I just got a call for a second interview. During the highly awkward conversation with my maybe-future boss, he told me that I was the strongest candidate he had met.

I was slightly taken aback since I have been anything but enthusiastic during this process. Don’t all companies want over-eager team players?

Apparently not. Apparently, much like dating, some people want you to be a disinterested bitch.

What I Have Learned About Applying for Jobs

When a company calls, do not call them back for two days.

When scheduling an interview be sure to choose both the date and the time, forcing other people to accommodate you.

Reschedule at least once.

Show up ten minutes late.

Do not print your resume on “resume paper”.

Do not write a “Thank you” e-mail after meeting with the prospective employer.

Even if I do not get the job, I’ve learned a lot.

Last night I went to dinner with the entire family and wound up in the corner (no escape!) wedged between my father and my mother.

Making conversation during the main course, I told my mother about the Wednesday interview, concluding “I don’t really know if I want it…”

Her response was to purse her lips, stare at her salmon and say, somewhat hesitatingly, “But CB, it's better to get paid alot of money to work in a job you don't like than to get paid a little money to work in a job you don't like.”

Touché Mama.

About five minutes later, it was my father’s turn to hear the story of the interview. Having learned from my mother, I concluded “But it would be a lot more money than I have now, so if they gave it to me, I'd take it.”

His response was to look at me quizically and intone “No job is worth selling your soul.”

And that was a pretty good point too.


This story can illustrate one of three things:

1. I was raised by two very different people, thus making me into the well-balanced woman you see before you


2. I was raised by two very different people, thus making me into the slightly schizophrenic woman you see before you


3. My parents are actually very similar in that they must contradict everything I say. (I mean, seriously, if I had told my mother I'd be taking the job it's quite possible she would have said "Remember what matters. Love. And joy. Not money.")

The Interview

It is quite disconcerting to be in an interview, selling it hard and suddenly have your mind begin to chant, You are a douche with no sense of humor. You are a douche with no sense of humor. Even more disconcerting is when you don’t know if the chant refers to the interviewer or yourself.

On the one hand, you’re definitely acting like a douche with no sense of humor but on the other hand, you’re pretty sure it’s an act while the man on the other side of the table is most likely a real douche. Especially since your douche act is going over so well with him.

We'll see. I think I could be okay with being a douche with no sense of humor, especially for twice the amount of money I am making now.

Interview Tomorrow

When applying for jobs, I write things that directly address the “Requirements” section in the job posting. Besides altering my resume to include all the needed skills, at some point in my cover letter I’ll say “I’m familiar with Powerpoint,” or “I’m proficient in PhotoShop and other imaging tools,” or “I’m familiar with a full range of marketing metric software, including, but not limited to, blah blah blah.”

What this translates to is: I have no idea what you're talking about. If you give me the job I'll learn what you're talking about before my start date. Now RESCUE ME, damnit.

Then I panic when I’m called in for an interview, because Oh my God, they're totally going to know.

I look really good in my new suit though. Hopefully the general air of importance that the suit implies, along with a firm handshake and eye contact (which I am so good at!), will get me a new job tomorrow before the conversation gets all technical.

Just Fucking Go To the Bathroom

They have replaced Perky with a woman with a strong sense of team spirit. Usually this is limited to such endearing tasks as laughing, joking, and literally hanging out by the water cooler. This is okay. This is fun.

Unfortunately, Team Spirit also has a finely honed sense of co-dependency and likes to do such things as tell people exactly when she is going to the bathroom. As in, “Okay everybody. I’m going to the bathroom. Anyone need anything? Be back in five!”

Presumably, I need to know when TS is in the bathroom so that if I peer in her cube and see My Teammate! She is not there! I do not panic, but rather think to myself While I am upset that a member of My Team is not immediately accessible, I can take comfort in the fact that she is only peeing and will most likely return in five to fifteen minutes.

I refuse, REFUSE, to participate in this new bullshit because:
a) I use the bathroom all the time, sometimes just for a change of scenery so to actually state out loud how many times a day I’m going would be alarming.
b) My company may own many things of "mine", including my weekends, my soul, and my ergonomically correct chair but I refuse to let them even think they own my digestive processes.
c) When I was nine I stopped having to ask to use the bathroom. I will not regress.

However other members of the Team have not been as strong—or perhaps this kind of unity is what they were striving for all along—and now I am bombarded with enthusiastic declarations of urination throughout the day.

Go Team!

