I scheduled to take my ITIL exam at an exam center here. I scheduled if for today even though I had a ton of other stuff to do this week and had only Thursday night and Friday to study (I logged 103 work hours this week).
Because I was afraid of being late, and wasn't sure where exactly the test center was (no street addresses here), and couldn't read the crap map on the web site, I called the test center and asked for the name of a close cross street (the testing center is on Zayed the 1st street, which is a long street). The moron I talked to gave me two names, but it was actually two different names for Zayed the 1st street, rather than the cross street. I had my driver talk to the idiot after I called him for the third time, and he found it for me. I told the driver I was nervous because I was taking an exam, and he shook his head and said "why would you take an exam with those guys who don't know where their building is?"
Point taken. And, for the record, the testing center is at a T, and rather than giving the driver the name of the street that Ts into their building, or the name of the huge BMW office across the street from the testing center, the moron at the test center told my driver the center was near a street 2 blocks away.
I got there right on time and went to sign in for the test. I waited for 10 minutes while a bunch of scurrying was going on behind the counter. Then a guy came up to me and said "Oh, your test was canceled. We are doing maintenance on the system today. I called your mobile to tell you but you did not answer." I was like "What do you mean you're doing maintenance when you've already charged me for the exam?" and they said "There were only 6 people doing exams today so we canceled them all, except for you who did not answer the phone."
I've been a little stressed out lately. And I was furious that after wasting my entire Friday studying I would not be able to take my exam. Because the rest of next week is so busy for me, it would be a full week before I could take the exam if I didn't take it today. And having that hanging over my head was not going to work.
I'll spare the gory details of what happened next. Suffice it to say, I got them to load up a computer so I could take the exam (after having to wait almost 45 minutes). Because the normal testing area was not available, I got stuck in this weird little room. It looked like a place where they give English exams or something. I was seated at a computer with a poster covered with dinosaurs on the wall behind. I had to sneak take this picture because I wasn't supposed to have my blackberry in the test area. The whole time I was taking my test I kept looking up at that t rex thinking "If I fail this thing because of that dinosaur poster I am going to be even more pissed than I already am".
The exam is supposed to take 1 hour. I did it in 10 minutes. The guy who was in the room watching to make sure I didn't cheat off of, I don't know, since I was the only one in there, the dinosaurs I guess, insisted that I couldn't possibly be done with the exam. He made me sit for another 10 minutes. I stared at the dinosaurs. Then, idiot me, I decided to review my answers. I changed two questions from the right answer to the wrong answer.
How do I know that? Because after the 10 minutes were up I submitted my answers. A half hour went by while the guy tried to figure out how to print my test results. When he was finally able to do that, drama building because it had now been 1/2 hour and I didn't know my score, he walked in and said "You got a 95%!" meaning I passed the exam. He then showed me how I had changed two answers and he said "why did you do that?" I felt like saying "because you made me sit here for 10 minutes with nothing to do but look at that scary dinosaur", but I didn't.
The guy at the front counter that I had yelled at until he set up the test for me shook his hand and said "I did not know a woman could get such a grade on a test". It was not the first time in the hour that had passed that I wanted to punch him. But I didn't.
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