Once, I was hoodwinked into accepting a job interview by a “marketing company” which ended up being a huge waste of time. The main question is, how did I get there?
Well, I was unceremoniously terminated by my employer. That’s an interesting statement as most terminations are not in fact, ceremonious. No one gets dressed up, places on a cap and gown, which subsequently hides the fact they have on their Sunday best; walks across a stage in front of hundreds and possibly thousands of people, to be handed a pink slip by the Dean of Supervisors.
My firing was quite uneventful, brief, and cold. A conference call was scheduled, yes, you read that correctly, I was terminated via conference call. It was a call for one, to render me unemployed, effective immediately. I didn’t get called into an office, given a speech about how things weren’t working out, then have to take the slow walk back to a desk to retrieve any personal belongings before being escorted out of the building. Instead, I was prompted via iPad calendar notification to attend a meeting. It was about as impersonal a firing that anyone could ever receive. The only way it could have been any more impersonal were if I showed up bright and early on a Monday morning to discover the doors to the office were locked, permanently.
In the process of applying for various jobs and accepting multiple interviews you'll eventually run into a company that you immediately know is not quite the right fit. On this particular afternoon, after arriving early to a large business park and sitting in my car to familiarize myself with the company via their website, I immediately began noticing, while constructed well, it was very generic and didn’t provide any substantive information. This was the first sign of many, something wasn’t quite right with this operation, however, I proceeded. After checking in the with receptionist, I began to observe the surroundings and my initial impression raised a yellow flag, something wasn’t quite right. It had all the subtle ambiance of a corporate office with a fly by night essence. Within five minutes my suspicions would be verified overhearing the front desk receptionist use a script to close multiple appointments; the same script that had led to my arrival. Irritated, I sat stewing in a vat of my own contempt for allowing myself to be deceived by some basic script. Instead of leaving, I decided to see the “interview” process through. Fortunately, my patience and obstinacy would be rewarded.
Were my initial misgivings unfounded? Had I been overly skeptical and pessimistic? No. Not only no, a resounding, hell no. When the hiring manager walked out to introduce herself, I suddenly felt an overwhelming since of flight. Of flight you ask? Yes, there was an overwhelming sensation of being in an airport and watching a plane coming in for a landing. Why would I feel this way? Could it be that the hiring manager had on some sort of airport attire which resulted in my reminiscing about my time “flying the friendly skies”? Well…not quite. The hiring manager, let’s call her Rachel, found it necessary to do what some women seem enamored by. Rachel had shaven her naturally growing eyebrows and decided to interpretively redraw them onto her face. Please give me the honor of describing her interpretive brow to you. First, she decided that her eyebrows must be thicker than most naturally occurring eyebrows. So, in redrawing the eyebrow she created a much thicker and rectangular start. She must have also concluded that her natural brow did not arch high enough, therefore, she arched them onto her lower third of her forehead. Not only did she want an extreme pitch to her arch, it needed to come to a stark point, similar to a soldier standing at attention, before steeply tapering off to a drastic point which extended slightly past her eye. The geometrical dynamics of Rachel’s drawn on eyebrows, vividly reminded me of the airplane wing and how it starts out broadly from the base, angling downward to the wing tip.
As Rachel rambled on about the company and the position for which she was hiring, I stared attentively at her reconstructionist eyebrows, giving them the unabashed attention which they desired. While she spat out her scripted verbal minutia, my eyes glared at the bald and void space her eyebrows had once occupied. I empathized with their shame at being left out stark naked in the cold as winter looms. I could imagine their discontent as they were not good enough to effectively cover her eyebrow and had instead been replaced by some fallible construct not even a clown would wear. Honestly, I cannot accurately recall the words Rachel spewed during the interview, although, it doesn’t matter as they were unimportant. Although what is important, a woman purported to represent Fortune 500 companies, found it acceptable to conduct interviews looking like a grade A buffoon, making it extremely difficult to take the company or herself very seriously. While I am upset that my time and gas were wasted, I would like thank Rachel for the laugh and this blog post.