Valentine's Day

Last night I received my Valentine’s gift of black thermal long underwear. It came in two tins—one for the pants and one for the long sleeve shirt. Both items were emblazoned with the logo “Hot Chillys.”

They matched Re-Boyfriend’s thermals perfectly, items that he wears throughout winter so that he can swagger around in a suit, seemingly impervious to the cold. (This makes for some interesting morning get-ups, such as the time he went to get a glass of water wearing black leggings and a button down and I realized he was dressed exactly like Lindsay Lohan.)

As I unfurled the bottoms, Re-Boyfriend’s eyes widened.

“Yours have a stirrup foot? I want those! That’s so awesome.”

You seriously cannot make this up.

“Now we can be warm together,” he told me.

“And run around like ninjas in the morning,” I answered, deadpan.

“Exactly.” He beamed.

To be fair, he also got me a very cute hat and it has been totally freezing in New York of late. Flowers wilt but thermals last forever. But I’m still going to lie if anyone at work asks me what I got for Valentine’s Day.

Today I realized my hatred of my job had reached new heights when I started believing it wasn’t important to photocopy every page of a document.

Things That Have Gone Wrong Today

1. A homeless man called me a “nigger” on the subway and spit in my direction. Besides being offensive, it was a little confusing since I am an almost-natural blonde.

2. I tried to empty my three-hole puncher into the garbage can, but missed. Now my cubicle floor is covered in tiny circles of white paper. This doesn’t bother me in and of itself, but I’m starting to get looks from other people.

3. Despite my repeated (read: constant) checking of my e-mail (which we all know makes people get back to you faster) nobody has written to me about the five million jobs I applied to this weekend. And I know it is before noon on a Monday but dear God, how many more spreadsheets do I have to STARE AT before I can LEAVE THIS PLACE.

Prognosis for the Week: Not Good

Wine

Last night, after Re-Boyfriend passed out on the couch, I decided I wanted a glass of wine. I got the bottle of Pinot Noir that had been residing on top of the refrigerator and screwed in the wine opener. As I pressed on the sides of the contraption, I found myself successfully removing the corkscrew from the bottle, but with no cork attached to the end of it--which was really the point of the whole operation.

I tried again, and the corkscrew again emerged without the cork. After five repetitions of this little exercise, the cork was beginning to look a little bedraggled, full of holes and crumbling, but it remained in place.

I decided to switch strategies. I began to use the edge of the corkscrew as a sort of shovel, flinging bits of cork around the kitchen as I dug into the top of the bottle. After ten minutes of intense shoveling, on what was perhaps an overzealous scoop, the corkscrew snapped in two.

Refusing to be deterred by this setback when so close to my goal, I tossed the two halves of the corkscrew into the garbage and grabbed a knife.

In retrospect, this is where things began to go horribly wrong.

I jammed the knife into the cork and managed to remove a quite sizeable chunk (thank you Williams Sonoma!) before cutting my finger. I sharply brought the finger to my mouth, knocking over the wine glass that had been waiting patiently on the counter. As the glass fell to the linoleum, shattering into thousands of little sharp pieces, it occurred to me that I wasn’t wearing any shoes.

Having no choice but to walk barefoot through the valley of glass, I tried to tip-toe dance around the visible shards. This strategy worked for less than thirty seconds when, 6 inches from the freedom of the carpeted living room, I cut myself again.

I sat on the rug to examine my foot and contemplate my next move in this chess game with the wine bottle.

Not wanting to bleed all over the carpet as I searched for a pair of my shoes, I grabbed Re-Boyfriends wool socks and brown shoes that were conveniently nearby. Thus attired, I grabbed the dust buster and walked confidently (but a little stumblingly) back to the kitchen. After picking up the larger pieces of glass (and managing not to cut myself on them!), I began vacuuming the area. I almost felt like the situation was under control but then, in a move I should have anticipated, the dust buster broke.

At this point, I really needed a glass of wine. I gave the bottle an experimental shake to see if the liquid could make its way through the infuriatingly still-in-place cork. It could. And a lot of it wound up on the floor, since my shake wound up being more “vigorous” than “experimental.” Deciding to deal with things later, I filled up a glass and took a big, semi-triumphant sip, ignoring the floating bits of cork that stuck to my tongue.

And, of course, that was when Re-Boyfriend woke up, finding me in pajama shorts with men’s shoes and wool socks, sucking at my bleeding finger, surrounded by broken glass and small puddles of wine.

“My foot is cut too,” I told him.