The interview
A Fictional short story
This morning I woke up, awake. Yes, you read that right. You see my eyes typically open post-slumber on most mornings. However, they are very reluctant to open, and the optical nerves don’t relay any meaningful data to let me know that I’m no longer in sleepy land. It’s like being drunk except that you’re also very, very angry. No matter how much I’ve slept I’m still tired. My brain is shouting curses in Gaelic with a Spanish accent. My legs are numb, my hands are shaky, my nose is blocked and itchy, and I need to pee.
And I hate everything about the world. Mostly that it’s a world, because, let’s face it, we have no other comparison. Well, except dreamy land, but I can’t keep having the same dream that I’m swimming naked over and over again. So anyways, although most mornings I’m generally in the grim reaper’s sweet embrace, today was different.
Oh, I still had the blocked nose, the numb legs, and conflicted deeply between the desire to empty my bladder and the never-ending pleas from my inner child whining for five more minutes in sleepy land. But today, I had something special. I had an interview. Before you get excited, this wasn’t the type of interview that I had a million times in front of the bathroom mirror, where I explained to Vogue magazine how I cured cancer, won an Oscar, and got out of the friend zone with my high school crush.
This was the type of interview that is being presented by the evil minds who concocted dentistry, taxes…and math. You see, there are many opportunities available to someone who is currently unemployed like me. I could write a book, learn programming, learn a skill, or get out my smartphone, and make dumb videos of myself pouting and wearing revealing clothing to get the gloriously sought-out title of “influencer”.
The influencer is everything I’m not, everything I loathe, and secretly, everything I want. I’m not an attractive, blonde girl with lip fillers, silicone implants, and designer bikinis. I’m a young, short guy, with an average IQ and about 10 followers on Instagram. I loathe them because they have nothing to offer the world except for a pouty kiss and a promise of intimacy. Keeping in mind this promise of intimacy deceptively advertised through Instagram is based on the notion that if a really hot girl is available to be interacted with through social media, then surely, after enough likes and comments simping out on her feed, she will realize that you are the knight in shining armour she was always looking for.
The word promise is used in reference to the watered-down version of the word currently in circulation amongst politicians, corporate investor reports, and every person who wants to hear a juicy secret on a non-disclosure condition. But enough about influencers, they couldn’t influence me to write more than a paragraph about them. Crap.
Where was I, oh yes, the interview. It was for a job. The easy way to work harder than you should, for less than you could make, with the security that you could lose everything you worked for by making one mistake. Because it gives you guaranteed money. Of course, guaranteed that you don’t make any mistakes, and work harder than you should, I think I’m repeating myself here.
To give you a little background about my skill sets. I used to play the flute. I helped my dad change the oil on his car once. I know how to turn an omelet into a scrambled egg. I can make instant coffee (although I have to read the instructions twice). And I have a bachelor's degree in animal psychology. However, I have no experience working for anyone other than my cousin Margaret who owned a barber’s shop. My job was to sweep up the hair. I got fired after I got into a philosophical debate with my university friends on the power of belief and how skills can be acquired through the power of observation.
In short, this involved me observing my barber aunt effortlessly cut hair, and on her lunch break once, deciding to be the hero and attempt to cut a customer’s hair. The result was uneven, too long in the front, too short at the top, and I tried to convince the woman that bald spots were fashionable in 20-something-year-old girls.
So for the last 5 months, I’ve been searching for a job. Job searches are like being bitten by fire ants while listening to house music being played as you wait on hold to speak to the tax office. When you start looking for a job you have this incredible idea of what you want in your head. You think of the perfect job that is easy to do, makes use of your talents, pays well, and has a brilliant career progression. By the time you are one month into your job search, you’ve gone from “They would be so lucky to have me” to “I’d settle for minimum wage and a 2-hour commute each way”.
You see, for someone with no experience, a job hunt is terrifying. Even for people with experience, it’s never easy. Job hunting is kind of like online dating. You’re both swiping on Tinder. But while you’re thinking, “great smile” (good pay) “nice rack” (job duties look acceptable) “cool hair” (short commute), they are also swiping thinking “too short” (not enough experience) “not stylish enough” (not enough experience) and “he looks like someone I just want to be friends with” (not enough experience).
I felt very pretentious at first with my job hunting. I’d start by thinking, about what I want, what will be perfect for me, and what will make me happy. But, like my dating life, 5 months in, all I’m thinking of is, would you take me? In my limited experience, I found that the job recruiting world is geared towards strict vetting of CVs to see if candidates have the desired experience, qualifications, and skills before they get so far as an online assessment. 99.9% of all my online applications didn’t even get to an online assessment. They just vetted me straight out the door, after taking one look at my pot-belly CV.
