A short story about the joys of job searching.
This building is so depressing. It’s a huge monolith looming over much smaller monoliths. Like they want to be the bigger one, but can’t, so they just ape its image. It’s a huge rectangle with rows and columns of windows, some are lit some aren’t. It’s like every office building you’ve ever seen, except this one consumed a bunch of
I’m here for an interview. They want to hire me to be a “Engagement Officer.” I have no idea what that is or if I’m qualified for it. I assume they’re paying me for it though, that would be a massive step up from most of the other interviews I’ve done recently.
As I walk through the front door a little man in a little suit and fancy hat greets me.
“Good evening. What is your purpose here?” He says. That’s a very strange way to greet someone. “What is your purpose?” That could send someone on an existential crisis. Especially if they’re slightly more high than I am right now.
“I have an interview. For a job” I say
“Which company?” He says. Fuck. I just looked at an address.
“Uh.”
“You’re interviewing for a job and you don’t know which company its for?”
“No, I do, fuck”
I take out my phone to see the email. I tap the screen and there’s no response. Likely because I have thick cloth gloves on. Because its cold.
“Shit.” I say. The doorman is visibly annoyed.
“Sir, please step aside, there are others behind you.”
I turn around to see a long snaking path of people looking at me. Each of their faces look angrier than the person in front of them. They all have suitcases and messenger bags. I look to my right and left. There are no other doors, just windows of people looking at me. How did these people get here so fast? I didn’t even hear them walk up behind me. I just fucking got here. Why does this building have only one door?
I take off my glove and fumble to my email app. Luckily, I’m not an absolute moron so I have the email saved.
“Uh it’s Dynamite Marketing Solutions.”
The doorman sighs and looks at a tablet next to him.
“That’s on the 27th floor. Take the elevator and then walk to your right. It’s at the end of the hallway.”
He steps aside and opens the door for me.
“Tha- Thanks y- you too.”
He looks at me with a mixture of confusion and anger. I scurry in, praying that I don’t cause another scene.
People are sitting in high end chairs, typing on laptops and drinking coffee. They all look like they’re doing something. It’s amazing. Just being here makes me feel more important. There are sculptures of random shapes at each corner of this huge room. Maybe they mean something, maybe it’s some kind of symbol of stability or-
Someone bumps past me. It’s a woman in one of those power suits that people wear. Dark colored pants, dark suit jacket, white shirt. Very serious. The woman looks back at me like she wants me to burst into flames. She storms off down a hallway.
“I wonder if the elevators are that way.” I think aloud to myself. I walk down the hallway and sure enough there are the elevators. Two great vessels taking these very important people up and down the monolith. Surrounded by very light colored wood that doesn’t seem to match at all with the building’s theme.
There are five elevators in a row. I walk towards the middle elevator and press the up button. The doors open and in the furthermost corner, there’s powersuit woman furiously pecking away at her phone. She’s probably writing some important email to complete some very important deal. Something well beyond my pay grade. Which is, I guess nothing. So most things are above my pay grade.
She looks up briefly to make eye contact with me, her face contorts into anger again and she says “Are you going to get on or not?”
Her voice is so powerful, it seemed to fill the entire elevator.
“Oh sorry , sorry.” I walk in and make a feeble attempt to press the “27” button and I end up hitting the “32” button instead. I hear a loud, obvious sigh of frustration behind me. I manage to press the “27” and after moment of nothing, the elevator rumbles to life and begins to rise. I look back at the buttons and I see that the “45” button is lit. That’s the highest number on the board. This woman is probably some sort of CEO and I’ve just made her furious, several times. Hopefully she won’t be deciding on my job prospects today. I look back at her out of the corner of my eye. She’s typing something out on her phone so aggressively the taps sound like hail.
The elevator finally, mercifully reaches the 27th floor. I walk through the door before they’re finished sliding. I take one last look back at pantsuit woman, she looks up at me furrows her brow, and looks back at her phone. The sliding doors close and I hear the elevator continue it’s journey up the grey monolith, taking pantsuit woman with it.
I follow the doorman’s instruction and sure enough, at the end of the hallway, I see a door emblazoned with “Dynamic Marketing Solutions.” There’s a little flame with “DMS” in it below the type. I open the door and see a woman sitting behind a desk. She’s wearing some black band t shirt and a warehouse’s worth of makeup. Her hair is completely black. She’s furiously chewing her fingernail and looking at something an iMac. She doesn’t acknowledge me when I walk in. Thank God. At least she didn’t give me one of those inauthentic hellos that make you know that you’re annoying them.
I walk up to the desk and sputter out “Hey, I have an interview here”
She points with her open hand towards two open chairs against the wall. I look back at her, she hasn’t stopped chewing her fingernail or staring at the screen. I realize that she’s barefoot as well. What a strange place this is. Hopefully they pay well.
