I don't know what I expected when I went to OVR on Tuesday, but I expected better than I found. There were a couple of moments when I heard my brain think, "Oh, no!" and I wondered if I had stumbled into an alternate universe with a different set of rules for interview behavior.
The woman I had spoken with a few weeks ago to set up the appointment sounded like she might be in her early twenties. We spoke for almost half an hour and she went over most of the material in my application. She told me then that it was the most fully completed application she had ever seen. She was taking notes, she said, as we spoke, so that when I came in for the interview, we could finish quickly. We set a date and time and the call ended.
Tuesday, I arrived about ten minutes early. Right at the appointed hour she opened the door to the office and said to me, the only other person in the place, "I'm expecting...oh, what is her name?...would you be that person?"
I am if the person you expect is Martha McLemore, I answered.
"Hmmm...maybe," she said. "But come on in. If the right person shows up, you can wait out here again."
(Oh, no, said my brain, in a tiny voice, barely audible. But I heard it.)
This was the same person who had left a voice-mail message last Thursday to inquire if I had written down the hour of our appointment, since she wasn't certain when I was scheduled to be there. She had written down 1p.m. and 2p.m. for appointments but she couldn't remember which was my slot. I thought that odd at the time, but figured she was young and new to the job, so I would cut her some slack. Besides, I forget things all the time, so who was I to judge her?
She isn't young, by the way. Only a couple of years younger than I am.
She ushered me into her office and said to make myself comfortable, but not to sit in the chair on the other side of the table, because that was her seat.
Oh, I thought, you mean the one where your coat is draped across the back, there where your laptop is set up and where you have your briefcase and portable file sitting? Okay, I'll be sure to avoid that chair.
(Oh, no, said my brain. Be quiet, I answered.)
"Okay, so who are you, again," she asked.
(Uh, oh, said my brain.)
I gave her my name again, and reminded her I was her 1 o'clock...just in case.
We settled into our respective seats and she began fumbling through her briefcase and the portable file.
"I know I have your application here somewhere," she said. "OH! I forgot! My name is C---- L------; did anyone tell you who you'd be meeting today?"
I reminded her that we had spoken a few weeks earlier and that she had introduced herself to me at the time as my case worker.
"Of course, of course," C---- said. "And you are Martha McLemore."
(Oh-no, oh-no, oh-no, said my brain. You're right, I answered, but we're here now, so let's just be patient. She knows her name and now she knows mine, so we're off to a good start. Just be cool.)
C---- found my application, and took out a handful of other papers for me to sign before we got started. The next part of the interview went okay, while she was explaining the forms I had to sign. She had this part down pat.
At some point she realized there was a second copy of my application paper-clipped to the one she was reviewing.
"For heaven's sake," she muttered. "What is all this? Did my secretary make a copy of your application? Why would she do that?"
I sat there quiet, but my brain was beginning to buzz with a string of oh-noes.
"This is my handwriting!" she exclaimed. "These are my notes! How did this happen? Why do I have two copies of your application, and why is one of them scribbled on in my handwriting?"
I suggested that perhaps she had written on my application those weeks ago when we spoke on the phone.
"Why would I do that?" I think C---- was speaking to herself.
"Got me," my brain retorted, before I could stop it.
C---- took a deep breath, shuffled all the papers together, and we began again. A few minutes into the next part of the interview, she stopped speaking and looked at me in surprise.
"Why, you remind me of a sister!"
Of your sister?
"No, you remind me of a sister - a nun!"
This time, my brain had nothing to say. Neither did I.
"Oh, it must be your tops. You know, the navy blue and the white collar. And you're so clean!"
And here I was worried because I didn't take the time to shampoo my hair this morning, I said, trying to make a joke - more for my sake than hers. I really needed to lighten the moment.
(I'm out of here, said my brain.)
C---- chuckled, a good sign. She recognizes humor, or pitiful attempts at it, anyway.
"And you are so focused!"
(One of us has to be! my brain smarted off.)
