I want you to want me!

Today I had my interview, and to mark the occasion the gods decided to assail the city with a nasty 'wintry mix' of precipitation, if only to give my interview day the apocalyptic feeling that it deserved. I took a train downtown an hour early, then read a chapter of Lolita while I waited in the station. I walked the 2-3 blocks to the giant building, got my 'security clearance,' took an elevator to the sixth floor, as instructed. Then I got a bit confused, because the door to the reception area seemed to be locked, so I milled about aimlessly, trying to figure out where exactly I was supposed to go. Finally, I was let in to the locked door, and waited on an expensive looking couch and pretended to read a magazine. After about five minutes the guy I was supposed to meet showed up, Pete, the same guy who I've talked to on the phone about 4 times in the last month and a half, and he escorted me up to the 17th floor before bolting, where I was interviewed by 3 people at once. There names were Anne, Sam, and Veronica. I believe one of these people (Veronica) would be my immediate supervisor if I was hired, and the other two explained to me what they did, in great details that I understood about 2% of. The interview was a lot different from what I was prepared for, mostly in that they didn't ask me many questions. They asked what I was looking for, what I liked and disliked about my last job, and about my film major. I honestly can't remember what else, if anything. But, for each of these questions, I flew into an ill-advised ten-minute monologue in which I'd contradict myself four times, pause a few times midsentence when I realized I had no idea what I was talking about, and stop speaking at an awkward moment as my cheeks flushed and sweat seemed to pour from every crevice of my body. I may be exaggerating, but I'm not sure. Nearly half of the interview was spent listening to them talk about the company. I asked a fair amount of questions, and received some knowledge as to what exactly I'd be doing and how the hierarchy is structured. But I also received two separate ten minute lectures about how the company worked, involving impromptu charts drawn on notebook paper, filled with circles and lines and abbreviations that held no meaning for me. It was during these times that I felt like I was on a disappointing date, with someone who was, while smoking hot, also flaky, or stupid, or a republican, in which I could only smile and nod and say 'Oh, I see' and furrow my brow at times, while in my head I was humming a jaunty little tune.

On a positive note, I did seem to convince them that I was some sort of genius, or at very least, an idiot savant. A hard-working one, at that. After nearly an hour of this, the interview was over. I went back to the sixth floor to see Pete again, who basically asked me how it went, and what I like about what I'd heard. He refused the list of references I had brought, but took 'my application,' which he emailed my late yesterday afternoon at the last minute, I had to print and fill it out, including the spot where I was forced to confess having an arrest on my otherwise spotless record, a drug-related one, at that. He briefly paged through this as we were talking but did not bring it up. I was told that a few more people were going to be interviewing, but then he'd contact me by next week Tuesday, to either set up a second interview with someone else, or to tell me to fuck off I guess.

I seriously don't know how impressed they were, I would not be surprised if the 3 interviewers said 'What a waste of our precious time' when out of ear-shot, or if they said 'Well, he looks like he would be a valuable addition to our team.' No idea. I've only had a few job interviews in my life, and I was hired on the spot at 3 of them, and rejected by two more (Including WalMart, 1998). They did say that what I'd be doing wasn't too far of from what I did at AmFam, which should mean good things, but who knows what will happen; this is Chicago, the City that Always Blows. Get it?! Because it's windy?! Ha ha ha ha.