Sometimes, You're Just a Small, German Child

I just finished writing my first scholarly paper since graduate school. I didn’t enjoy it very much, because, really, there isn’t very much to enjoy about writing scholarly papers-- unless you’re writing them whilst receiving oral sex, which I wasn’t.

I wrote this paper as part and parcel of the process of acquiring a BBJ (Big Boy Job—nothing to do with oral sex anymore, sorry) and, if I get it (God I hope I get it! How many losers do they need?!) it may very well be the first BBJ I’ve held since 2003. Since then, I’ve had a quaint series of jobs, but none of them have been BBJs. They’ve just been, you know, Little J’s, as opposed to the Flying J, which, apparently, is a franchise of highway gas stations for eighteen-wheelers, and not some sort of Jewish person doing avian acrobatics.

You might surmise that, since I didn’t especially enjoy the process of writing this scholarly paper that maybe I’m not applying/vying for the right job. You know, since, if I get hired, that’s pretty much what I’ll be doing, um, all goddamn day long. Well, that and applying for other jobs. And waiting for a satisfactorily suburban police department to announce that they’re holding a written and physical agility testing session. And blogging from work.

Actually, come to think of it, since this is a BBJ with an actual, real company, they’ll probably have all kinds of internet filters and firewalls and blocked sites and super-scary Big Brother e-monitoring/iSnoopery going on so that if I so much as try to buy Stan Rogers music on Amazon they’ll probably fire my tight, though distinctly bony ass.

And then I will look for other jobs, and wait for police departments, and blog from home. And, sporadically, observe pornographic still images/moving motion pictures via a computer with no ookie spy shit on it.

Writing the scholarly paper wasn’t hard—then again, maybe I just didn’t do it right—but motivating myself to do it was extraordinarily Herculean. I would do anything before I would sit down to write this paper. I did the dishes, I walked the dogs, I watched clips of Tim Conway cracking Harvey Korman up on “The Carol Burnett Show.” I made obscure Gilbertian references on peoples’ Facebook pages—and you all know I’m not into that.

By the way—did you know that the first lemur ever born in captivity in the United Kingdom was born on Gilbert’s property?

Anyway, I am a hopeless slackass and, really, I ought to be more motivated and zealous about an opportunity to land a BBJ when I won’t have any J or j in almost precisely a month but maybe I’m just not ready for a BBJ. Maybe I don’t want another desk.

Or, far scarier, maybe another desk is just what I need.

Ever get the feeling that you’re the small, ruddy-cheeked German child in any number of Brothers Grimm fairy tales? You know—you’re hopping along through the forest, wearing a red cape or lederhosen or chaps coated in Vaseline or whatever and the woods get all dark and scary and shit, and the trees are all gnarled and twisty-like, and there you are, just standing there with a basket of pastries in one hand and your plump little choad in the other and you’re faced with two paths. One of those paths leads to a precious little cottage, safe and warm with a white damask sleeper sofa from Jennifer Convertibles, all ready for you, and your favorite hot bowl of regurgitated mushflakes, and grammaw crocheting you a facemask or something…

…and the other path leads straight into the lair of your friendly, local clustertoothed, semi-retarded, lascivious wolf or T-Rex or rabid llama who will assrape you with a frozen garden hose until you sing the “Star Spangled Banner” like Stevie Nicks.

Well, that’s kind of how I feel, looking for jobs, and, not to sound too dramatic here but kind of standing on the precipice—making choices, being a small, German child kind of all alone in the woods, on the lookout for drooling, hairy creatures clutching the frozen garden hoses of the world, petrified to bend over to pick up that tempting pastry I just dropped.

Phoneterview

So, I have this phone interview coming up this morning and, call me a pathetic neonate, but I’m kind of scared.

I mean, I’m more conflicted than scared, actually, because part of me is very relieved that it’s a phone interview and not a real, live in-person interview.

Really, I’m just a fucking mess and I don’t know how to feel about it. I'm such a girl.

My dear, good, short wife is also conflicted, occupationally speaking, and I recently suggested that she make a Pro/Con List to help her sort through her sentiments about her current and prospective job. Then, she directed me to order her a pita pizza with pineapples and green peppers. So, there we are. Not particularly liking pineapples, or green peppers, or pita myself, I decided to make a Pro/Con List of my own to see if I could help myself determine exactly how I feel about this impending phone interview.

