Meeting “The Team”
This week has been extremely haphazard for me as far as actually showing up for work. Part of this, I guess, is my subconscious feeling that I’ll get this job I’ve interviewed for; mostly, though, it has to do with having almost no work — even though I got “promoted,” I managed to clear up “months” of work in about a day and a half — so on Wednesday I didn’t go to work at all; Thursday, I left early (around 11) to have lunch with Lucy, then didn’t go back to work that day; and on Friday, I had my in-person interview with “The Team.”
Sadly, despite actually being in the office for a grand total of about 12 hours this week, only one person noticed my disappearing act, and I approached her on Friday morning with such gusto and confidence that she faltered and decided to not even question it. I am, quite possibly, the worst person alive.
I left work around 10:30 Friday morning so I could print out a few writing samples, a few hard copies of my resume. I also mapped out a painstaking route so that I would only have to navigate two major thoroughfares, one with which I have been intimately familiar for most of my life, and therefore wouldn’t confuse myself or get lost. The meeting was for two o’clock, and MapQuest estimated a little over 40 minutes to get there. I doubled that, “just in case.”
After this, I got dressed in my one and only power suit. One of the good things about my sister is she’s a little hippy-dippy and had no interest whatsoever in an ultra-formal wedding. So rather than renting a tuxedo for the occasion, I wisely bought a new suit that would both look nice for formal occasions but not too nice that I would seem overdressed (or like I had just stepped out from chaperoning a prom) for less-formal-but-still-need-to-look-nice occasions. I wasn’t sure if the suit was too much or not; it seemed like a formal kind of place, at least for the sake of interviewing, but at the same time, it was casual Friday. I decided to split the difference, wearing the shirt, tie, and pants, but I left the sportcoat at home. Why the fuck am I talking about my choice in interview attire? The joke’s on you for wasting time reading this paragraph. Moving on…
Feeling prepared for the interview, I sat down and relaxed for about half an hour, trying to put myself into a mental position where I could feel good about myself and attempt to be confident, witty, and — perish the thought! — even charming. Sometimes I can pull this off (sadly, I can’t find any corroborating evidence by plugging in “charm” or “job” as search terms, so you’ll have to take my word for it); usually, it’s a disaster. But I had to keep positive, because in addition to really wanting this job, I was incredibly nervous about whether they’d think I could get along with them.
So I got myself into a good frame of mind, then hit the road. Fortunately, the early-morning predictions of “endless torrential downpour turning to sleet and slow by afternoon” turned out to be inaccurate; the rain had dried up before I even left work, and it didn’t come back until late in the evening. So the drive was smooth, and by the time I got out to Northbrook (where this job is located), the sun had even come out. Also, I turned out to be about an hour early, so I did what any terrified prospective employee would do: prepared to wet myself. Afraid the office building wouldn’t have facilities in the lobby, I kept driving until I found a Starbucks, which I know from experience has the cleanest public restrooms outside of most suburban McDonald’s restaurants.
I ordered a medium (fuck you, grande!) earl grey tea for two reasons: (1) despite my efforts to wean myself off the sweet, sweet elixir of happiness, I felt I needed just a smidge of the wonder-drug to take the edge off and add a little bit of artificial charm and peppiness to my otherwise dull demeanor; and (2) I remembered how much I hated it when non-customers would come in and use the restrooms. So I ordered the tea and used the can while I let it steep.
I got back, discarded the bag, and then thought of a couple of things: with less than an hour to go before the interview, I had very little time for the extremely hot tea to cool before I went, and chances are the caffeine wouldn’t kick in until after the interview. Also, the Tazo tea that Starbucks stocks is utter shit, so I decided to take a chance on something i feared. For a long time, a couple of people have been telling me on a regular basis that I am a total loser for not sloshing milk into my tea. Personally, I find milk in coffee disgusting (except in Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, which is actually disgusting without cream and sugar), so I figured I’d feel the same way about tea. But I thought now was the time to take a chance: the lukewarm milk would, hopefully, cool the tea a little more quickly, and it would take the nasty Tazo edge off the tea.
Tea in hand, I drove back to the office building, parked, and sat reading for about 50 minutes, periodically sipping the tea until (after about 20 minutes) it was hot enough to satisfy but cool enough to drink without burning my mouth. To my chagrin, tea and milk is about the best thing in the universe. I am, I’ll admit, a changed man. Still sucks in coffee, though.
With five minutes before the scheduled interview time, I kind of had to urinate again. Quick-acting diuretic, or prostatic inflammation? And I’m weird about my bathroom stuff; I would have been horrified to go up there and ask, first thing, to use the bathroom. As I crossed the parking lot, I thought, “If there’s no bathroom in the lobby, I’ll go to the second floor” — the interview was on the fourth — “and ask to use their bathroom.” Fortunately, there was a bathroom right there in the lobby, so I did my business and went upstairs.
