The Interview

Does anyone truly like being interviewed for a job? It’s akin to explaining some misdeed to your mother that you thought no one in the world, especially your mom, would ever find out about. Moreover, you are told to approach interviews prepared to answer invasive questions that would never be asked except in situations where you are doomed to fail. What are your weaknesses? Is there a good way to answer this? Have you ever had conflict with your boss and how did you handle it? Let me help you with this one, never, ever answer yes, especially when you fill it out with an exposition on your authority issues.

That said, I have had success with at least forty interviews in my illustrious career. The following were not among them including my first formal interview—for a McDonald’s cashier—which took place when the franchise first appeared in my neighbourhood. .

Excerpt from Notes from the Bottom of the Box: The Search for Identity by a Modern-Day Renaissance Woman.

Several of us from high school, about ten altogether, went in to apply for work. We sat on fiberglass-molded chairs the colour of sickly pastels—the time-honoured decorum of fast food joints everywhere—while waiting to be interviewed. One by one my friends got up, talked to the manager and got hired. Then it was my turn. I didn’t get hired. I can’t say for certain why this was, although my mind is drawn to the moment when my sense of the ridiculous interrupted the meeting. The manager was telling me in an oh-so-sincere voice about the all-out wonder that was his McDonald’s, when I started to smile. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a golly-gee-this-is-fascinating smile. It was an oh-my-god-I-am-going-to burst-out-laughing grin, a smirk of delight that could not be hidden behind any attempt to chew off my knuckle. Even back then some part of me knew I would not fit in with corporate shenanigans.

Then there was the interview with the bank in which I was applying for work as an entry level teller. I didn’t do my research before heading in, so I didn’t know I was out of my league until the interviewer described their average client as anything but average. You know the kind: extremely wealthy, with high expectations for efficiency, service and kowtowing. Then again, knowledge of your potential customer base does not always elicit the most advantageous answers in an interviewee—I stayed true to who I was. When the interviewer asked how I dealt with conflict, I chose to describe an incident from my Downtown Eastside days—working with a strung-out cocaine addict who found offence in something I said. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job—his loss or, better said, the bank’s loss. Still, I imagine the example I gave was not far off from dealing with a multimillionaire finding a minute mistake in his service fees and wanting the overcharge refunded NOW. An addict is an addict, regardless of the substance.

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