Fondots

I'm sure that's probably the case, but that's kind of my point.

Even if I landed another, better, job between my initial interview and my job shadow, I probably would have still shown up for the shadow because when else are you going to get a chance to peek behind the curtain like that?

I may not have pursued it any further from that, but to me being able to just show up and listen to 911 calls being handled for a bit would be too cool of an opportunity to pass up. I'm pretty sure I would have jumped at the opportunity to do that even if I wasn't trying to get hired.

But again, I'm biased, I work here and like my job so of course I think it's kind of neat.

I don't know what sort of fantasy land you live in, but I've never heard of anywhere paying someone for a job interview.

It is sitting there listening to and watching someone do the job.

They're not answering calls, they're not entering anything into the computer, they're not doing paperwork, the most they're going to be asked to do is "hey can you move your chair a bit, I need to get into that drawer"

In fact, if they tried to do any of those things they'd be kicked right the fuck out, that would be a whole mess of liability issues since they don't have any of the necessary training or certifications.

They're observing to see what the job entails. They're (hopefully) asking questions to see if it's a good fit for them, and we're seeing how they react to what they're hearing and what their attitude is like to see if they're going to be a good fit.

When I have a job shadow with me, nothing changes about how I do my job except I scoot my chair a little further to the left to make room for them, and between calls I'm chatting mostly with them instead of my coworkers or reading, and once they're done I have a short questionnaire to fill out about whether I think they're a good candidate.

They sit there quietly watching and listening to me handle calls, and in between we just chit chat. They usually ask some questions about the calls they heard me take or the job in general (they all seem to ask what the craziest call I ever took was) I usually ask a few of my own to get a feel for them. I tell them stories about the job, crack some jokes, I point out a couple things that I think are neat (like the document we have with information about what we're supposed to do if we get a call about a loose emu- it happens more often than you'd think)

Then after they leave I have a short questionnaire to fill out about if I think they're a good candidate or not.

They sit with a call-taker for about 30-45 minutes listening to 911 calls coming in, then go sit with a dispatcher for about the same amount of time to listen to calls being given out over the radio the the field units, then there's a short, pretty informal interview with the on-duty supervisors and/or someone from our training department.

They're not getting trained, they're not expected to retain any of the information or understand everything, and they're certainly not expected to be able to do the job after sitting with me. It's pretty much all about vibes. Do they like the vibe of the workplace, and do we like their vibe as a potential coworker.

new job

For a new job, sure, you should be getting paid. This is part of the hiring process, you don't have the job yet.

I've known a lot of people who've gotten jobs that have had a half dozen or so rounds of interviews, how many hours does that add up to? Every other interview I've ever done was at least 30-45 minutes, so after 3 rounds or so of interviews at another job you've pretty much broken even on that.

And with other jobs that's often spread over multiple days or weeks that you'd probably need to take time off from your current job for. I'd gladly take this hour or two on a night or weekend over that.

A lot of things vary from one agency to another, but where I work I don't think most people would consider this a last resort job. Most of us are here either because this is what we want to do or because it's a good career builder towards other public safety/law enforcement type jobs.

For my part, if I have to work, I think this is about as good as it gets for me. I like the hours, the pay isn't amazing but it's livable, benefits are solid, and it's interesting and satisfying work.

It's also not the quickest hiring process since they usually wait until they have a few people to run a training class, it's been a few years now but I believe I did my aptitude test and interview in mid August (same day because they were doing a hiring event, sometimes they have to get scheduled separately) did my job shadow a week or two later with another short interview, got my conditional offer around mid September, had to do a drug, hearing, and vision test and a psych eval, and class started in about mid-late October, so about 2 months start to finish.

I have a friend who tested at the same time as me and got picked up for the next class they ran, so it was a couple extra months for him.

And some other agencies have extra steps in the process. More rounds of interviews, really in-depth background checks with interviews with the sheriff and a polygraph test and such (thankfully the agency I work for isn't like that since polygraphs are bullshit)

No not ideal for someone who really needs a job ASAP.

I don't think death note ever quite fully explored the possibilities of what it can and can't make happen.