I walk over and sit down in a chair. To my right are four of the same copy of Home and Garden magazine. They’re July 2004 issues. It’s now that I realize how small this front office is. The front desk is maybe 7 feet away from the front door and I could probably stretch myself across the width of the room. There’s a single door next to the front desk woman. Probably where the rest of the office is. I imagine an open floor plan with well dressed people tapping away at laptops. Offices with huge windows lining each wall with managers in suits making important calls and typing important documents. A real job. Something that doesn’t require me to clean shit off of walls or fight packs of dogs to deliver a single hamburger. I’m coming up in the world.
A man bursts through the door. He’s balding and while he’s not trying to hide it, he’s not really leaning into it much either. He’s got the band of hair that wraps around the sides and lower back of his head. Why doesn’t he just shave it off? He’s wearing an unbuttoned, untucked dress shirt with a ratty blazer. There’s either wine, ketchup or blood near the collar of his shirt. The front desk woman is completely unfazed by this.
“When the fuck is my interview Diane” the man says. “What time is it.”
“It’s three ten sir” Diane says. “The interview was ten minutes ago. The guy is over there.” She points at me. She hasn’t looked away from the screen once.
“What. What? What the fuck. Why didn’t you tell me he was here. Goddamnit. Shit. Well come on. And goddamnit Diane I told you not to watch that shit here. Why the fuck are you watching cartoon porn in the middle of the day anyway. Jesus Christ.”
“It’s not FUCKING cartoon porn Gene! It’s anime!”
“Whatever. Come on kid. Let’s get this shit over with.”
He gestures to me. I stand up and walk towards the door. There are scratches along the bottom third of the door. Maybe claw marks? Gene opens the door and I’m met with a large open room. There are no tables, desks, or furniture of any kind. Just a a single plant in the middle of the floor. It looks like it’s a fern?
“Come on, the office is over here.” Gene says. “What’s your name?”
“Gregory. Or just Greg. I guess.”
“Alright Greg, here we are.”
The office doesn’t even have a front door. It’s just a desk covered in paperwork with a small slit of a window behind it. There’s no front wall separating the “office” from the rest of the “office.” It’s just a protrusion of a larger room.
“Just sit there.” Gene says pointing at a chair full of paperwork.
“Do you want me to move this stuff?” I say.
“No, I mean yeah- just, fuck it just put it on the floor.” I gather the paperwork and put it on the floor.
“So kid. You’re here for the job. Where’s your resume.”
“I emailed it to you.”
“You didn’t bring a physical copy?”
“Uh, I didn’t think-“
“Goddamit, where’s my laptop.” Gene pushes a mountain of paperwork onto the floor. He looks around the surface of his desk and then pushes another pile of paper onto the floor.
“There’s the sunofabich.” Gene opens the oldest laptop I’ve ever seen and begins furiously typing.
“There it is.” Gene leans close into the screen and squints his eyes and murmurs under his breath.
“Well, you’ve got the degree, but you don’t seem to have much actual experience in this field kid. What made you apply?”
“I’m a real self starter” I start “While I don’t have a wealth of experience in the field I’m ready to begin a new chapter of my career and I believe that-“
“Shut up, stop. No” Gene waves his hand at me to stop. “Don’t give me that rehearsed bullshit.” He saw right through it. I knew I should’ve rehearsed more. I sounded completely unnatural, like the voicemail assistant.
“What do you think we do here?” Gene says.
“Marketing?” I say.
“Yeah, smart ass, but what do you think we do?”
“Um. Sell things? To people?”
“Are you high right now?”
“No.”
“I know you are. I can see your eyes. I know what fucking high looks like kid. It’s legal here. No shame.”
“But-“
“Let me tell you what you’d be doing. You’d be going door to door selling this-“ Gene reaches down to his right and pulls out a box. The box reads “Kristoffer Priemier Knives.” It’s got a buff dude holding a bunch of knives between his knuckles.
“This is the Kristoffer Knife Collection. It’s twelve knives and it costs five hundred dollars.”
“FIVE HUNDRED?” I say. Shout I guess.
“Yes. You go door to door selling this shit and you get a 1 percent commission on each set sold.”
“I would get 5 bucks for each one?”
“Yep. You’re walking around all day every day trying to sell this shit in the hot Georgia sun.”
“Do people actually do this? For a living?”
“Yep, felons mostly. Are you a felon?”
“No.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing here?””
“I just saw the ad online and hit apply.”
“You didn’t read the description did ya.”
“No. I guess I didn’t.”
“Get outta here kid. Go find a real job.”
“Thanks. I guess.”
I stand up and start to walk out of the office. I turn around and see Gene staring out of the tiny slit of a window. How did he end up like this? How do people find themselves in jobs like this?
I walk out of the office back into the front room. The woman is still there, still watching cartoon porn, still chewing her fingers. As I reach the front door I turn around and say, “Have a nice day!” She grunts without taking her fingers out of her mouth. I turn around, open the door, and leave.
The Superlux 