Melancholy Aftermath - a job interview story

My cyberfriends Alexandra and Sheila are actors and they bravely go on audition after audition, putting themselves on the line in the brutal world of show biz. I find it bitterly ironic that we demand actors, who by nature and training are some of the most sensitive artists we have, to undergo this harsh, sometimes agonizing process just to find work. Auditioning must be like having to get an emotional delousing - or a decontamination scrub-down a la Silkwood.

I was thinking of Sheila and Alex yesterday when I went on a job interview.

The job as advertized was an interesting-sounding litigation support paralegal and the pay range was low but tolerable. Within five minutes in the interview I learned that the job was really the "make-ten-copies-and-deliver-them-to-the-attorney" type, it was a temporary position, and the salary would be the exact bottom of the range stated. So there I was, a middle-aged, middle-careered, gray-haired fat man with years of experience doing complex paralegal work, auditioning for a job requiring no experience, no skill, and much better suited to a young, energetic, just-starting-out person still living at home.

It was a nightmare.

Four people interviewed me: two attorneys and two assistants. We sat in a tiny, crowded meeting room. I kept the smile plastered to my face and tried to come up with articulate answers to their simple questions.

"What experience have you had that makes you believe you could do this job?" Oh, umm, I've made copies before, dude, and I even know about the 'collate' button. Did you read my resume prior to the interview? Maybe one of the three federal judges I have listed as references might elucidate you to that, my friend.

"Do you understand that the salary is $10.28 per hour and that the position runs out in November and that you won't have a desk or anything?" Gee, sounds grrrrrrrreat!! Is there a stinking little employee lounge that smells like mildew and has big signs all over like DON'T STEAL OTHER PEOPLE'S FOOD FROM THE FRIDGE and CLEAN YOUR OWN COFFEE CUPS? Because that would be the piece de resistance!!

"What do you think is your greatest strength and your worst weakness?" Well, my greatest strength is being able to smile at you at this moment when my brain is shrieking like a banshee, and my worst weakness is my inability to announce out loud that the job is a crock and the advertizing was false and I wouldn't take this job if I was addicted to toner.

"Are you willing to use one-tenth of your abilities and one-tenth of your brain to make one-tenth what you're worth and accomplish one-tenth of what you could?" Okay, they didn't ask that question.

I left the interview and fell into the mightiest funk.

If they offered me the job (and frankly, they shouldn't), am I desperate enough to say yes? What if nothing else comes along? Is this what it comes to, begging for scraps?

I managed to avoid hitting a fast-food joint on the way home by purposefully taking a circuitous route through prairies and barrios, and I was prepared for the post-interview emotional tumult (I had poached some chicken the night before), so the fallout was minimal physically, but I'm a little bit shot to shit this morning, feeling terribly insecure and uncertain. And I know, there's other jobs out there, there's other interviews, there's something GREAT just waiting for me, and I'll be fine, and God will provide, yadda yadda yadda, but right now, at this moment, it's hard to feel great about myself. How do you do it, Alex and Sheila? How do you swallow the rejection without taking it personally? And how do you keep hope alive?

If I were a trained actor with strong experience and memories of thunderous applause, rave reviews, triumphant performances and the respect of my peers, I'd have a damned hard time auditioning for a one-line part in a potato chip commerial - "Gee, they're crispy!" - and not getting it. I'd need to spend the evening in bed, wearing a tattered kimono, nipping at a bottle of burbon, chain-smoking, popping Milk Duds, dolefully turning the pages of my old scrapbooks of clippings and reviews, and woozily singing along with Peggy Lee. "Is that all there is?" Maybe, Peggy, maybe so.

"God, I hope I get, I hope I get it . . . . . I really need this job, please God I need this job, I've got to get this job . . . "

"There's gotta be something better than this, there's gotta be something better to do . . . "

All right, now that I got that out of my system I think I'll go wash the car.

And try not to eat a burger.