Here I am in the sixth month of my forced vacation and a week after a family get-together in the north woods of Wisconsin and I receive a notice from the City of Madison. This city has been a constant prospective employer for me. I believe I've applied for no less than six positions there. I've applied this time out of my chosen historic field - engineering - as a Parking Enforcement Officer. That's right, I meter maid, so what are ya gonna make of it? Anyway, the notice was for a scheduled test to which I was commanded to take without any chance of a reschedule. Oh, by the way, there are 351 applicants for three (3) positions!
I was able to talk to an acquaintance who holds a position of this type already as to what to expect from the test. He said it was a lot of double and triple ways of asking the same questions. I found he was correct, luckily.
The test was one one of the easiest I've ever taken. It began with a photocopied yellow pages map of the downtown area and over twenty questions mostly as to routes to be taken from one destination to another. I don't see why that was so difficult. The hardest part was locating the specific streets from the list and the coordinates from the map. Remember, I do have a college degree in geography. I wasn't sure as to what the intent was, to find the quickest or the safest or the most cost effective route. I chose what I perceived as the quickest. It moved on to a huge section if situational ethics. Then came sections on observation and proof reading and reading comprehension. This section was really stupid because the answers were in the document and could be referred to at will with a quick scan.
The entire test took me seventy-five minutes and I took my time. This is the third civil service exam I've taken and the second in Madison. I'll probably get a 75% and be listed #300 after all this bragging. We'll see in two weeks.
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