Since I’m a negative sonofabitch, I’ll do us all a favor and start with the...

PRO

• Prospective employer/interviewer gets no visual.

Call me excessively self-deprecating, but this first point cannot be mitigated or ignored. They that hold the cards to my future will be utterly unable to deduct points for poor posture, Jenga-teeth, sweaty palms, coffee odor(s), haphazard, untamable Jew hair, eccentric neckwear and dress shoes from the early 1970s. In a word, I’m amazed that I was ever hired, by anybody, prior to the advent and implementation of the phone interview.

Tight.

• (Related to first bullet-point), I can react however I want to their questions.

When they ask me how I dealt with a challenging situation at my current or former job, or if I could be any zoo animal in the eastern hemisphere, which would it be and why, or what do I consider to be a professional weakness of mine, I can roll my eyes, make jerk-off motions with my hand, lie down supine on the floor, give the dogs the finger, pretty much whatever the hell I want as long as I don’t let anything audible slip. Like my boxers to the floor.

BOO-YA!

• I don’t have to obsess over being late.

This is a huge, huge deal. No innocent motorist will fall victim to my frothing road-rage, there will be no feverish gripping of the already careworn eight-year-old steering wheel of my car, there will be no frantic, near epileptic search for a parking garage in downtown Philly (the last time I was engaged in this pursuit, I put the car in an underground lot for five hours and was charged $29.00) and I will not go through all of these gymnastics and near aeronautics just to arrive twenty-five minutes early only to be directed to a vinyl chair in some stuffy waiting room so my heart rate can slow down to somewhere near 144 BPM.

• Absolutely no chance at being caught staring at interviewer’s breasts.

Yes, it’s happened before. I mean, I don't know if I was caught, really, but, whenever I engage in this act, I almost invariably get caught. And, no, I'm definitely not immune from doing it at a job interview. What can I say? I am only a man and, therefore, evil and retarded.

And now, where I am most comfortable, I’m tempted to call it “Home” but, for these purposes we’ll just go with….

CON

• Prospective interviewer/employer gets no visual.

I know, I know, I know—this point not only appeared in the “Pro” section, but it appeared first! What is wrong with me, O Evil & Retarded One? Well, see, while there are definite and clinically-proven negative attributes to my physical presentation, there are also things that work in my favor which, in a phoneterview, the interviewer will not observe.

For starters, now that “Pirates of Penzance” and “Peter Pan” are over, I no longer sport regrettable, Victorian-era facial hair (i.e., large, walrus-style moustache that swept down to my jawline and sideburns that, well, did the same. I’m clean-shaven, with a nice haircut, and I look at least twenty-five years, and a century-and-a-half younger than I did just a month ago. I mean, I’d do me. I mean— hire.

Another thing that tends to work in my favor at in-person interviews is that I dress very, very well, unlike, presumably, a significant portion of job-seekers in my age-bracket. Because I absolutely love dressing up in shirts and ties, you can tell that I don’t just put them on for job interviews, and I certainly don’t opt for the pre-packaged $17.99 shirt-and-tie from TJ Maxx. No, I actually have class and dignity and I like to think that it shows. But not during a phoneterview.

In personal conversations, especially when I am asked to talk about my ideals concerning truth, justice, about my personal philosophy, and/or being honest and respectable, you can almost watch the tears welling up in my eyes, such a sensitive, integrity-filled pussyburger I am—and I suspect prospective employers like interviewing people who they know won’t dick them over, steal from the safe, or rape the boss’s daughter or hamster. Hopefully, in the phone interview, they’ll be able to hear my voice crack with sincerity.

• If you’ve ever spoken to me over the phone…

…you know that I sound like a fucking idiot at best, and a hard-of-hearing mental patient off his meds at worse.

When I don’t have a person’s face and lips to watch like a hawk to enable me to process what they’re saying and interpret their body language, I’m basically dead in the water. If you’re fooled into thinking that I’m eloquent and facile with words because of what you may have read or may have though you read on this blog, well, it’s just a charade of a façade. You’d have better luck asking a dying donkey for directions to the Holiday Inn in Boise than you would having a semi-coherent telephone conversation with me.

• I can’t impress anyone by being early.

Because that impresses people.

So, there it is, kidderoos: my Pro/Con List. I don’t know exactly where it leaves us, or me, except that it’s 7:18am, and my phone interview starts in fifty-seven minutes.

