, so I'm on my own. Whatever.
Are you listening Google? Consider this post my application. I'm surprisingly inexpensive and I know I can bring value to this job because, I once heard it said, that if you want a job done efficiently hire a lazy person, and my laziness quotient is off the charts. But don't get me wrong-I still want to change the World. I just want to change it in the easiest manner available.
Here we go:
How many golf balls can you fit into a school bus?
Answer: 0
Explanation: My school bus is filled with American teenagers on their way home from a band competition with all their instruments in tow. Every seat is taken and, don't tell, but a couple people are sitting in the aisle. The bus driver just had gastric bypass surgery, but it hasn't quite kicked in yet, if you know what I mean. They just stopped for dinner, where everybody got super-sized for an extra fifty-nine cents. Now, chances are, you could fit some golf balls in between carbohydrate-laden bodies and band cases, but given the weight limits for a standard bus, this would not be advisable. Not if you want to be legal. And get over that bridge up ahead. And whoa, is that a weigh station? Yeah, no room on the bus for golf balls, dudes.
(The great thing about this answer is that it also applies to a very small school bus, such as the one that Chicken rode for many years. No estimating cubic footage necessary, which would be tedious)
How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle.
Answer: Chicken doesn't do windows, but she has four kids and will rent them out for $4 p/ window.
Explanation: None required, but I just saved you about 15 million bucks. Maybe I should be your CFO? Of course, this job could take awhile. My kids work kind of slow and one of them is really short. Another one, I suspect, will not be a very effective window cleaner considering the state of her room and car most days.
How many piano tuners are there in the whole world?
Answer: It depends on the number of pianos, but let's say there are 15 million pianos, there are 21, 277 piano tuners in the world
Explanation: If every piano is tuned once per year, and if every piano tuner tunes an average of 3 pianos per day, five days a week, but takes 3 weeks vacation and six sick days, then he can tune 705 pianos per year. It should be noted, however, that given the economy and the general slackness of most piano owners, who either do not follow the prescribed formula for piano tuning or have even forgotten they own a piano because, although they had high hopes at the time of purchase, it turns out their kid is actually NOT the second coming of Mozart, that at least 20 percent of these piano tuners are unemployed and another 30 percent supplement their income with an additional full-time job, possibly delivering Chinese take-out. Are you hungry? I could eat. Anyway, so that would bring the actual number of full-time piano tuners down to roughly 10,638 world wide.
Design an Evacuation Plan for San Francisco:
Answer: Have Steve Jobs quickly design and construct an iUniverse app that will allow people to use their macs and iphones to download themselves into a safe alternate internet community until the emergency status has been lifted. Steve Jobs probably already has iUniverse in progress. The question is, will we be able to afford it? And would Steve Jobs let us out?
Explain the definition of Dead Beef:
Answer: Beef that is no longer alive. It is sometimes used, also, in reference to the Wendy's commercial, "Where's the Beef", which is no longer in use by Wendy's.
Explanation: I know it can't be that easy, but really, what else could it be if its dead?
A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
Answer: The man (an elderly chicken farmer) was on his way to the lottery to turn in his multi-mega million dollar ticket. The ticket was 363 days and 23 hours old because he never checks his lottery tickets, assuming that he will never win, which is just a defeatist attitude, if you ask me, but on that particular day, he was organizing his junk drawer and found the ticket and decided to check it. When he discovered he was holding the winning ticket, he also discovered that the ticket would expire within an hour. The lottery office was 50 minutes away. He hopped into his 1982 ford fiesta and hit the road. Forty minutes into the drive, his car broke down. There was a hotel just ahead. He didn't want to leave the car because he was very attached to it, so he pushed it to the hotel, which took 11 minutes. The problem with the chicken farmer was that he was too nostalgic and not really very smart. He was very sweet, however, and when he told his sad story to the valet guy at the hotel, the valet guy felt sorry for him, so he sent him to the bar and asked the bartender to make the poor guy a drink, so the bartender did. The bartender, a former Vegas dancer, really took a shine to the farmer, and he to her. That drink turned into dinner, dancing, and a marriage proposal. They lived happily ever after. That chicken farmer was the luckiest guy in the world.
Explain a database to your eight-year-old nephew in three sentences:
Answer: A database is a lot like your Dad's garage. It has a lot of stuff in it. But unlike your Dad's garage, when you need something that is in your database, you can actually find it and don't need to stomp around the house cursing and yelling that you've been robbed.
Note to Google: It would probably make more sense to have my 8-year-old nephew explain databases to me.
Phew, that was intense! Google, I'll watch the mail, okay?
World, if you would like the answers to the questions that Google posed (besides mine, I mean), they are also included in the article.
Chicken out
OMG, you totally should get the job at Google. I'll put in a good word for you.
ReplyDeleteSo many things to love about this post!
ReplyDeleteI loved the Joann reference. I hope she takes a break in her writing/editing to read it! :)
YOU should be hired in a heartbeat. I don't know if any answers could be better!!!
Effing Google! I wish I was a millionaire and could hire you, Chicken, because you have the kind of skills that I would require of my employees.
