The Interview From Hell

I retired 21 years earlier than planned, and I didn’t take the news well. 

“Adele?”  The man in the ugly brown suit came out of his office and studied me through thick lenses.

“No.  I’m Arlene.”

“Oh.”  He nodded and disappeared into his cave, which happened to be one of the many identical doors in an adjoining hallway.

I was in the wrong building for my interview.  The two buildings on P Street were built when I left Sacramento 20 years ago, and to me, they were mere strangers.  I walked to the receptionist, a young woman dressed in a dark blue suit with a matching tie.  In my day, as a receptionist, when I show up for work, I always wore a dress, high heels and makeup.  That manly outfit and the tie did nothing for her.

“You’re in the wrong building.”  She pointed to the building on the other side of the street.

I had this sinking feeling take over me.  But that was the story of my life.  Right church, wrong pew.  In this case, I had it all wrong.

By waiting in the wrong building, I was already a half hour late, but I figured I’d finish the interview and go home.  I had never been late for an interview in my life, but somehow, it made sense to me to finish what I started.

As I waited in the right reception room, two men came through the tall doors separating the workers from the applicants.  It was their break time, but they didn’t go downstairs.

“What’s your job like?” I asked one of them.

He was clearly suffering from job stress, and looked like he badly needed a cigarette.  The other man stepped up to the nearest window and looked to the distance.  Then he stuck his hands in the front pockets of his polyester pants and started to jingle coins.

“They keep track of your breaks, your personal phone calls, and the time it takes you to come back from lunch.”

Wonderful.   After being on my own for years and left alone to make decisions, I knew I wouldn’t last long in this type of a work environment.  I could imagine my husband traveling downtown to post my bail.

Just as he finished speaking, the blinds in the building automatically came down.

“It happens about the same time each day,” he explained as he watched my eyes widen.  “They’re meant to come down as the sun hits the glass.  It’s an energy saving feature.”

I was already getting the creeps from this sterile building and its equally sterile workers.

Once inside for my interview, I sat in this long room with a conference table, and there was barely enough room to navigate.   The interviewer and her Yes-woman sat next to her.  Having worked for the State of California since my teens, I knew this interview scenario well. 

“Oh, I see you walked the talk and talked the talk,” the interviewer said as she looked at my application form.

The interviewer was a plus size woman who stood about 5’9” and weighed at least 290.  I could easily pick her out in any line up. 

It took all I had not to say, “Oh, Honey, it looks like you walked the walk and talked the talk to too many office potlucks, didn’t you?”  Grazing was the term used for these events.

“We just don’t know about you law enforcement types,” she added.  “You can swing either way.”

What was she talking about?  What is a “law enforcement type”?  Oh, pullleeeeease.  It’s not that I couldn’t make up my mind when it came to deciding what was right and what was wrong.  That I could “turn” to the "dark side" at any time I pleased.

I was waiting for her to say, “Since you worked for the Department of Corrections, have you been corrected?”

I looked at the Yes-woman, who was nodding like one of those bobbing Chihuahua dogs people used to put on the dashboards of their cars in the 60s.  Each time the interviewer opened her mouth, Yes-woman nodded.  It must be nice to be paid for keeping a chair seat warm and nodding your head during interviews.

Already, I was thinking about wanting to be somewhere else.  I could picture myself at home, knitting my charity blanket while watching taped episodes of “The Young and the Restless”.  And not having to think about anything, other than what to make for dinner. 

After that disastrous interview, a friend of mine advised me to quit looking for work and to just enjoy retirement.         

To seal the deal, I finalized my decision of not looking for work by going down Memory Lane.  I parked my truck at a light rail station during rush hour and rode into the downtown area.  I remember standing in that crowded car with the same bored, tired faces who looked like the public transit riders from my state worker past.  Regional Transit had changed the route into downtown when I left Sacramento.  I got off at the wrong station, and had to ask an elderly rider to help me find the next train.

During my 23 years as a state worker, I went through two periods of pay warrants, but I wasn’t forced to take an unpaid day off.  I didn’t worry about getting laid off, demoted, fired or constantly wondering I'd get a cut in pay.

You can’t go home again, Thomas Wolfe once wrote.

Yeah, no kidding.  He could have been writing about a person like me, struggling to find work after retirement.  Since that awful interview three years ago, I’ve been content to find my own adventures without feeling guilty about not bringing home a paycheck.  Surprisingly enough, that interview forced me to finally accept retirement graciously.  These days, I'm grateful to wake up to a day that is mine.