Skills/Education
Dropped out of normal school after 8th grade.
Cannot tolerate taking alcohol in a shot, but can sip down large amounts.
Withstands electric shock well.
Excellent porn-archival skills. Archives for friends, of course. Not me.
Experience
2000-present - Holds title of Latino Lover to girlfriend.
We can take this into the gutter a little bit, right?
I can make streetlights go dark just by walking unde - OW! Stop hitting me!
Okay, for real:
Great innate sense of direction: I can find my way around any new (to me) city within a couple of hours. I’ve ended up giving better directions than the locals.
Great Cardar: I can find any vechile I rode in in any large parking lot within a matter of minutes. (One exception: Epcot. Only Epcot.)
Great gibberish: I can instantly compose new lyrics to pop tunes that plausibly sound like a foreign language translations (confused the hell out of my boss when I started singing Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” ** in “Norweigen”, then “Italian”, then “Arabic”. The guy with us who really spoke Arabic played along like I was doing well, and clued me in later he knew I wasn’t even close. At least I got a few pointers on Arabic pronunciation.)
** one of his favorite singers & song. I despise 'em both.
Mastered machine-language level programming on the Commodore 64. If anyone needs a C-64 programmer, I’m ready!
I threw newspapers out of my car for a year, before I finished college and became a nurse. I can accurately toss an L.A. Times left-handed over the top of my car. I can drive on the wrong side of the street at 5 AM without provoking police attention. I can use an automated newspaper tying machine without injuring myself.
I can stick my tongue out really far, then flick it up til it touches the tip of my nose.
I get bored really, really easily, I will talk to myself and laugh for no reason, and I trip over everything.
I can juggle, though!
I am truly amazed at the number of “Gleeks” we have here. And is that a common term?
As far down as you like, within constraints of normal posting in this forum.
I can roll my tongue, do lots of voices and accents at the drop of a hat, have an uncanny knack for finding loose change everywhere I go, and total strangers approach me all the time and ask for advice and info–which I can almost always give them.
I can cross my eyes, and I can roll just one around separately, either one.
I can wiggle my ears, and I’ve heard you can wiggle just one with enough practice.
I can roll my tongue into a tube longitudinally, and spread out my toes, and grasp items with them.
I can rub my stomach in a circle and pat the top of my head with the other hand at the same time.
And, this was just what I developed before I graduated from high school! Imagine what I can do now!
Let’s see…
I can pick up stuff with my toes.
I can cross my toes without ‘helping them out’, if you will.
I can cross one eye. Hey, it’s a birth defect, but who knows? 
I can wiggle my nose like a rabbit.
I can raise one eyebrow. Drake Hogestyn and Lee Majors, eat yer hearts out!
I can tie a cherry stem into a knot with my tongue.
I also have monkey toes like Dazzling White Diamonds.
I can only sing along in tune to songs on the radio only if Ben Folds is the singer.
I can wiggle my ears, either one alone, both together, or both in alternating directions. I have complete conscious control of my ear-flap muscles.
I have the superpower of giving people nicknames - once I name them, it sticks, and everyone starts calling them by that name. I cannot, however, come up with a decent nickname for myself.
I was looking for a technician in an academic setting (MIT). I got a CV from a kid who had graduated summa cum cucumber from Cornell the year before. The strange thing in his resume was the gap. It looked like the past year he had spent as a clerk in a videostore. I was finally convinced I would not be hiring him when one of his bullet point was: “provided customers with exact change”.
Hah! I can wiggle just my left ear!
But not my right 
I can never get truly lost, anywhere in the world that I have ever been, except in London, England, which really kind of sucks as a ‘skill’ as I currently live in London.
I can order a beer politely (with please and thank-yous as appropriate) in 6 languages. But I can only ask for directions in 2.
I think I can speak Spanish but I really can’t, and anyone who can speak Spanish finds this out very very quickly.
I know how to disarm 4 different types of nuclear weapons permanently. And I can fix many things on a 30-million-dollar strike fighter with a hammer, a big-ass screwdriver, and some duct tape.
I know how to make military explosives out of common household chemicals, including napalm, pipe bombs, and dynamite.
I am an expert marksman with both pistol and rifle, and a pretty mean shot with a shotgun as well.
I was once upon a time trained as a paramedic, but it’s been so long I have forgotten almost everything except how to perform CPR - this one isn’t so bad, but I just don’t want to be shown up as the go-to guy for all health crises in a given place as I might be flat-out wrong. I will do whatever I can to help, but I hope like hell a real doctor or EMT is around to bail me out before I do something really stupid.
My first job in getting out of the Air Force was a grave digger. In winter. In Montana. Most of the employers I would ever like to work for probably don’t need to know that, although I think it might have been my best job ever for one simple reason - none of my friends or family ever asked me to perform my ‘job’ at home or at a party, ever. Unlike any other career I have had (especially hi-tech jobs! Family tech support sucks!)
Hey, at least he wasn’t sitting around his parents’ house waiting for just the right job to come and find him.
I have a degree from a respected university, and am a technical writer with years of experience. But when I send out my resume to be considered for professional technical writing jobs, I make sure that it doesn’t include my forklift-operating warehouse experience nor my highway-transport-rig driving experience. I’m glad of those experiences, certainly; not least because they allowed me to make a living during some hard writing markets. But it is unlikely that a prospective high-tech, degree-requiring employer would take me seriously if I did include them. I’m long out of school, though, and have plenty of other appropriate experiences to list, unlike your candidate, who–it seems to me, anyway–was making the best of what he had.
