I ambled into the recruitment agency’s foyer – this was an interview I was preparing to treat with great disregard, as I’d had an amazingly promising interview just the day before. I was feeling so confident about my previous interview that it was a fair bet I had that job (the next day, I ended up getting it, too).
Today’s interview was merely to back myself up, in the unlikely event I wasn’t offered the job I’d been interviewed for yesterday. Fortunately, today was a group interview, so I would be belittled by the interviewer along with three other minions.
After checking in with the receptionist, I was directed to sit next to one of those pieces of modern installation art you typically see around arty-farty offices of late.
I looked around – to my right, a young feral-looking man momentarily appeared as he shifted around in his seat and preened his dreadlocks, then cloaked back into invisibility as he settled back again. That’s what all-liquid diets do to you, I suppose.
Peering cautiously around the giant piece of art towering over me, I noticed a prim lady wearing a sunhat sitting rigidly in her seat. She was grasping her handbag so tightly with both hands that her knuckles had long ago reached the stage of turning white, and had now begun transforming into a festive shade of blue.
Suddenly, the installation art rumbled into life and expelled air from a source unknown. Cowering in terror, I looked up and realised that the installation art was in fact a very large woman in a very bad dress.
‘I used to work for Telstra’s call centre,’ she boomed down at the quivering woman next to her without warning. ‘Worked with a pack of wankers, me.’
The poor woman could do nothing but continue to look up in terror at the absolute monstrosity she was faced with. The giant’s enormous nostrils slightly constricted, then relaxed; releasing a breeze which ruffled my hair. The skinny feral on my right also appeared only to have just realised the item placed on my left was not installation art but a human being – either that, or he appeared to be suffering severe gastric pains.
‘Pack o’ fuckin bastards, swearing at me all day, ‘n that; ‘n bein’ slack and they was all fuckin’ pricks, I mean I ain’t no wallflower by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s why I’m looking for work somewhere else,’ she graciously informed the three of us. She emphasised her desire for release by straining to slightly lift one meaty thigh, expelling a gaseous substance reminiscent of a stinking corpse from her rear end; then shuddering her leg back down to earth.
‘I mean, I ain’t no wallflower by any stretch of the imagination, I seen crap goin’ on at work places ‘n shit, but Telstra is a bunch of fucking pricks, sexist arseholes,’ she refused to relent. The lady with the handbag was frozen in sheer terror of the woman – the skinny feral on my right looked rather relieved that he had a light body frame, and was thus a less likely candidate for consummation by the large woman.
‘Them Telstra bastards, they were against everything y’know? I mean, I ain’t no Christian or anything, but they made an awful lot of Jesus jokes, that’s not right is it? I mean, I ain’t no wallflower by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s just not right,’ she continued her lecture.
‘I’m a Christian,’ piped up the skinny feral on my right. This declaration was met with visible distaste from the fat woman, although this was probably mostly due to his body weight. Then again, maybe she’d had a bad Christian experience: being dragged along to church every Christmas by my parents as a child and fawned over by the old ladies was no fun in my books – it was sheer terror. In fact, at the time it had lead me to believe that the people I most wanted to die were the ones who had been born again.
‘You can all come into our meeting room now,’ a weary-looking staff member informed us, as we duly shuffled into a room lined with computer terminals, and an enormous desk in the middle. Eager to make an impression and nab the job, the giant woman spliced delicately pincered the seat next to the staff member between her fingers as if it was writhing with germs, then spliced it between her buttocks. Myself, the Christian feral and the handbag lady sat wordlessly opposite them.
‘I’m now going to explain what this job is all about,’ informed the staff member. ‘You’ll be working in a small call centre of five peopl-’
‘I worked in a call centre,’ boomed the giant woman informatively. ‘With Telstra, pack of bastards they are… I mean, I ain’t wallflower by any stretch of th-’
‘Thank you, Flora,’ sighed the staff member. Flora?
‘Oh!’ giggled the feral unexpectedly. ‘My name is Leif! How amusing!’ This was met with a return glance by the large woman which signaled that she was not amused in the slightest… although it was rather difficult to make out her true emotions, considering her face was masked by such a large amount of makeup, it must have been applied from an upturned bin lid.
Noticing that the staff member was observing her in a new, slightly disapproving light; the large woman regained her composure and smiled sweetly. It was plainly obvious that she was desperate to obtain this job: the job agency was a giant toilet seat, and our interviewer was her dodgy cocaine.