If you are lucky enough to get to an online assessment, this typically involves competency-based exercises designed to see if you have basic literary and problem-solving skills. Once you have passed this stage, you are about as in as having matched on tinder. Now, it’s yours to screw up. By the way, opening a tinder conversation with “would you rather fight ten duck-sized horses, or one horse sized duck” is not a good opener. Neither is “hello there”, although I persist with this one, because the girl of my dreams doesn’t have to be pretty or have a nice rack. But she has to know that the correct response is “General Kenobi”.
So once you’ve passed the online assessment, you have the phone interview. This isn’t so bad. It’s like a warm-up before you begin the real workout. They ask you dumb ass questions which have nothing to do with what you’ll be doing in real life. They are assessing the confidence with which you speak, your enthusiasm, your passion, your focus, and also your ability to do something that you have no idea how to do. It’s funny how they think that your ability to do a complex job properly can be established based purely on how specific you are with answering questions that you were not prepared or trained to answer.
But, shaky knees, sweaty palms, and quivering voice aside, 3 days ago, I passed the phone interview. It was for a call center job. It was customer service. Selling something. Or customer serving something. Or providing support on something. I really didn’t pay attention, I was so busy trying to tell my knees to stop shaking. The job description simply harped on how they wanted a dedicated, passionate associate, committed to providing excellent levels of customer service. The job responsibilities were equally vague, managing inbound calls with a high level of accuracy and diligence and delivering on KPIs, completing routine training, and acknowledging customer queries. I didn’t know what they did, and throughout the phone interview, this didn’t seem to come up in the conversation.
Today I have the face-to-face interview. I had planned the outfit I wanted to wear the night before, as I knew that I’d have to wake up early and get to the interview on time. I had 3 shirts of acceptable quality. By acceptable, I’m using the term that politicians use to describe the state of the economy, their unethical co-worker’s conduct, or their oversized pay packets. The first shirt was slightly crushed around the sleeves. The second shirt was faded and missing half a button. The third shirt was crushed around the back of the shirt and had a stain in the lower right corner.
I went with shirt number three, as I could tuck the shirt in, and I figured that I’d just walk in and out of the room in a way so that they never saw my back. The shirt was grey, and the only trousers I had were a different shade of grey. Only 48 more shades and I can get a totally different job, I thought to myself, smiling at my wit. Maybe I should tell that joke at the interview, people love jokes, it breaks the ice. Luckily, common sense reared its ugly head to stop me in my tracks. Phew, I thought, what if I had actually said that joke, I would be fired before I got the job.
Thankful that I just had a close escape, I decided to give common sense the rest of the day off and powered on towards my interview without a single intelligent thought in my head for company. This was a mistake. But I didn’t realize this at the time, because I had just given common sense the day off, and no one was there to tell me how stupid I was being.
I make my way to the interview. There are people sitting around me, wearing suits and ties. I’m wearing sneakers. They look at me smugly and say hi to me like they are my best friend. They ask me what job I’m interviewing for, and once they find out I’m going for the same job, they look at me with all the sincerity of a pastor preaching to a wayward flock and tell me with conviction that they hope that I get the job. Then they subtly drop how well educated they are and how qualified they are for this job. But in the most humble way. Like, “I only have 12 years experience in customer service and have only won employee of the year 7 times. I’ve only exceeded my targets by 300%, and my uncle is only a senior assistant to the mayor”.
There are croissants and breakfast foods, tea, and coffee. I’m too nervous to eat, I say as I eat my fifth danish. (Pastry, not a Scandinavian person). I sit there glancing at the clock. I don’t know why I’m glancing at the clock, I’m number 5 in the group, and we are being interviewed one at a time. I should be looking at the door and waiting for number 3 to come out, so I can watch number 4 smugly walk in. But I’m looking at the clock. I suppose that’s the thing with waiting rooms, even though half the time you are waiting in a queue, you still look at your watch or clock, thinking that at some point the universe will say “hey, you’ve been waiting long enough, it’s your time to shine now”.
My time to shine finally comes. Based on the amount I’m sweating, I’d certainly say I’m shining. I sit down. I smile awkwardly. The interviewers smile reassuringly, asking me how I’m doing and if I feel nervous. I mean, isn’t it obvious from the shaking knees and my inability to say anything more than “hello”?
The first question.
Give me an example of a time where you have done better than you thought you could have done, had you known that you wouldn’t have been as good as you were when you first started thinking about the time when you thought you did what you had done.
I ask them to repeat the question. They repeat it.
I stare at them blankly.
I ask for a glass of water. I sip the water. They are looking at me with raised eyebrows, hopeful eyes, and gentle, warming smiles. These people can’t tell that you are confused, I say to myself. Just start talking. I didn’t understand the exact question, but I did hear the words "better" and "thought".