ReplyDeleteYep- I'd snap you up in a heartbeat. Maybe if we all bombard google with "hire Chicken emails " they'll stand up and take notice.
ReplyDeleteLove the new header too!
I'm wondering if a "dead beef" is something that, culturally, many people found irritating for a while, but no longer care about because there's something (or someone) even more irritating now. For example, Mel Gibson. Or maybe BP (although I suspect that beef is not yet dead.)
ReplyDeleteP.S. Your answer for San Franciso's evacuation rocks.
My first thought about the database was that the kid needs to explain a database to you too! Very funny.
ReplyDeleteToo much need to think out of the box. I could never work for google. I'm in the box until they put me in the ground.
Thanks, all.
ReplyDeleteDBS-So Dead Beef could actually stand for Bobby Flay, then? Psyched.
Average Broad-check your lottery tickets
Thanks for your offer Chicken, I'll take you up on it if (meaning 'when') I get stuck.
ReplyDeleteI loooove your explanation of a database. It totally made my week a better place. And the evacuation of San Francisco: best idea ever!
Google should totally hire you.
Hi Ashes-I'll be here. My email is chickensconsigliere@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteThe database and San Fran are my favorites, too. Let's hope Google likes them, eh?
by the way, DBS, Dead Beef, as it turned out, was some kind of old language or software or something. Guess you'd have to be an IT fanatic to pick up on that one.
ReplyDeleteThose are the best interview questions ever. Then again, if it was up to me in that first question "golf" would be replaced with "tennis" and "a school bus" would be replaced with "your mouth."
ReplyDeleteHi Elly Lou-and if it were me answering, the answer would still be 0, because my mouth is usually full of fries.
ReplyDeletechicken consigliere for CFO! way to think outside of the scooby doo lunch pail (don't judge).
ReplyDeletebeam me up iUniverse.
Thanks Punker-CFO sounds kinda boring, though. And you probably have to be able to count past 100, too. I hope they come up with something more fun than that for me.
ReplyDeleteYup, I'd hire you.
ReplyDeleteA job with Google, huh...like, you'd have to be all thinky, and answer questions, right?
ReplyDeleteSalty Jill-we should start our own Google. That would show them.
ReplyDeleteSandra-exactly. Someone would type in something in the search box and I'd have to run and look it up in Encyclopaedia Brittanica. At least that's what I'm guessing. Or I could send them to your blog, which would be easier. You have most of the answers, right?
Dead beef is computer related.
ReplyDeleteI read "database" as "base" as in "base two" and was excited I actually knew an answer...lol...at me.
CC, were you this funny before you met Chicken, or did this great sense of humor and witty writing happen after you became the CC? Your blog has been an icon on my desktop for quite awhile. I even mentioned the blog in one of my blog posts.
Chicken, let me know when you're writing crap about me or you need answers, because I will take my nose out of these awful revisions and come to your aid! Although, I have to say, my friend, you did NOT need any help of mine on this. You are brilliant, beyond brilliant, my Chardonnay Bestie.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have a story about my piano tuner. Of course, I do. He was this young, handsome guy named Nick and he had his own business. It was time to tune our piano but I wanted to make sure my hubs was around because this guy was so full of the talky talk and he would NEVER LEAVE. And my husband is very good and tactful at getting people to leave whereas I just burst into tears after too many hours and flee the room. That's my kind of tact.
Anyway, it always used to amaze me that this young, handsome dude had nothing better to do than sit around talking to people and tuning their pianos. Well, of course my hubs got held up at work and the hour with Nick stretched into hours and I kept leaving the room to cuss my husband out on the phone and tell him to get his ass home. After 3 hours, my hubs came home and Nick still stayed. Finally, it was past dinner time and we hadn't made any dinner because we were still entertaining Nick. We told him we had to excuse ourselves because we had to make dinner and he was all, "Well, I'm pretty hungry myself." He ended up sitting down with us and eating frozen burgers we cooked up. Then we tried to excuse ourselves to put our kids to bed. He came in and read the kids a freakin' STORY! I finally had to say, "Nick, thanks for tuning the piano, but you've gotta go."
Nick went out of business. Probably too many customers Not enough time.
Thanks for the shout out Chicken. Anytime, I'm there for you.
Chicken, Google should snap you right up. Your answers were much more imaginative, I'm sure, than the 'real' answers, which isn't to say that your answers aren't real, because you really hit the nail on the head with those.
ReplyDeletexo -El
Speaking as someone who once did hire you and would hire you again in a heartbeat; Google, you don't know what you are missing. Seriously. Unless you expect this search engine thingy to be a short term fad, get thyself to The Chicken prompt-o-ree-no and commence hiring process.
ReplyDeleteCB
Hi CB "Prompt-o-ree-no" is going to be my new favorite word. It makes me laugh just to read it. And I'm going to use commence, too. Probably something like, littleb, get thyself into this tub prompt-o-ree-no and commence to washing. And thanks. For saying you'd rehire me again. That made me feel good:-)
ReplyDelete