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| Wednesday, January 24, 2007 |
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So I Went Down There
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I went to the interview not expecting much. The mental picture I had was of a grubby Buford Highway office park, a little stall with wicker furniture and a rubber potted plant in the lobby, stains in the carpet that had been there since the `80s, much like the sparkle-silver rainbow pattern wallpaper. There would be five or six employees, on the optimistic side maybe as many as 10. This might be an opportunity but a flimsy one, for sure.
Imagine my surprise as I turned the corner and saw a real four-story glass office building, complete with a lake and geese! Marble floors, brassy elevators...wow! This may be a real job after all!
The inside had clearly been done up by a licensed interior decorator: earth tones and contemporary. Just passing a few employees on the way in I quickly noticed they all wore colors that matched the walls, carpet and furniture; lots of burgundy, beige and black. In the lobby there were big leather chairs and a plasma screen TV and displays of the magazines they produce.
All of this turned my thoughts in a different direction. This looked like a Norcross version of the Ugly Betty show, and I was Betty. Now, instead of expecting it to be too lame of a scene to be worth jumping ship for, I now reasoned I was not nearly a hip enough dresser to fit in here. This was the black turtleneck and ash-gray slacks crowd, with practiced aloof, cool attitudes. I was a little too frumpy and khaki for this scene.
Then my potential boss met me, and she seemed to be modelled after Laurie Anderson. She had told me in advance I would be there three hours but I couldn't imagine doing what. Now I was told I would be speaking to three higher-level managers as well as taking writing and spelling tests. WHAT?!
I wasn't ready for this at all. For the Fitzsimmons interviews I had studied potential interview questions, drafted answers, prepared factoids about the company to drop. Here I was walking in blind, and without a black turtleneck. Oh, well...let the chips fall where they may, even if its in a pile of shit.
My answers ran on quite a bit. QUITE a bit. When they asked me how I responded to constructive criticism I explained how I learned how to handle it by watching American Idol. I said, "My philosophy is, if you're standing at the counter at Burger King and a guy says he wants an extra pickle on his Whopper, don't argue with him about why one pickle is good enough. Just throw the pickle on there and make him happy and get him on his way." It went like this.
The woman who may be my immediate supervisor seemed to take a shine to me, another lady seemed to find me amusing but probably thought I landed from Mars, a third lady I'm for some reason betting she might not be so into me, though she had found my Web page and said she had listened to my radio demos (I knew they were all spies!).
So who knows? |
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Posted by Art | 11:24 PM EST |
3 comments
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That they looked for your website and came clean about it rather than keep it a secret shows that they have more than a passing interest.