West Texas meets Napa Valley

I went for a job interview yesterday. It was for a oil refinery chemist position.

The refinery was small by comparison of the large refineries I have seen in the San Francisco area. I was told that this plant deals with mostly heavy oils, used for asphalt and other road uses. The oil mined from this local basin, Santa Maria Valley, is 60% heavy oils in each barrel. So it makes sense that they work with what is most available. The other 40% goes to another refinery for further refining for fuels, lubricants, etc.

I arrived early to an empty office building adjacent to the plant. Soon a man in a hard hat told me someone would be with me shortly.


I soon met the Boss, the current chemist who was now also overseeing the production side of things and has been spread too thin, cue Me. I talked with the Boss for a while. He like my resume and that I showed up early for the interview. He said a guy he interviewed 2 days before was 30 minutes late and had no practical lab experience.


I met the Boss's boss, the plant manager. He was soft spoken and had been there 30 years. I took a look at the primitive but very clean lab. The Boss showed me some of his new instruments that only lab rats like us would find interesting.


He said he wanted me to work there, and then called the HR person and told them to sign me up. I was given directions to the main office and off I went to fill out some paper work.


"Main Office" was an overstatement to me. I drove down a bumpy dirt road through wine vineyards, two cattle guards with cattle present, and into an oil field. It was like West Texas meets Napa Valley. There were oil pumps running and in the middle was a cluster of mobile homes...the Main Offices. I guess the oil business is a more "temporary" or mobile business...or the owner just doesn't need no fancy buildings.


I went in to the office and met the HR person, with whom I had met before. I met her before at a career show, which is how I found out about the job. At the job fair, she didn't look me in the eye or care if I existed at all. I gave her my resume, signed a "I will give you urine for drug test" form and left. She is the worst HR person I have ever met. She doesn't seem to want to be wherever she is. If this is the face of this company, than it's not pretty.

Anyways, I talk to her and she gives me two pieces of paper to fill out. No tax forms or anything else, just a math test and English test. The math was very basic, add, subtract, multiply, and divide. The English was funny. It was all multiple choice. I had to answer simple questions like "Sally do you have the time?" with choices like (a) No, I don't have a dog (b) Yes, it is 2008 or (c) Yes, it is 6:30.

Surprisingly, I did miss some of the questions. I missed 3 or 4 out of 30 of the English questions! It reminds me of the questions new immigrants have to learn that no American knows.

I guess I passed but miss HR didn't tell me. However, She did tell me about the company, "We are an oil company and we, uhmm, we sell oil and stuff. The refinery you will work at does some oil and then uhh sells oil I think." WOW! Now I can tell my friends and family that all I know about this fine company! Oh boy, I hope she is not a sign of the type of people this company hires.

Wish me luck. Miss HR is supposed to call me and tell me when I start. She probably just threw my file in the trash and I'll never hear from them again.

Hey, it's a job.