One week in, and I’ve already failed. I’m only halfway through The Last of the Mohicans; review forthcoming.
Instead, let me write about a couple of bad interviews.
I will preface these anecdotes by saying that I am very happy in my job and career, and I’m thankful to have a means to pay the bills, because working on the great American novel is not.
I’m no stranger to bad interviews. In fact, I’ve interviewed quite a few times, almost always badly, which necessitated quite a few more interviews. Perhaps my worst ever was during college, when I wore a green, ruffly, rayon shirt and showed up to find my colleagues looking poised and professional in dark suits. I don’t remember what the job was, but clearly I was unqualified, and I knew it.
Almost immediately, I began to feel the sweat dripping from my armpits. The interviewers were very nice people, let’s call them both Bob, and Bob tried to lob me a softball by asking how I got such good grades. But it was too tough a question for me, so I said I didn’t know. He asked if I was smart, just so I could at least answer one question correctly and get a single point on the interview score sheet. But I can’t find the easy, obvious answer if it’s handed to me on a silver platter, so I said no!
I kept squirming around until they finally shook my hand and showed me the door. I ran to the bathroom to see my dark pit stains all the way to my waist and all down my sleeves. You would’ve believed me if I’d told you I’d spent the last half-hour mowing the lawn at noon in August in Houston. Bob personally called me a few hours later to tell me I wasn’t being hired, as if that wasn’t obvious. Luckily, I didn’t answer the phone so I only had to listen to the voicemail afterwards. I threw away that shirt.
Fast forward a few years, and I’ve done quite a few more interviews. At some point along the way, I bought a black blazer and a black pencil skirt from two different Goodwills on two different occasions, and they match well enough because black is black. I got an interview offer for a job in some dull field. I had previously told my boyfriend to shoot me if I ever went into that sort of job, and I would hate for him to become a murderer on my account (although I later learned that he hadn’t been listening, so I could’ve taken the job and lived to later die a slow, painful death of boredom).
The interviewer, let’s call her Nancy, set up this interview at the Bread Company, and that’s where it all started to go downhill. Nancy must’ve had so little interest in me that I didn’t even get an invitation to her office where I could be interviewed in a conference room by a panel, like any respectable candidate would be.
Yet I agreed to the interview, so I showed up to the Bread Company at 8:45 AM wearing my black skirt suit and black kitten heels and feeling just as out of place as I had felt those several years before in my ruffly, sweat-soaked shirt. The restaurant was packed. I took about five passes through the dining area, convincing myself each time that Nancy was not there yet, and each time feeling more self-conscious and out-of-place. Then I waited by the door for fifteen minutes, and I longed for the days of office interviews where I could talk to a receptionist and wait on a couch in a lobby with a couple of magazines.
Finally, Nancy shows up, right on time, and I shake her hand and instantly don’t like her because she makes me feel very tall and very overdressed, and she takes me to a little table right in the middle of the dining area where everyone who’s already seen me walk back and forth through the restaurant five times, looking for this lady, can now see me on the hot seat, begging for a job I don’t want.
Nancy starts off with a soft-ball, asking me about my experience and aspirations. I take a tip from the politicians and answer only about my experience, because I didn’t think she’d be interested to know that my aspiration is to write a great American novel. Then she asked about school, and the advice I would give to myself before starting out. The only advice I could think of was to not go to school, but I couldn’t say that, so instead I squirmed around and hemmed and hawed and finally pulled out the “I don’t know,” card. But I couldn’t leave it at that, because that answer is only good for defendants in depositions, so, somehow, “I didn’t like school much,” came out.
Then Nancy asked me about office culture. I’m fortunate enough to have never worked in a culture worth complaining about, and I imagine this is why I find office culture an entirely disinteresting subject. She asked what I would change about the culture at my job. Now, I don’t know a good way to answer this, but I do know a bad way, which is to suggest that I would replace all the lawyers with nurses, firefighters, teachers, or farmers. Don’t worry, I didn’t say it. Instead, I gave the second worst possible answer, which is something of a default for me: “I don’t know.”
Nancy was already clearly done with me, but she was kind enough to end the interview in the way interviews always end, which is to invite me to ask questions. I asked what she was looking for in an associate. She said she was looking for a hard worker who would step up to take care of what needed to be done.
“Well, that clears things up,” I said, standing and grabbing my bag. “Thank you for the interview.” I shook her hand and found the door myself, which wasn’t hard because I’d been in and out that door five times already, remember? Nancy called later to say what didn’t need to be said.
Perhaps my next interview will be better, and hopefully next week I’ll write about The Last of the Mohicans.