Two Interviews

I’ve had two job interviews in the past three weeks. For those not in the know, that is not the correct amount that you should have in that span of time. The dearth of interviews could (and probably should) be attributed to my general ineptness at the application process, but maybe I’ve just hit that nexus of seasonal/econo-climatic famine relevant to anybody in my particular field (non-specialized couchsitting). Nonetheless, the fact that I dragged my husk out of the apartment and into the winter has, each time, left me feeling accomplished and aspirational, enough so that I can spend the rest of the day drinking beer and watching game shows without regret. Let’s see how they went, and judge me:

Interview One: Applying to a nursing home that’s a forty-minute walk from my house wasn’t the brightest option I could have pursued, but Craigslist is my mistress, so what are you going to do. The fastest route to the place (named for a former President—no, not that one) is a winding stretch through town that confused me enough that I had to double back on the sidewalk and get my bearings—sometimes you can see me out there, milling around like the true idiot that I am. Anyway, I finally got there and managed to fill out a form, and also, as requested, sign a logbook. Seeing the names of others you’re up against for a job is a weird novelty. There was only one other in the ledger going for the same position, and I instantly deferred to him, in my head: You have it, buddy. You deserve it. So sure was I that nothing would come of it that I went out of town the next week, and indeed nobody contacted me for this “fill immediately” position, so I assumed it was over. A week and a half later I received an e-mail:

Hi Ezra,

Are you available to come in for an interview to further discuss the dishwashing position? I am available Monday, the 9th at 10am. Please let me know if this will work for you. Thank you and look forward to hearing from you.

Sure, it’ll work! I drunkenly replied and headed out on the town. On Monday morning, minutes before preparing to bundle up for the trek, I fortunately did a last-second e-mail check and found this:

Hi Ezra, I am going to have to reschedule your interview today. Can we plan on meeting tomorrow, Tuesday the 10th at 10am? Thank you and sorry for the short notice.

Rude, and potentially time-wasting for me, but okay, whatever. Miss Boss responded to my affirmative response with a brisk thanks and promise to “see [me] than,” and I burned off another day. The next morning I headed out, more confidently finding the backstreet turns to get to the nursing home, where I walked into the lobby ten minutes early (after having fruitlessly knocked on the door of a nearby friend’s house hoping to kill the extra time there), and learned that Miss Department Head was still in a big staff meeting. I had thought I’d rescheduled to avoid such an annoyance, but who am I to judge others’ practices. After what seemed like a half an hour sitting next to another silent prospective hire (who was waiting for a different, more-lengthily-occupied department head), reading in a bad local paper about my favorite restaurant franchise’s bankruptcy, and watching assorted trembling, ancient bodies get wheeled in and out by chipper medics, a very tired looking woman, much younger than I expected, introduced herself and we went into the small, adjoining dining room. I cannot recall the entire substance of the conversation that followed, for the specific reason that I was completely taken aback at the complexity of its content. I had applied for a job listed as “Part-time Dishwasher,” but as described it sounded more like “non-professional snack nurse.” Relatively few of the tasks involved actual dishwashing, though those that did were compounded by the necessary conformity to standards of especial cleanliness—far beyond the spray-n-go method adopted at my last dishwashing gig— vis-à-vis various old-folk dietary needs. Apparently my face didn’t betray how overwhelmed I was, as she continued to describe the daily multi-schedule of tray assembly, ice retrieval, coffee attending and cart-wheeling, again all subject to gravely prescribed diet charts. Before I could get my bearings I was treated to an admonition from this stern-looking woman (who couldn’t be much older than thirty) that part-time employees were not afforded any flexibility of schedule, absolutely no vacation time and no sick days. As I thanked her—with a little inside-laugh at my vocal reassurance that no, I didn’t have any questions about this job whose content I now had no conception of—and briskly left the sad, ugly building to begin the forty minute walk home in the biting chill, I had a feeling that—though unsure what, subjectively, it meant—I had interviewed about as poorly as I could have. Two and half weeks later, the job posting went back up on Craigslist.

Interview Two: I’ve been seeing posts for these environmental action committee grunt jobs on Craigslist regularly for months now, and I applied on a lark back in the fall, expecting and receiving no reply. It seems odd to me that a nonprofit would, in these economic climes, advertise so freely and often for paying, non-specialized jobs (the actual form to contact them is a three-line thing on their website; no resume required), and I assumed it was one of those too-out-there-to-be-true nothings, maybe a necessity to adhere to special tax regulations. So when I, again, without any effort or expectation, filled out the little form—making my ending note an especially stately phrase of Responsibility and Imperative—I was very surprised to be called a couple of days later, asking for an interview. I made an ass of myself on the phone, stammering on about my uncertainty of suitability re: location and lack of transportation, but the voice on the other end was more reassuring than I deserved. I went to the office the next week expecting to, again, be put on meeting-hold for a time while some harried dress-shirted hippie wrangled seventeen tasks at once, but I was greeting by a lone, young woman, dressed casually and surrounded by the standard left-wing clutter, who merely asked me to fill out a slightly more detailed application. When we sat down to talk in the high-ceilinged office, I decided to not put on any airs and be straightforward, and I think it helped my presence, if not my qualification. She seemed relieved that I knew what “canvassing” meant, and the half-hour of internet research I’d done the previous evening paid off superficially, even if we didn’t get into an impassioned mutual declaration of dedicated tree-huggery. I felt confident, and actually regretted not being able to admit that I consume factory-farmed meat and occasionally smoked—oh, but I don’t drive!—as a character-coloring bullet point of complex personal value. It’s half a week later, and I don’t know if I’ll get a callback, but at least, unlike at the nursing home, I didn’t stammer like an idiot for thirty seconds, trying to decide whether my question about the schedule was so dumb that I would be dismissed immediately without comment.

Post-mortem: Three years ago I wouldn’t exactly picture myself now, sitting in my room by myself on a Friday night, listening to Phil Collins and sighing softly. Where do the days go? I’ve run out of booze money, and the television bores me. I lose myself in video games and books, and dream of a life without desperation. The interviews are over; hoping for more is like swimming upward toward purgatory.