Take this job
Rojie’s prompt today, just 85 hours and 50 minutes (or so?) until the first of June, is:
What is your own pet peeve about yourself?
Many years ago, in an earlier life, I was spending my days happily working at a job that excelled at keeping my mind busy. One day I saw there was an internal job posting that I thought sounded interesting. It was a white-collar, entry level job in IT and I kind of liked the thought of going to work wearing smart-casual shoes, chinos and a button down shirt instead of sneakers, jeans and a Grateful dead t-shirt. I had many some a few a couple of the minimum job qualifications so I applied and surprisingly, I got notified that I was selected to be interviewed for the job. Wow, great! Now what? Interviews for all the jobs I’d held to this point had been simple: Why do you want the job? You don’t use drugs, do you? Will you remember to come to work everyday? Ok, see you Monday morning at 8:00.
Now I was going to interview for a real job, one that meant something, and I needed to get some insight into interviewing. I got a book from the library about job interviews, and I actually read it and I was as ready as I could be.
The interview was with two people, the direct supervisor and the branch manager. The direct supervisor asked me questions and the branch manager sat there and stared at me like she thought I might steal something if she blinked, and if the goal was to intimidate, it worked.
The supervisor was nice and the interview was going well and a quick glance at the clock told me we’d been at it almost 10 minutes and I thought we had to be near the end because all my earlier job interviews had lasted like a minute or two and then the Staring Branch Manager broke her silence and threw me a curveball and asked me to talk about my greatest weakness. Ok, let’s play. I had read the book, and I knew what to possibly expect so I was sitting, waiting on the curveball and when I saw it headed right at me at 80 miles per hour I leaned back and took a swing for the fences and framed what I believed was my greatest weakness was into an actual strength. Thank you interview book!
Swing and a miss. There was no joy in Mudville when Casey struck out and there was no joy in that hot interview room because the Staring Branch Manager said, “How about you give me an answer that didn’t come from a book?”
Strike three.
This part, the part about the interviewer knowing what was in the book, wasn’t in the book. Thanks a lot interview book! Was she a mind reader? Had to be. Maybe she wrote the book, or certainly a book? I had nothing else to do at that point but panic. I answered poorly and that was that. Thank you, nice seeing you, blah, blah, blah. I left, and like The Wizard of Oz movie Dorothy who realized she was very happy right there in her own backyard, I just wanted to put my sneakers, jeans and t-shirt back on and return to my comfortable little backyard.
“If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.” – Dorothy Gale
This is a really long way of saying that today’s prompt, “What is your own pet peeve about yourself?” reminded me of a job interview question.
If you’ve made it this far and are sitting there thinking, like the Staring Branch Manager who was likely a telepath, that he didn’t answer the question, I’ll just say that like everyone, I have pet peeves about myself, and when life starts to spiral for any reason it’s incredibly easy to get lost in that spiral which can lead to emotional overload. I work hard to not get lost in that spiral, to avoid the overload, but I admit I don’t always recognize it as quickly as I could.
You can decide for yourself if any of that is true.
#CaseyAtTheBat #DorothyGale #Interview #JobInterview #Life #Love #MentalHealth #SelfHelp #Spiral #Telepaths #TheWizardOfOz #Work #Working #Writing