Phone Interview

After years of wanting to drive off a cliff on the way to work, today I had what thought might be a sliver of hope, a reason to wake up and go to work, a light at the end of the tunnel, I had phone interview with a non-Shitshow company!  

I was pretty excited; I couldn’t help but start to day dream that this was my chance to get out of the Shitshow.  At 3:30pm I placed the call and to my surprise the functional manager I was to talk answered the phone (at the Shitshow flunktional managers are next to impossible to fine). 

The first question I was asked sealed my fate.  “What part of your current job don’t you like?”  I froze like a deer in the headlights. 

I couldn’t focus.  Flashes of King Kong throwing chairs and screaming at me raced through my head. I could smell Queen Perfume while flashes of her asking me the most idiotic questions.  Thoughts of being forced to follow processes written by new hires which require writing a 20 page report for a 2 page test swirled in my head.  I kept drifting in and out of the HR Twilight Zone where I was being told if I didn’t already work here I’d be the perfect candidate for a position here. 

The manager on the phone sensed my hesitation, eventually I sputtered out, “there seems to be a lot of process red tape which often times makes getting the job done harder than it needs to me.”    The manager responded with “interesting, please tell me more.  My Dad used to work at the Shitshow, I’m really interested in understanding how that place works.” 

The rest of the interview had nothing to do with my skill set or work experience; it was completely focused on the manager trying to understand the incomprehensible nature of the Shitshow.  Of course my explanations only left more questions and made no sense to the outsider which resulted in me being written off as not being able to clearly communicate.  At the end of the interview I was basically given that famous line of “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Because the light at the end of the tunnel was nothing more than a train, I throw rocks.