| The Interview |
| Ever have one of those days where you wake up, and nothing seems to want to go right? I've had plenty of them, but this one is still pretty fresh in my memory. It was April of 2004. The branch manager for my company had told me that a position for a site supervisor was available. He wanted to know if I was interested. I was getting through some pretty hard times, and the feeling of uselessness at the site that I was currently stationed at was not helping me at all, so I told him that anything was worth looking into. The branch manager calls me back the very same day, and tells me that the client of this particular site wanted to meet with me the next day. Of course I told him OK. I hung up the phone, and said to myself, "I have nothing decent to wear." I was on afternoons at the time, so before I went to work, I swung by a store and bought a top and a pair of slacks. This was hard to do since I was at a point where I had to beat up Paul, because Peter was too poor to rob. I went to work, and ended up staying there later than Midnight discussing a site issue with my relief. I was planning on waking up at 8 AM the next morning so I could have plenty of time to get situated before the interview, which was to occur at high noon. I did make an attempt to set my alarm, but, I flipped the wrong switch. I woke up, looked at the clock, jumped up, and said, "Oh crap!" It was 9:45 AM. At that precise moment, my phone started ringing. It was the branch manager. "Are you excited about meeting the client?" he asked. I looked down at my pajama clad body and said, "I'm working on it." I then proceeded to take the fastest shower that I ever took in my life while brushing my teeth at the same time. I toweled off, and went to get dressed. Cue the next problem. The top that I had selected the previous day didn't fit correctly. Basically, it looked like crap. I had to rummage through the depths of my closet to find something that would go with the slacks which fit just fine. I finally found something that I thought to be suitable. I got dressed and took off. Even with all of the chaos, I was still out the door by 10:30 AM. I had plenty of time...Or, so I thought. Traffic was a holy nightmare. The roads were packed, not to mention all of the little construction projects that seemed to spring out of nowhere. At times, I was lucky if I got to advance more than 10 feet. I was reading construction signs, trying not to hit one of the million cars on the road with me, and look for this site at the same time. Before I knew it, I was looking at a sign that said "Welcome to Detroit" and it was noon. I pulled into a fast food joint, and called the main office. They transferred me to the branch manager's cell. "Where are you?" "I'm in Detroit." "What are you doing in Detroit?' he asked in a tense whisper. "It's a long story. I'm turning around now, and I'll be there shortly." When I finally arrived at the appropriate intersection, and looked up at this monster of a building, I just couldn't believe that I missed seeing it. At this time, I turned into what I thought was the driveway to the building, and ended up getting trapped in the drive-thru of a sub shop. Anyway, by the time I got out of the drive-thru from Hell, turned into the correct driveway, found a place to park, and ventured up to the building's management office, I was thirty minutes late. As I was taking off my coat, I started the interview by saying, "Well, the good thing is that I'm not nervous, because at this point, there's no use in being so." The interview went fairly well considering that I was half an hour late, and the client was starving to death because I delayed her lunch. When I got home, I realized that I had forgotten to take the tag off of my new pants. I don't know if the client noticed it or not. The moral of this story is: Even though you do just about everything wrong, things can still work out for the better. I got the position. I love my job and the people that I work with. I wouldn't have it any other way. |