So I started talking about the time that I had a paper to turn in, and I was a little late, but I did better than I thought I would have done. Halfway through the first sentence, I start a mini argument inside my head about whether I think it’s relevant to say that the reason I was late with the paper was that I misunderstood the date it was due. By misunderstood, I thought it was a month in the future. And then a month in the future came around and it turned out that I had forgotten about it completely.
So I stuttered that the due date was clear on the submission form agenda from the upper supervisory board of controlled dictating requirements. All made-up bullshit, but if you are going to throw a lot of confusing words at me, I’m prepared to salvo on back. I then said that the paper was due on an area that wasn’t my specialty, and that I felt that I wasn’t prepared enough.
I didn’t tell them that the reason I wasn’t specializing in this area was that I skipped classes to play beer darts pong. This was an extremely competitive sport that involved flinging darts at one another while drinking beer and attempting to catch the darts using ping pong bats. After the flying dutchman incident (Jan Hendrik in a famously dangerous attempt to fly across the goalpost to catch the winning dart), the sport was frowned upon. I said that the reason was that my specialty was focused on European culture and the study of projectile-based aerodynamic physics with a liquid-based stimulant.
The story was an inspirational ballad that would have shamed Abraham Lincoln. It was about bravery, dedication, ingenuity, adaptability, and overwhelming results. I said that the result was the highest in my group. Seeing as my group consisted of Jan Hendrik and the other beer darts pong players, two of whom were in the hospital with puncture wounds, this was actually not a grand achievement. I got a C Minus. For a 500-word report that had to be titled, “why animals are cute to some people.” It wasn’t that impressive, but the way I said it, you would have thought that I passed a medical school entrance exam in the top percentile.
The second question
Tell me about an achievement that you are really proud of and how it has helped mold you into the character that you will be in five years' time if you get this job.
Ok, I literally just told you about my greatest achievement. I can’t seem like I can’t think quick on my feet. Why do people say think on their feet. The feet are literally the furthest body part away from the thinky part of the body. What’s the thinky part. Breen? Breighn? Brian? I know it must be far away from my feet because I just thought that Brian was far away from my feet. Where are my words? Where is thinky part. What is achievement? What ever happened to Jan Hendrik? Oh, yes, he got expelled from school after he claimed that the holes in his hand were because he was Jesus returned.
I then start to laugh. I then catch my laugh, and in a split second, thinky part says, turn it into a cough. Then Brian (wait…brain…hey, brain, how are you old friend), suddenly says what if people think you are sick and end the interview. So I try and take a deep breath. But once I have taken the in air, I forget what to do with the out air. How do I get rid of the air, through the mouth or the nose? Which one would look more professional? I speak with the mouth, so air goes out through the mouth.
I then exhale loudly with my mouth and blow some of the papers on the desk to the side. Everyone laughs. I laugh, and I feel better. Then I realized that I forgot the question. I ask them to repeat it.
I then talk about the time I played the flute effortlessly for an audience of 100 people in a school band. Of course, I was playing it fast and loose with the word effortlessly, the same way a woman might describe childbirth if she was trying to reassure another expectant mother with devious lies.
The third question
Why do you think that you will do well at this job?
I was not expecting this one. I thought they were the people who would say whether or not they thought I would do well at this job. Surely, they must assume that I think I’d do well at the job. I wouldn’t show up for an interview thinking, yea, I’ll probably get fired on my third day, but at least I had fun at the interview and got to eat 5 danishes (pastries, again I don’t eat people on the grounds that they taste bad, probably. Also they have a lot of calories, I’d never lose the weight.)
Now, I could try and fake some of that confidence that the girls who have put me in the friend zone always tell me that I need. But I decide that confidence is overrated and simply go for broke. I launch an impassioned speech about the odds of success and failure, and that people always expect success but never prepare for failure. Halfway through I think it sounds too pessimistic and I can see the disapproving frowns on their faces as the thought of someone who motivates colleagues to accept failures starts to cause them fears that their corporate agency of overwhelming positive reinforcement (with a dash of, failure means you lose your job) might be superseded.
So halfway through I change it to a rant about how people who set themselves up for failure will fail. And I don’t believe that I have come this far to fail and that if given the opportunity, I will excel at my job.
And so, they smile at me, shake my hand, and tell me that they’ll be in touch.
As I walk out, I have the feeling that the sun is shining more brightly, and that the stars are sparkling more vividly. Neither of these is true, as it’s raining miserably. I look at the clock as I exit, as I had just been told that they will be in touch, and somehow looking at the clock while waiting for something to happen is just something people do.