Unless, of course, I call early.

Tell Me About Yourself

No wonder nobody reads newspapers anymore.

I found this article in The Philadelphia Inquirer today. Its title: "The One Interview Question Many Dread." Funnily enough, "Tell me about yourself." isn't a question at all. But we'll let that slide. Because we're so nice here.

The article proceeds to describe the anguish and dread interviewees ostensibly feel when being presented with this bad boy at a job interview.

"Tell me about yourself."

In a series of thoroughly uninspired paragraphs, the writer goes on to advise folks in America who are currently seeking jobs (10.2%, last time I checked) on how to handle this non-question at a job interview, for those people who are lucky enough to land one.

"Be ready with your own personal 'mini commercial,'" the article wisely advises, "The message: hire me."

Well, no shit, brainiac. It's a job interview, not a lap-dance.

I've been on my fair share of job interviews in my life (I wish I could say I've been on more, actually) and I fail to see what is so hard about some dewy, balding prick from HR wearing a wrinkled Today's Man shirt-and-tie combo about yourself. After all, they're not asking you to recount the woeful tale of your first handjob or what you do in the basement at night when nobody else is home. Telling this schmeggegie about yourself is the whole fucking reason you're there, isn't it?

The problem, I suppose, comes when people feel the need to lie. Or "puff up." Or "exaggerate." Or any of the other colorful synonyms for "to lie" that you are privileged to know. Answering questions is only hard if you're not telling the truth. As long as you don't molest cats with frozen garden hoses or shit yourself to keep warm, I don't think telling someone about yourself at a job interview should be such a daunting and cataclysmic event. Get over yourself. You're just a loser like the rest of us, except that you happen to be an unemployed loser.

That's okay, though. I still love you. My little loser-boo.

One thing I am grateful for, though, that I realized after reading this article, is not that I have a job, but that I have a wife. I haven't been on many first dates in my life, but they're pretty unbearable by and large, and the main reason I feel that way is that you have to tell your life's story (edited for time constraints and content, of course) in some dark, noisy restaurant-- and that gets old fast. Like, after three minutes, I'm ready to thrust the salad fork into my adam's apple. Most peoples' lives are an amalgam of at least mildly entertaining anecdotes that have been retold at family dinners and social gatherings and in the local newspaper's police blotter that we tuck away and bring out once again on first dates-- to impress, to amuse, to engage, to prevent mass suicide and to indulge in the ritualized behaviors of "the first date."

You tell me about you, I'll pretend to listen while I look down your blouse.

I'll tell you about me, you'll pretend to listen while you stealthily look me up in the National Crime Information Center database on your Blackberry under the table.

For those of you out there who are still dating: I'm sorry.

For those of you out there looking for jobs: I'm very sorry.

That said, the dumb article I read said that your "personal mini commercial" should be no longer than 300 words. I thought I'd give it a try.

Ready? Here goes it:

Hi.

My name is Mr. Apron, but you can call me “Brotha.” I really want to work here because I am unemployed, and have been wearing the same underwear since last Thursday. I have exhausted my pantry’s food supply, except for a box of raisins, which nobody under the age of 87 eats of their own free will, and I have steadily moved on to raiding the dog food container for sustenance. The dog does not mind, as I ate him two days ago.

I think you should hire me because I make really good Xerox copies and my skin tastes good. Want to try? No? Okay.

See, what had happened was, I was born a long time ago. And my mom is a tree, so that’s kind of cool. Throughout my childhood I used to eat gravel and organize Edwardian costume balls on the playground at recess. In middle school, I got super interested in aeronautics. And synchronized vomiting. Unfortunately, I had to give that up when my parents told me that wasn’t an Olympic sport. I was bummed, but my teeth were rotting out of my head, so I guess it’s good I stopped.

Anywho, after I was excused from high school for coming to my Western Civ class dressed as Herman Goring, I decided to explore some career options. And my navel. I ended up inventing Silly String and the world’s first ever burlap thong panty, (last seen being modeled by Dr. Oz on the Oprah Winfrey Show) and I went on to become the only Methodist-impersonator ever to fly from Alabama to the 213km into the Indian Ocean on a 19th century commode.

I’m proud, also, to claim myself the first person to ever receive teeth-transplant surgery with dentition donated from a recently-deceased Bonobo.

Hire me.

DAMN! 300 words on the dot, bitches. Your turn!