Well, I'm here to learn as much as I can today, I answered her.
We got back on track, until C---- had to look through her portable file for another set of forms. She wasn't having much luck, and her frustration was increasing. Her professional demeanor, such as it was, began to slip.
"Dammit," she said, "if my assistant forgot to put those forms in here, I'm going to be pissed!"
Brain and I were stunned. I don't have any prudish ideas, as you all know, about cursing, but there is a time and a place for such things, and this was neither the time nor the place, to my way of thinking. I mean, we hadn't even had coffee together, yet!
"You know," C---- continued, more to herself, because she didn't seem to remember there was anyone else in the room. "I've had just about enough of this bullshit!"
"Well," said brain, out loud again, "I guess it's a good thing I'm not a nun, after all, isn't it?"
C---- looked up at me in shocked surprise, caught the joke, slapped her ample thigh and let loose with a laugh that echoed around the room like a thunderclap.
"Oh, I guess not!"
It took another fifteen or so minutes for us to conclude the interview. Someone from her office will call me in a few days to set up the vocational tests early next month. Once they have the results, she and I will meet again and we'll go over my training or education options.
If she can remember my name. I think I'm changing it to Sister Sofie.
(It just dawned on me that perhaps the interview was the Personality Test, mentioned in a previous post. If so, I think I might have passed that one, after all.)(c) 2010 Martha McLemore
12 comments:
OMG!!!! Good thing for your sense of humour!
now, that was scary!!
loved your internal dialogue..... but I suppose you had to find someone intelligent to talk to since it clearly was not C.L...... wow.
it sounds completely surreal....good thing you are a mostly unflappable person;
good luck with the next phase.... I guess!
I think you handled the interview very well and I agree it is very annoying for someone not to know your name, be unprepared and make flippant unrelated remarks during the course of the interview upon which you prepared diligently. My advice to you however is to bear in mind most people are poor interviewers and I even see her comments coming across not as negatives but simply as someone who possibly is just having one bad day and honestly shared that sentient with you by trying to make some offhand jokes together with sharing her frustration.
I’d much prefer that sort of honesty and letting down ones guard to the cold clinical efficient professional interview approach devoid of humour or feeling. The way you have recorded the interview made the post both interesting and funny so well down- and we look forward to the next instalment.
Best wishes
On the bright side I reckon you'll be doing her job (much better) in about a year or so! You expect your interviewer to be organized at the very least!
That was tragically comical. Good for you for remaining cool, Sister Sofie.
Your story - on which you will dine out for many years - has dim echoes of my early days in the USA. For some reason I had to visit some Federal service or other (possibly the IR) and I came back to the office acutely depressed. I said to an elderly guy I worked with: "It's not just the beaten-down attitude of incompetence, the mulish desire not to help and the shuffling gait of the office workers, it's those dull green filing cabinets. I could have Brixton in London." The guy, a Jew who had left Austria one step ahead of Hitler and worked his way across mainland Europe, shrugged his shoulders. "Or in Vienna, in Brussels, in Paris." It seems the ethos is transportable and the existence of a laptop doesn't change things. Best wishes.
Bring a couple of bowls of your wonderful soup along to share for the next round!
The results of your job testing are in:
You are hereby qualified to write comedy.
There ought to be some saying somewhere about never let yourself be interviewed by anyone who is closer to the edge of a nervous breakdown than you are yourself.
Come to think if it though, I think I probably have been, many times.
I can't imagine you really look too much like a nun, though I'm sure you do look lovely and clean!
Soups all look spendid, too.
Great writing - it sounds like a scene from Catch 22
Good luck.
D was once asked by a 'boss' when he did temp work, if he got his job in the Army National Guard through a temp agency. He says he wanted to throw her out the window, but manage, instead, to just not go back to that office the next day.
That's just crazy. Myabe you should send her a little box of chocolates every week with your name attached so she doesn't forget who you are. I would love to have 15 minutes alone with the @##^%& assistant to see what she thinks of the whole thing.
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