On November 1st all the grade nines at my school went to “take your kid to work day”. This day was a chance to see what our parents do at their work. Unlike the rest of the school, us plp-ers were told to get three interviews with people at our parents work.

I went with my dad because I already know a lot about my moms work and I wouldn’t have been able to get enough interviews there. My dad works at the Head Office for MEC. He is the all-purpose, troubleshooting and process improvement person. Basically, he does different jobs depending on what is asked of him.

I was given a sheet with a few questions on it that I had to fill out while at MEC. I didn’t have a pen or pencil with me, so I recorded the interviewee’s answers. While none of my interviewees wished to have video, I was allowed to record audio.

https://youtu.be/ij_LDFzPUQs

Honestly, I probably wouldn’t enjoy working at the head office. I don’t know what about it makes it so uninteresting. Don’t get me wrong, they do great work there and the people are nice and everything. But I guess its because of the fact that my personality wouldn’t match the workspace. I prefer to stay indoors working or playing on a computer, and working amongst all the exercise equipment and the bikes and climbing gear and all outdoor stuff wouldn’t mesh with me.

On the flip side, if I did get a job there, I would probably want a job as a web developer. From what I know, they mostly focus on the MEC website. They’re the people who make the website what it is and make changes to it. In one of my interviews with a web developer, Jeffery, he says that the fewer clicks a customer has to make, the more likely they are to buy something. This was very odd to me, because I don’t go shopping online and think “oh jeez, I’m just one click from this awesome sweater, but it’s already been 4 clicks. I’m just gonna not buy it. It’s just too much effort.” Although I do see why too many clicks may be bad. If your website takes the customer from the website to a page about sweaters to a page about snowboards to YouTube then facebook, it get really complicated.

The other two interviews were a lot less interesting (from a story telling point of view). One interview was with Shannon, the hiring coordinator. She is the person who looks over peoples resumes and decides wether to hire them or not. She answered the questions like I asked, and didn’t start telling any stories.

The final interview was with my dad, Lorne. He is, as previously stated, the all-purpose, troubleshooting and process improvement person. He also didn’t go on any story, but to be fair, I didn’t ask either of them to.

So yeah. I would probably not enjoy working at MEC, but there are a few jobs that do seem interesting to me. I think being a web developer would be kinda interesting, but I would dislike working their in general.