Phone Interview - Learning Moment

Learning Moment Chaos

What NOT to do the day before a phone interview…

Learning moments… UGH. I love them and I hate them more than anything. The latest learning moment was the day before two phone interviews with a company I am REALLY excited about down in Los Angeles, CA. I didn’t have anything going on the night before so I decided to slip into some yoga & mediation.

CHAPTER 1: Meditation turned Apple Support

I started setting up for my yoga/meditation and plugged my phone into my laptop… I was prompted with the infamous "latest update” and though, what the hell, lets get this over with. BAD IDEA.

Sure enough, I spent the next hour and a half online with Apple Support to figure out how to get my freaking phone back on - it was completely dead and unresponsive. I tried the update multiple times and then went into attempting the restore mode… Nothing was working.

Customer Support scheduled me an appointment for the next day… the earliest time was in the afternoon at ALL surrounding Apple stores (FOR REAL). They were able to find an Apple Approved support center about thirty minutes away from my house at 9:45am. I took the appointment (interviews weren’t’ until 1pm).

CHAPTER 2: Power Outage

The next morning, I left for the Apple Approved support store and arrived about 15 minutes early to give myself as much possible time to figure this out. Sure enough, when I arrived (literally praying in my car for patience and acceptance for whatever was to happen) the freaking power was out. Someone had backed into a power line earlier that morning and all power for the block was 100% off. I swear I almost started crying right there… this was turning into a real Will Smith in Pursuit of Happiness type morning. As much as City Apple wanted to help, they were helpless given their circumstance.

SIDE NOTE: I had been emailing my older sister the night prior to see if I could use her phone number. However, having two young kiddos and pregnant with a third has her quite busy and I hadn’t gotten a response from her. That said, I knew worst case scenario was that I could purchase a brand new phone and use my same phone number all before my interview. That is, IF I was able to see an Apple representative.

CHAPTER 3: Last Resort

I ventured back to the downtown Apple store putting all hope and faith into this last resort… I pulled up and sure enough, the store didn’t open until 10am. Honestly, why the heck don’t the open any earlier than 10am on a weekday?! Shockingly, I was able to maintain a sense of calm and walked up to wait outside of the glass cube of a store. There was only one person waiting outside with me at that point. In a matter of 10 minutes there were roughly 15 people waiting outside the store… I knew I would have to make a run for it as soon as they unlocked the doors.

While I was waiting, I met a woman outside who offered to pray for me in my journey and reminded me to keep my faith alive and not to worry - thank God for this woman as I was losing my sh*t.

Finally, the doors opened.

CHAPTER 4: Hallelujah

There I was, thinking I might have to spend over $200 for a new phone or worst case have to get a new phone number and come off like an unorganized mess to my potential future employer… I didn’t have an appointment so I walked up to the first customer service rep I saw and asked how long the wait was.

LONG STORY SHORT…

I met with a service technician (or whatever they call themselves - respectfully) and he SAVED ME! I was able to use my same phone and run the update. I had all my original content on my phone once it started back up. He said what likely happened was that I had cookies or software running on my computer that was somehow blocking the update from being successful.

FINAL NOTE

DON’T RUN AN UPDATE ON YOUR iPhone THE DAY BEFORE YOU HAVE A PHONE INTERVIEW!!!

Photography by Ben Z. Mund | Creative Direction by Laura Coyier