I told the receptionist my name and who I was meeting with, and she asked me to sit in the waiting area. She phoned my contact, and I browsed the magazine selection on the coffee table. Every single magazine had something to do with golf. This discouraged me. I found the Friday Sun-Times and leafed through it for a few minutes before my contact, who I’ll refer to as Scary Lady, approached and led me to a nearby conference room with a view of beautiful (?) Northbrook.
Why “Scary Lady”? This was the woman who interviewed me on the phone, and although I suspected I was in, she still had a strange, offputting demeanor about her. Like she totally hates me. I’ve met a lot of people who hate me, so I am attuned to the vibes. I also felt like it was a bad sign that “The Team” was nowhere to be found, but she addressed that pretty quickly: “You’ll also be meeting with Googly Lady, who should be here shortly.”
Wait, “The Team” is two people? What the hell kind of operation is this? (Although I’ll point out now that my fear of being overdressed was unwarranted — this place had the most formal casual Friday I’ve ever seen.) Am I just meeting with these two people? I thought she said —
“After you talk with us, you’ll be talking with Catty Man and Hot Girl,” she added.
“I…see,” I thought.
“Okay,” I said suavely.
She started in asking me questions she had already asked me on the phone. She admitted she had already asked these, and I’m not sure why she felt the need to ask them again — maybe she didn’t take notes the first time on the likely chance that I was a total loser? As I started addressing her first two-part question, Googly Lady quietly slipped into the room, so I had to repeat my entire answer in a baffling an incoherent way.
But here’s why Googly Lady earned her name: from the answer of the first question onward, she stared at me with rapt attention, bordering on psychotic fascination, as if everything I was saying was incredibly charming, intelligent, and hilarious. Which is funny because during this phase of the interview, I was at my least charming. In part because I feared Googly Lady’s hungry eyes, but mainly because Scary Lady terrified me. More than on the phone, because I couldn’t see her hard, piercing look and apparent lack of humor. Was this some sort of good cop/bad cop tactic? If so, perhaps Googly Lady would be in my corner, gently massaging me and spraying water across my face and into my mouth in slow motion.
After about 20 minutes of listening to my semi-coherent, free-associated answers to basic “can you do this job?” questions, Scary Lady took the opportunity to reiterate the job tasks. She went into more detail than she did on the phone, and I felt a tiny pit of fecal-related doom balling up in my nether regions as I realized, to my dismay, that I don’t think I can actually do this job. I already knew I was eminently unqualified, but if they were willing to overlook that, so was I. But as she expanded on the job tasks, I realized not only am I unqualified, I don’t think I even want to do this job. It’s less writing-intensive than she originally stated, and although the reduction in writing accommodates an increase in research (which I love), they also expect me to be really, really, really on top of the researching game. I flat-out lied and told them I was more than capable, but…well, maybe I could get into the groove of what they want me to do, but I’m not convinced I’m assertive enough on the phone to accomplish what they want/need.
This disheartened me and shook my confidence…just in time to meet with the Senior Vice-President (!!!), who was surprisingly good humored and sarcastic (hence his nickname, Catty Man, inspired by him actually referring to himself as “catty,” which — in conjunction with his turtleneck and my penchant for stereotyping — leads me to assume he’s playing for a different team). We actually got along pretty well, trading weird barbed insults. It’s possible that you shouldn’t trade barbed insults with a man who will potentially pay you money to do a job, but he started it.
With Catty Man was Hot Girl, an achingly gorgeous girl who had recently been hired (aside from that, I have no idea what her job position was — I’m hoping it’s somewhere in the realm of motivational massaging), who tried to take the Scary Lady route. She tried to sit there with a poker face, unamused at all times, but she kept smiling at my jokes, which weren’t even funny. So, in my mind, it’s either three-against-one or four-against-zero. I still can’t decide if Scary Lady really disliked me (why would she have called me in or let me go past the obvious “I am screening you out with this first part of the in-person interview”?) or if she was just trying not to show emotion to keep me from getting my hopes up either way.
Frankly, though, my hopes aren’t up. Even if they may have liked me personally, I don’t think I convinced any of them (maybe Googly Lady…) that I can do this job. I tried to, I used (largely fictional) examples to illustrate my competence in tasks I’ve never really attempted to do, but I have a bad feeling they didn’t buy it. Although Catty Man didn’t give me the brush-off I expected — rather than the old “we’ll be in touch” line that means “you’ll never hear from us again and will be ‘accidentally’ disconnected from the switchboard if you ever call,” he said very pointedly that if they haven’t called me by “early next week,” I should get in touch ASAP. So that’s a good sign.
Right?
Posted by Stan on February 5, 2006 12:33 PM | Permalink | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace | Digg It
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