Tell Me About Time There Was A Crisis At Work

I have to sit through interviews again today. No bat shit crazies yet (still a chance for that this afternoon), just some over eager young adults, with rabid little eyes prying me to let them in, please let them in, you don’t know what it’s like out there.

There was the guy who could have easily been mistaken for a drifter who killed hobos in his spare time, the guy who when I asked if he could walk us through his resume glared at me for what felt like three and half minutes and then said, “You mean tell you about my resume?” Yeah. He could have ventured down Crazy Road, but opted for gradually more and more uncommunicative.

And there’s those poor souls who are so nervous that they cannot keep there voices under check, the ones who wipe their hands before shaking with me. I feel for them, but cannot let my empathetic ways sway my decisions. People, I’m a professional.

Did I ever tell you guys about the really bad interview that I had?

I was desperate for a gig, I wasn’t even able to buy smokes, and was at a point where I was just plain sick of retail abuse. There was a posting on the career callboard at school for what amounted to an office bitch position at an insurance company. Of course I didn’t give a fuck about insurance, but it was somewhere, it was a paycheck.

I spoke with the contact there, we’ll say his name was Ken. Ken and I had a great conversation, Ken said that he would get back to me, but apparently Ken was just not that into me. It’s not that I couldn’t take the hint, I understood that he didn’t want to hire me, I just wasn’t going to let it go. I called, I sent faxes, if I knew that he had a pet bunny I would have left it boiling on his stove.

Again, I was poor and I was nic fitting.

After much diligence on my part, Ken finally agreed to meet with me at his office in downtown San Francisco. It was in one of those older buildings in the Financial District, it was high up and made mostly of windows. Now I really wanted to work there.

We talked about my work experience, about school, and I found then (as I still find now) that being a film major will get you nowhere fast. I was playing it all flirtatious by laughing at anything he said that was remotely funny. When he brought up some chestnut about his policy selling days, I fake laughed so hard that I let one rip.

Yup, loud, pants rip sounding, no mistake about it fart. Ken was kind enough to overlook the sound effects, pretending he didn’t hear it, but when that burning and rotten lunch meat smell hit his nose, there was no mistaking it. That row of way too white teeth became a pucker that drew down a bit at the corners. I think he may have actually tried to hide a gag. He put a fist to his mouth, cleared his throat and began closing with the dreaded, “anyway.”

I’m totally kidding, that never happened. I did interview at a bookstore with a case of walking pneumonia, sweating so hard that I could feel it trickling down the back of my neck. And man, I certainly understand why you don’t want to bring in a sweaty, self proclaimed David Lynch fan into your small bookstore.

It’s a recipe for disaster, that and powdered milk.


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: “Low Down” by Tom Waits.