Brain Poops

In our last episode…

Right up front, you told us all that this process would take an hour, and that anyone who could not stay one hour needed to leave right then. Bug eyed applicants took turns glancing at each other.

We apparently were the Nobodies who really had to spend at least an hour with this guy to get hired. We somehow thought that instead of spending that hour improving ourselves or appreciating fine art we should sit here and endure him in hopes of at least a 1:11 chance of getting hired.

My soul bawled like a newborn hurled into a cactus patch.

You then proceeded to try and entertain us all and lighten the mood by insisting we have fun with this. As if 12 people needing work are really a great bunch to suggest “have fun” to.

Immediately the more subservient and desperate people cracked 1.21 jigawatt smiles and chuckled a bit, pulling on that special area of the brain that only they and Oscar-Winning actors have which allows you to fake having fun in excruciating situations.

Using what I can only write off as Managerial Voodoo, your head swiveled sharply and dangerously around to glare directly at me and my wry half smile. I might have blanched, but I assure you it was only because staring into your face at that moment was being akin to gazing deep into an abyss of broken dreams and slavish devotion to the only job you have known for 8 years.

In that split second before I regained composure I saw you as a giant, middle-aged, overweight dragon with muscular atrophy and matronly upper arms. You were wearing an appropriately sized Oxfordcloth short sleeve shirt and a black nondescript tie. You were adjusting your 1983-sociopath-style glasses and walking from the bus-stop to your home in suburbia.

I saw you look at your giant stucco house and sigh, the weight of a mortgage that will likely outlive you weighing down on your corporate dinosaur shoulders.

When I snapped back to the morbid reality I was supposed to be in I managed to say “What?”
You made an odd face and said “Fun!”

“I feel like a target,” I say.

To which you responded: “Ha HA! You ARE!”

From a personal standpoint, by default, whenever someone calls me a “Target” I immediately switch to Call-of-Duty mode. You are now my enemy, managerial assassin! I know you wily ways and am immune. I was tested in the field of combat, having interviewed with the gamut of manager types and interview traps.

You then proceeded to tell us that, one by one, we would tell the group our names and three random facts. As an example, you told us that one of your facts is that you like Fruity Pebbles above all other cereal. I still remember, and I feel that memory wasted space.

The poor bloke to my right was the first one to go. He apparently was a recent transplant from the Philippines and didn’t speak much English. His three facts, if I remember right were:

1. I am from Philippines
2. I need job
3. I don’t talk English great

I was next to face down the double-barreled eyeball assault from my 11 fellow captives and 1 Job Warden. I was well prepared.

1. I’m a script writer, but business is a little slow.
2. I was flown out to Vegas to video Richard Branson repel from the top of the Palms Hotel and Casino.
3. I’m learning the violin.

Wham, bam, thank you JOB! Right? That is, until my next obstacle. To the left of the high school spaz next to me was Shirley [name changed to protect the guilty].

You, the unbiased manager, knew her name and her kids names (which I should mention startled her). Any other stalker-like information retention? Like what color vibrator was playing the role of “Mr. Robinson” the night before, as seen from the sturdy Oak branch across from her bay window?

She, employing a centuries-old stratagem of all mothers ever lived, oriented her three facts around her precious “bundle of pure angelic light” children. I saw the metaphorical hook slip through your imagined dragon gill and set in place. It was apparent to me then that the rest of the interview wouldn’t matter for the rest of us.

Then came someone who I am going to call Andy for the sake of this post.

Andy was a recent graduate from the USC, and his black eyes had an irritating habit of vibrating while he was speaking. He was wearing a yellow plaid button up shirt with rolled up sleeves. I guess he was trying to look “cool” by exposing his girlish forearms. His voice pitch, if graphed, would have resembled the Matterhorn roller coaster. Andy had the best three facts out of us all.

1. 1.) I can wake up at any time of the day without an alarm clock.
3. 2.) I often daydream about riding a wolf as a means of transportation.
5. 3.) I think it would be quite pleasant to be a woman. I mean, I played on in Drama once.

I was floored. My mind was blown more than a 24 year old Senator with a black American Express card and a trust fund.

In three statements, he had eclipsed my mundane day-to-day musings with the patently absurd and incredibly more imaginative use of idle brain time. It felt what I can only describe as what people seeing the Wizard of Oz in all its color-saturated splendor for the first time in 1939.

I can never daydream the same again. I have seen the top of the mountain.

The rest of the group had the usual answers, of course. “Blah blah I like the beach and stuff”… “Blah blah- new show on FOX is my LIFE”… “Blah blah I’m in a band called ‘FuckStallions of the Apocalypse.”

Then you dropped the bomb on us. We would be divided into two groups of 6 for the next exercise. As my fellow “Left-Siders” started bringing out their weapons of choice (blood-spattered ballpoints, resume folders, makeshift cutlasses of paper-cut hell sculpted from misprinted and old CVs), I tried to get my fellow gladiators psyched up for the big fat kill.

“Alright Lefties, you know the drill. No mercy, no survivors. High-school-chick: you kick for the balls and you aim to go through. Philippine’s Guy: attack their morale by acting like you’re tech support outsourced to the Philippines. Everybody pair up… but Andy’s eyes are MINE!”

We were just finishing our blood oath to the brotherhood with a trendy gang sign, flag, and way to lace up your shoes to rep the left when you said “There will not be blood.” Which set forth an explosion of movie geek giggles and guffaws.

We were to all put our hands in the middle of our circle, and had to hold hands with 2 separate hands

from 2 people not immediately to our left or right. Mild germaphobe flash, but I tough it out and we all tangle up in the middle.

“Now untangle yourselves without letting go”

So now I’m in a mess of tangled limbs, performing for what I assume to be a bored manager, trying not to rub up against the single mom or the just-turned-18 beach bunny high school girls. The 16 year old “Dungeon Master Level 20-ought-7-plural five” I’m attached to sniffs one’s hair and drools a little.

I check my watch while in the midst of what looks like, from the inside, to be where amputee arms go when they die. In the midst of the forearms and such being flung about, angrily thrusting elbows by accident, I notice this interview has run on for two hours and showed no sign of stopping.

We get about 10% less tangled than those bloody Righties and you say we have to stop. We remove sweaty palms from awkward stranger palms and sit down, pondering if we brought any hand sanitizer and vowing not to eat anything or touch our faces until we wash our hands again.

CONTINUE TO ACT 3! A resolution of genuine sentiment.

I see a lot of people voting, but not too many commenters. Tell me what you think, peoples! Even if it’s just digging my weenis, it still counts for something.