‘There’s a couple of stages to this interview process,’ instructed the staff member. ‘I’ll be interviewing you all as a group, then individually, and there’s also a computer skills test.’
Hearing the word ‘computer’, the fat lady’s eyes sunk back into her head with terror. ‘I hope these keyboards have been sterilised,’ she shrilled. ‘I ain’t no wallflower by any stretch of the imagination, but I worked at Telstra, and the computers th-’
‘Thank you, Flora,’ intoned the staff member, tapping a pen impatiently at a metallic clipboard. ‘I’m going to ask you all a couple of questions which you’ll all answer in turn. The first thing I’d like to ask you all, is what you want the most. How about you?’ she nodded at the handbag lady.
‘Happiness,’ she spoke silently. ‘Peaceful happiness.’
‘Shiny skin,’ the feral interrupted. ‘I want shiny skin.’ After these responses, I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to say. Luckily, Flora began regaling us with a further case study from the ranks of Telstra.
‘Perhaps I didn’t make myself very clear,’ the staff member deadpanned, with her eyes squinted shut in frustration. ‘I meant what you wanted the most in relation to your career. Let’s try, ah… how about, what phrase do you find yourself using the most in your current or previous job, and why?’
This seemed like an unusual question, however I was willing to place good money that the feral’s response to this question would be a shouted ‘Green Left Weekly!’.
After this weary process concluded, the other three applicants were instructed to complete the computer test which had been set up on the computers behind us. I was to be the first to complete the one-on-one interview. A rumble from the fat woman opposite me signaled she was about to make a movement, and I for one was unsure if it was going to be a contextual or literal.
As the staff member lead me out of the room, the fat woman fired up again. ‘I really need this job, I have three kids to feed. I ain’t no wallflower by any stretch of the imagination, but…’
Having three children to feed was a lucky coincidence, as she had a pair of breasts for each of them.
The staff member forced me into an interview closet, where we huddled around a tiny table. I’ve never been one who suffers from claustrophobia, but this room was tinier than Craig McLachlan’s career potential.
The woman in front of me had pulled out a copy of my resume and peered at it intensely, as if scruitinising for minute errors. She’d also commenced a disturbing style of panting, and was breathing awfully hard. I began to feel lightheaded – she was hogging all the oxygen in this huddled small enclosure.
‘So,’ she began. ‘Did you enjoy your last job?’ (Pant, pant, pant).
‘It was… most enjoyable?’ I cautiously began. I’ve become suspicious of job interviewers, because I’m never quite sure when the interview questions formally begin. I prepared to settle into a series of vocational queries, volleying back and forth across the desk.
‘Okay, that’s all I need to know, your resume looks fine,’ she concluded. (Pant, pant).
‘That’s it?’ I wondered aloud, becoming confused.
‘Yes?’ she replied with a quizzical look on her face, then opens the door, continuing to give me awkward looks. I scramble outside into the hall and gulp in deep breaths of beautiful, precious oxygen. Five more minutes in there and I’d have been a goner.
She lead me back into the main meeting room where the other three applicants were attentively tapping away at their keyboards, and looked down at her clipboard. ‘There is one requirement for this job – it’s based on a rotating roster, so you will be working some graveyard shifts.’
The large lady stopped typing at her keyboard, swiveled around on her seat in and instant, and came precariously close to flying off at a dangerous angle. ‘I can’t work graveyard shifts,’ she shrieked. ‘I wasn’t told of this!’ Her face mirrored the look on an excited tourist’s face when their plane lands, and the weather is unexpectedly shite.
‘I’m not really prepared to work that kind of shift either,’ I shrugged helplessly.
The staff member looked at each of us in shock. She was embodying the exact facial expression of a mother identifying the steely scraping sound of a dishwasher drawer being forced in at an awkward angle, from the next room.
‘But… but you CAN’T do this to me!’ she gasped, and threw in a few pants for good measure.
‘Hmm, I’m not so big on that,’ the hippie chimed in, and the lady with the handbag began lolling her head around in a nodding fashion in agreement, as if her head was attached to the rest of her body with a dangerously small amount of Blu-Tac.
‘Look,’ huffed the large woman. ‘I’m no wallflower by any stretch of the imagination – I’ve seen the ways some goddamn bad parents have brought up their children. I have three kids to feed and I intend to be there for them. I just can’t work late nights. I have three children.’
I turned to the interviewer and nodded in utter agreement. ‘I can’t work late nights either, I, uh…. I drink a lot of alcohol.’
Although the interviewer was mortified, I wasn’t lying. Not by any stretch of the imagination.