The last interview I had went well. So, of course, I didn't get the job. It's the way of the Unemployed Warrior, really. A week went by and the other interview was going to happen. I didn't have a good feeling about it, mostly because it was a phone interview. I hate phone interviews. I don't even like talking on the phone. I'd never even had a phone interview before and I knew before it even happened that I would hate being on a phone interview.
So it came. Five people who's names I tried to scribble down futilely were all talking to me on a speaker phone in some obviously drafty room. I couldn't make out words they were saying. They were asking me questions I couldn't understand. I went outside of typical job-hunter mentality and followed my previously stated edict: The Truth.
They thanked me for my time and that was that. "Fuck..." was what I said when I sat back in my chair following the call. The dog trotted in the room and I knew it was time to go hang out with her, or, let's be real here...she needed to go outside to relieve herself.
Let's just call it a day.
----
Three and a half weeks later. Phone rings. They ask for me. "Hi!" I said, "This is me..."
It's a lady who's name I don't catch. She's in Human Resources. They want to meet me in person.
"Wow, okay..."
She asks what time and day is good for me. She says they'll see me then and we both hang up.
"Fuuuuuuuuck...."
So I'm in a similar situation to before. I'm looking for things to wear. I realize that the people I will be meeting in person for my interview really have no link whatsoever to the people that interviewed me at the interview-that-went-really-well-but-didn't-pan-out-for-whatever-reason and that I can just wear the same thing I'd worn before.
I shaved off my beard. It still hurts to do it.
I go and meet them. I'm sticking to my plan. If I don't know something, I don't know it. If I do, I talk about it. They will like me for me or they won't like me for me, but they will have some opinion of me by the time this thing is over.
I stutter and stammer several times and make jokes at my own expense. They assure me I'm doing fine. The five person panel read from a set of questions that are slightly altered versions of the same questions and I quickly think of ways to answer the same questions in a slightly different manner.
I tell the main guy the building is really interesting on the way back to the elevators and we talk about that. He tells me it was really nice to meet me and that they'd be in touch.
I feel horrible about how it went. I sit in my car for ten minutes out in the parking lot and feel like I'm going to puke.
----
Around 10:30 a.m., the phone rings. They want to talk to me.
It takes a second to figure out who it is, and I hear another voice on the line. I'm being conferenced in.
I realize that I want to talk to them, too.
"Hey, I've got some good news..."
I'm standing in the laundry room, looking out the back door at the propane tank..
"...We want to offer you the position, you know, ...if you want it..."
I can't talk.
"...You there?"
"Yes! Yes, I'm here... Yes, Yes, I am definitely, I mean, I definitely want the position. Yes, I'll take it. I do!"
They're laughing, I'm laughing.
I can't wipe the smile off my face.
My wife is sitting on the couch looking up at me with her eyebrows raised and a big stupid grin on her face. I have a big stupid grin on my face.
They tell me some stuff about how much I'll make and what the official title is and when I start and I go over all it with them one more time to make sure all of this is real.
They assure me it is. I assure them that I'm very excited and they assure me that they are as well.
We hang up.
My wife jumps up and hugs me and we jump up and down turning in a circle like we just won the World Series, Super Bowl, Family Double Dare, Donkey Kong Final Board and the fuckin' lottery all at once.
"I got a fucking job." is what I told my wife.
"I know!", she said.
"I got a fucking job!"
----
I got a fucking job.
