Saturday, May 01, 2004

Reference Check

At the moment, I am between interviews on the newest hit TV show, "Who Wants to be Chessie's Pet Sitter?" OK, so we aren't actually taping this for network TV distribution, but we should be. It won't be long until picking a person to feed our cat while we're on vacation will be the only place reality TV hasn't gone.

I've spaced the interviews far enough apart that one potential pet sitter won't run into another one. This has left me with about an hour to contemplate the fist potential sitter's references. The odd thing about references and recommendations (which are, functionally, the same thing) is that pretty much anyone can get two or three people to say, if asked, that the recommendee is a responsible person and provides excellent whatever you're looking for. One simply does not ask people to be references if there is a chance they might say that one smokes crack and hasn't done an honest day's work in one's entire life. At work, prospective students' two required recommendations almost universally say "Outstanding" on all criteria and "would highly recommend." We might as well just print them with all that filled in.

UPDATE: I have fixed some errors in grammar that seem to have eluded my attention, as well as the stupid sounding parts.

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