Update

I just got home from the interviews of my prospective replacement. Neither will work the way we had hoped, so we decided to punt. I told my boss we don't want to make a bad decision just so we can make a decision. I don't exactly know how this will work, but I'm hoping something will work out. Bottom line: we're still looking and I'll probably be helping out at night and on weekends for a while.

But I've got to describe the second interview. And trust me, I really try not to judge a book by its cover.....

She arrived in a colored t-shirt, white cotton pants (I think a stretch knit, like the sweet ladies ladleing your soup at the cafeteria would wear), and white tennis shoes. This is for a professional position within a law firm. I'd have put on dress shoes if I was interviewing for a file clerk position, but she didn't get the memo.

She is a CPA, looking for a part-time accounting position. She does accounting at night for several clients, and said she needed to fill her daytime hours a little. When asked about her other work, she used the word "blessing" at least four times to describe it. Something about spreading blessings or something like that.

She had on huge wire-rimmed glasses similar to ones I wore in the 80's. She also had eyebrows that looked like two big, black, wooly caterpillars stuck on her face. A little tweezing and trimming would have gone a long way, although I tried to picture her on "What Not To Wear" and could only envision a collective hands-in-the-air "I give up" gesture from Stacy, Clinton, Nick, and Carmindy. She had nice skin though.

I was hoping she was pleasant, to make up for her lack of appropriate interview garb. She was not. I asked her about her use of software written specifically for an industry or service, and she said she was well-versed in Quickbooks, Peachtree, etc. I said, "Well those are all available to the general public and are written to a level that a basic user could understand, but I was wondering if she had used anything that was not available to the mainstream but was more accounting intensive with a less user-friendly interface." She bristled at that, and gave a lame non-answer. I thought "Huh?" We moved on in the interview but I had checked out by this time, trying to make my face not reveal the "You're SO history" that I was thinking.

Oh, and her cell phone went off (it was on vibrate -- it should have been off) five times during our 30-minute interview. My boss didn't hear it, but I did.

As soon as she left, my boss and I evaluated and knew immediately we were on the same page. So we're revamping our ad and starting over. Cross your fingers the right person is just waiting for the right ad to reply to.

P.S. Right now I'm being sung to by the prettiest little canary you ever saw. And I'm on my way to visit the beautiful new grandson. Should be a wonderful weekend in spite of the horrendous heat. I'd better go pack!