Exceedingly odd

Like most people I've had plenty of odd experiences in my life. To list a few:

Being on a tube train going through Kings Cross station, London, in 1987 minutes before the station was engulfed in a massive fire.

My first day at work. In 1965 smoking in offices was normal and I virtually suffocated from the thick fug of tobacco smoke. Alarmingly, I soon got used to it.

A very informal interview for the Guardian in 1970. It took place in the local greasy spoon over bacon sandwiches*. I didn't get the job.

Having food poisoning on a flight to Australia and finding the woman beside me also had food poisoning. So we were able to pinpoint the source - we had both had an egg sandwich at Costa, Heathrow.

Losing my sense of smell. No idea when that first happened, but it was well before covid so that wasn't the cause.

Being with a rather drunk girl friend (not Jenny) when she lost control of the car and drove into a field. Luckily neither of us was injured.

I could go on but I won't.

* I didn't become a vegetarian until 1975

Just keep talking

I'm not a very talkative person. Which doesn't really matter most of the time. I just say what I need to say, or if I'm silent someone more garrulous will happily babble away to fill the void.

But there's one situation where not talking is a definite negative. Namely, the job interview. If there's one thing that's called for here, it's plenty of words. And fast.

You know how it is. They ask you all those appallingly open-ended questions like "How good are you at acting on your own initiative/ working as part of a team/ meeting tight deadlines/ advanced brain surgery?" and you're expected to prattle away effortlessly about all the impressive things you've done, the extraordinary skills you possess, your boundless versatility and ingenuity, and your willingness to commute 100 miles to their flea-ridden office next to the landfill site.

So I trot out a few likely things and they dutifully scribble them down in their alarmingly empty notepads that they hope to fill with my dazzling and pertinent replies.

At this point I dry up, my mind goes blank, but they're still gazing at me expectantly as if I must have lots more to say. I rack my brain feverishly for inspiration but nothing emerges. My work with baby elephants? My stint in the funeral parlour? Perhaps not quite what they're looking for. Surely I've said enough? Haven't I convinced them yet? What more do they need to know?

This is where the naturally loquacious just carry on spouting, as if every experience in their entire life clearly equips them for the job, starting with conception and leaving the womb. They could go on all day if the interviewers didn't frantically call a halt and move on to the next question.

How do they do it? How do they find so much to talk about? It would be handy to have a little switch somewhere that made me talkative on demand. For when quietness is a vice and not a virtue.

Yes, I had a job interview. And no, I didn't get the job. Ah well, c'est la vie....

See also: Interview pitfalls, Panel game

Panel game

So anyway I went for this interview. And you know what it's like when you just don't click with the interview panel but it seems a bit melodramatic to walk out so you dutifully go through the motions?

Question, answer, question, answer, and you really don't care any more because you know you don't want to work there, so you recite the answers in a sort of Dalek monotone, slotting the words together like bits of Lego.

You know exactly what I mean, don't you? That's how it was when I shot up to the ninth floor of a swish office block with an eye-popping view across the city of Belfast.

It was a government quango called, shall we say, the Monitoring and Supervisory Agency. You don't need to know what it actually does, but I'm sure it's frightfully useful.

So for starters there was the interview by numbers routine. It also didn't help that one of the female interviewers reminded me uncannily of a woman I once worked with who (allegedly) was heavily into bondage.

I looked disbelievingly at the blonde hair, the thin lips and the beady eyes and it was a supreme effort of will not to imagine her in a pair of handcuffs or tied to a bed post. People who start these unforgettable rumours should be horsewhipped.

If that wasn't distraction enough, all the interviewers were scribbling like people possessed, their red-hot biros scratching away feverishly as if I was confiding the meaning of the universe. I mean, how much information do you need to decide if candidate number six is a little treasure or a total goofball?

So anyway I stoically did my bit, everyone thanked everyone else and I rushed out into a biting Arctic wind that practically stripped off my clothes, my body hair and my eyeballs. What I have to go through to earn an honest crust.

PS (Thursday afternoon): Would you believe, I've been offered the job! But I have another interview next week for a job I really want, so I'm still going to turn this one down and take my chances. Brave or what?

Interview pitfalls

I've done plenty of interviews in my life, but they never cease to be nerve-shredding occasions. However well-prepared I think I am, so often there's something unexpected to trip me up.

I might start off confidently enough, with fluent answers showing my obvious suitability for the job in question, but how easily it can all be derailed. Sooner or later, any of the following may occur:

1. One of the interviewers reminds me of Basil Fawlty and I spend the entire interview trying desperately not to laugh.
2. I'm asked a totally unexpected question ("So why did your grandmother leave Romania?"), my mind instantly goes blank and I'm left staring inanely at the panel.
3. One of the interviewers is so aggressive I have a mounting desire to pick up the water jug and empty the contents all over them.
4. I accidentally upset the water jug and it soaks everything in sight, including all the job applications.
5. I realise a box of condoms has fallen out of my trouser pocket (I can't even recall buying it).
6. One of the interviewers is sweating profusely, and my increasingly bizarre theories as to why this should be are hopelessly distracting me (I'm pretty sure they've just had a quickie with someone in Accounts).

If my guardian angel is on the ball, none of the above happens and the interview goes swimmingly. If my luck is firmly out, I'm assailed by every mishap possible and wish I was anywhere else in the world but there.

But the upshot can be surprising. What I perceived as a perfect interview, wowing the panel with my glittering personality and dazzling expertise, leads to a deafening silence and polite evasions when I pursue it a week later.

On the other hand, the seeming interview-from-hell, where everything went arse-upwards from minute one and I virtually crawled out on my hands and knees, is followed an hour after by a job offer and the revelation that I was "the outstanding candidate". Who can fathom it?

I think one reason I stay in a job for quite a stretch is simply the terrifying prospect of another round of anxiety-ridden interviews en route to my next perch. Never mind a cure for cancer, what I need is a miracle drug for interviews. Oh, and strawberry-flavour, please.

(see also Flirty's Embarrassing Interview Experience)