Ultimately, it’s your choice whom you choose to consider. But to disqualify someone who may have the academic qualifications that you’re looking for, just because he’s currently earning a living by working in a video store seems to me to be rather limiting.
I agree with you about the not disqualifying just cause he had a non-related job in the interim, but I think it was the ‘making perfect change for all customers’ that stood out as a no-hire warning sign.
I wouldn’t have hired him either - that was a basic part of the job, and a resume should only specify those things that stand out. I might have been really nice and said something like ‘dude, if you’re serious, you might take that little bit out’ if he was a shining candidate in all other respects, but damn! :rolleyes:
Well, there may not have been much else he could say about the job. At least he wasn’t making errors in giving change. That would have been a definite “do not hire” sign in my book. 
Yes, but I guess what got me was that it seemed to be the video store experience and the one line about making change that disqualified him. I agree that the latter may not have been the wisest thing to put on a resume that was being used to apply for a job at MIT, but given his recent graduation and relative newness to the world of work, I’d probably overlook it. Your opinion may, of course, be different.
Interestingly, little mention was made of the candidate’s academic qualifications. Vreemdeling, did he have what you were looking for, academically? Could you clarify what you meant by “summa cum cucumber”?
I guess I’m taking this a little to heart because of an experience I had during the time I was operating a forklift. It was an extremely hard technical writing market (the recession of the early '90s, if you’re wondering) and I was trying to get back into the field. I was doing okay as a forklift operator, but I wanted the familiarity and the much better money and better hours (I was working a night shift) of a tech writing job.
Anyway, I remember one interview I went on. I didn’t have my forklift experience on my resume, and I dreaded the question, “What are you doing now?” Most people understood that we all have to make a living somehow, and given the market, operating a forklift was better than nothing. Except for one particular interviewer. Our conversation went something like this:
Him: What are you doing now?
Me: I’m a forklift operator.
Him: You’re a forklift operator?
Me: Just for now, until the market softens a bit. As you can see from my resume, I’m really a technical writer.
Him: You’re a forklift operator.
Me: No, a technical writer, as I said. I’ve written for companies X, Y, Z, and A, and been in the field for ten years.
Him: You’re a forklift operator.
Me: I should point out that I have my degree from the University of ____, and have a list of references with me.
Him: You’re a forklift operator.
Me: I brought my portfolio of work to show you, if you’d like to see it.
Him: You’re a forklift operator.
As you can tell, this interviewer couldn’t get past my current job of “forklift operator” to understand my qualifications for “technical writer.” I’m a little worried that Vreemdeling saw the kid in the video store in the same way–no matter how well qualified he might otherwise be for the job, to Vreemdeling, he will always be “video store guy.” And I don’t think that’s the fairest way to look at the situation.
But that’s my opinion. As I said earlier, it is ultimately Vreemdeling’s choice whom he or she chooses to consider.
Hmmm…okay, I’m not proud of all of these things, but what the hey:
[ul]
[li]I do lots of mediocre imitations and a few good ones. My Beavis & Butthead are my pride and joy, and I can make crying sounds like a newborn. I’ve fooled people with that last one. [/li]
[li]I’m ambidextrous, and it’s caused me hell my entire life. I write left-handed, so teachers gave me left-handed scissors and whatnot. But I do most everything else (scissors, throw, bat) right-handed. I’ll hold a rifle or a guitar left-handed, though. Screwy.[/li]
[li]I’m a member of a statewide paranormal investigation – in other words, I hunt ghosts for fun and profit. Oops, scratch the “profit” part. I’m primarily into Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP).[/li]
[li]I follow professional wrestling. Okay, there, it’s out. Yes, it’s sports entertainment and is essentially soap opera for men (though I was an avid fan of Days of Our Lives back in the 80s). Fake, you say? Sure it is, but no more fake than any other television show.[/li]
[li]I’m a reviewer for a DVD web site.[/li][/ul]
You can wiggle your nose like a rabbit, Dazz? How cute! I gotta see that.
He ain’t kiddin’ people… I’ve heard his Beavis and Butthead… OMG. I’m glad I’ve never heard the newborn crying, though. Oy.
And your imitations are a far cry from mediocre, my friend. Far cry, indeed.
Sparky, I’ll be more than happy to wiggle my nose for ya, but right now it’s just a wee bit snotty. I’ve gots myself a bit of a cold.
The 6510 was a neat chip for the time and grade of machine, but I’d rather program for the PDP-11 or PDP-8 or any of the VAXen. IBM machines aren’t quite as interesting to me, but the System/360 is cool in a historical sense.
My main useless skills relate to the extinct, useless, and joke programming languages I know, including CUPL and Brainfuck. I’m probably one of the only people you’ll meet who programs in PILOT, probably the Plan 9 of ostensibly `serious’ programming languages, for fun. (Seriously, it can’t even hold up as a scripting language. Unlike COBOL, it really doesn’t have a problem domain or even an area of competence. It isn’t even evil, just woefully underpowered, like the watery, flat caffeine-free diet soda of programming languages.)
I can also hold complex multi-level workspace environments in my head. I have had multiple screen sessions, virtual terminals, and emacs buffers, not to mention desktops in my window manager, open at the same time, and I can find every file and program just fine. (This might arguably be useful, but I haven’t found a genuine need for my hypertrophy of this skill.)
I’m the exact opposite. And I don’t think I’ll ever put on a resumé that I can sit and stare at a wall for an hour or so. It just might give them the wrong impression. Although sitting and counting until something happens is more fun. I made it past 1200 once. And no speed counting either, I said every number clearly and in its entirety.