Okay, so I'm taking this state test in St. Pete, caffeinated out of my gourd, memory full of useless stuff I've probably already forgotten, and the proctor lady says, “Regardless of whether you are finished with the test or not, you will wait here an hour.”
What the fuck is that? I thought I lived in the United States of America. Why should I be penalized for reading quickly? Commies.
And, sure as shit, I finished the damn thing in forty minutes, then checked every damn one of my answers while stuck in that twenty minutes of regimented “me and the test room” time. For some reason, the test people keep your scrap paper so I wrote, “One hour fascists” on it, but I used weird and changing calligraphy and put up a lot of doodles around the letters so they might not get the message.
Anyway, tests suck.
Before the test, I was under explicit instructions to buy a calculator that was only capable of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division for use during the test. Just to be a prick, I got a calculator that could also tell me the temperature. And I'll have you know it was 65 degrees in that room.
The calculator cost me $4.49 with tax. That's less than I can spend in a McDonald's. It pissed me off though that it was only necessary for about six of the hundred total questions. Somehow I don't feel like I got my money's worth.
Most of these work-related tests I take are on computers. You answer the questions, click on a box marked “Get Grade” or something equally frightening, and your grade pops up. But this test makes you wait seven days before you get a response. It was like college again. I even had to use a scantron (sp?) sheet and a number 2 pencil. And they wouldn't let me leave? Come to think of it, it was a lot more like high school than college.
My least favorite people at these things are the people who just don't get it. It's not that they're not smart people, but during all the classes, they keep challenging the teacher's information and pointing out other aspects of the business. The problem with these other aspects of the business is that they are wholly unrelated to passing the test, which is why we all took the class. Fortunately, a couple of well placed groans will usually shut these assholes up.
Anyway, now that the most boring work weekend of my life is over, I can finally get back to what's important.
If only I remembered what that was.