My mars colony example is probably more than a 20 day project no matter what, so that's probably out.

But I don't think it's totally clear whether it would be able to make someone have an out-of-the-blue eureka moment about cold fusion, hole up in their bedroom writing out the scientific proofs for a week not eating or drinking, then keel over dead of dehydration (I figure that's maybe a bit more realistic than my heart attack from shock example)

It can certainly make people do things they otherwise wouldn't, but I don't know if it's clear that it could plant that kind of knowledge in someone's head.

In addition to the economy thing that everyone else has already pointed out (and is totally valid)

I think it's worth pointing out that in the northern hemisphere it's summer right now, so if that's where you're located there's a lot of people going on vacations and having parties right now.

My social circles aren't exactly rolling in it, but at any given time over the summer, there's still at least a couple people I know are the beach, camping, having a BBQ or bonfire, or hanging out at a pool somewhere on their downtime when they might have been at a bar or something otherwise.

If you live in a touristy area, yeah, that's the economy, bars should be booming there.

I remember a couple years ago on a whim a couple of friends and I decided to go to a bar that's usually packed with a line well out the door of people waiting to get it. But it just happened to be a holiday weekend so lots of people had other plans, and we got in no problem.

Do you expect people to get paid for showing up to a job interview? Because that's, in essence, what it is- a second round of interviews, albeit a pretty informal one.

And since we're obviously a 24/7 operation, there's a lot of flexibility on when we can schedule it, not like most interviews where you probably have to take time off of work for it, we do a lot of them on weekends and evenings.

It's also a really good chance to see what the workplace culture and actual day-to-day reality of the job is like and to talk to people who are actually doing the job instead of just taking some suit from HR's word for it.

No more than for any other sort of job interview. They're not answering calls, they're sitting there listening.

And honestly I thought it was a great experience when I got hired, it gave me a real inside look to what the workplace culture was before I started here, and a chance to talk to and ask questions to people who are actually doing the job I was applying for instead of some HR/supervisor/deputy director type.

And since we obviously work 24/7/365 we can pretty much make any time work for these applicants, so they don't need to take off from work or anything to come in and do it. We get a lot of them on nights and weekends.

It's also pretty necessary to make sure people can handle it. It can get really intense at times, and seeing an incident unfold in real time is a very different experience than listening to a recording of a call after the fact. Class space to train new dispatchers is limited, and almost every dispatch center is constantly short-staffed, so we really need to make our hires count, and we lose plenty enough throughout the training process as it is, we don't want to spend a couple months training someone only to get them out on the floor to realize that they can't emotionally handle listening to, let alone actually handling 911 calls.

Does our choosing a cause of death preclude them from dying of other causes? Because you could potentially do some wild stuff to postpone death of loved ones by, for example, deciding they'll die 60 years in the future of old age.

And how much control do you have around the circumstances surrounding their death? Could I specify "dies of heart attack brought on by shock of working out the key to practical cold fusion on paper" or "head trauma due to fall while adjusting to lower gravity in main living area of self-sustaining mars colony" to force us forward in technology and science?

Because that's basically what I'd do.

Only very tangentially related to this

I work in 911 dispatch. Part of our hiring process is after the initial interview and aptitude test, they have applicants come in to do a job shadow with us for an hour or two. Basically just sit with us while we're answering and dispatching calls, see what the work we do is actually like, gives them a chance ask us questions, and we can kind of feel them out to see if they'd be a good fit.

And a shocking amount of people make it to that stage and then don't show up for their job shadow.

I'm admittedly biased, since I work here, but I feel like even if I didn't actually have any interest in the job, that would be an interesting peek behind the curtain that I'd still want to see regardless.

I played a lot of it back in the day and thoroughly enjoyed it, and I'm certainly not above admitting that it was kind of corny but I can appreciate corniness for its own sake

But I recently picked it back up and it's just not clicking for me anymore.

I feel like it's kind of a skill issue. Years ago I got pretty good at it, and so my memories of it are colored by that. But it's been well over a decade since I've played it, so I've lost all of those skills, and when your memories are of rolling around at the speed of sound, it feels pretty janky to be back at square 1 missing the timing of everything