Wednesday, December 11, 2002

Door to Door Most people have a story about the worst job they ever had. I have a few tales of boring temp jobs, but I was actually spared from the typical litany of awful high school or college jobs--meat packer, riveter, roadie for REO Speedwagon, bean picker, chicken tenderizer, whatever. So I can't really top any of the horrific stories most have. But I believe I may have had one of the worst job interviews of all time. We were in sort of in between time--Melissa was finishing her dissertation, and we were preparing within a few months to move to Washington, D.C. from St. Paul, Minnesota. For reasons that I absolutely cannot remember, I concluded that I wanted to get into advertising/marketing, or something like this. In retrospect, this is almost as poor a decision as graduate school, though it didn't end up costing me nearly thirty grand. At any rate, I scoured the newspapers for a while, and finally replied to an ad that said: MARKETING AND ADVERTISING VACANCIES! PROFESSIONAL WORK WITH ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY AND SPORTS TEAMS! NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY! Yeah, yeah. I was foolish for not seeing this is a sham. But I was naive to these things, because I had never looked for a job before. And why not call, right? Nothing to lose. The "initial interview" was pretty brief. It went like this: Me: Hello, my name is Jim Haefele. I'm calling about the marketing job. Them: Can you come in for an interview tomorrow? Wow! They must really have had a good sense for my communication skills and drive, based just on the way I inquired about the job! I accepted and showed up the next day in a suit. The interview was in a seedy part of Minneapolis, literally across the street from a gigantic adult store called Sex World. There were maybe ten other men and women in the lobby waiting to be interviewed. I was the only one who seemed to have dressed up at all, though some of them looked to have washed their hair, while others had put on clean Monster Truck Rally T-shirts. Surely I would stand out in such a crowd of ne'er-do-wells as a professional, destined for greatness. I could see myself in high-level negotiations between the NBA and the Minnesota Timberwolves. They called me in, and again, the "interview" was brief. The interviewer looked over the form I'd filled out, listing things like my social security number, my age, references, credit card numbers, the usual. He asked a few questions: Him: Why would you like to work for us? (Keep in mind that I did not know what the job entailed, making this a particularly difficult question to answer truthfully.) Me: Well, I'm interested in the marketing field, because I feel like I have the drive and skills necessary to excel. I'm intrigued by the possibility of working in professional sports, because I'm a big sports fan. Him: (As though he didn't hear a single word I'd just spoken) How would you rate your communication skills on a scale of 1-10? Me: (Wanting to project confidence, I didn't hesitate.) Ten. Him: Okay. Can you come in on Friday for the second phase of the interview? It will take all day. Me: Uh.....what will be doing? Him: You'll be working closely with one of our best employees to check out the job, go to some meetings, etc. I accepted, though it is important to note that he did not explain what the job was. I was cowed by the fact that I was at my first interview, so I didn't push it. Friday came, and I showed up outside Sex World at 8 AM. There were several other interviewees in attendance, all dressed in suits. My suspicion was, and is, that they chose whom to invite to the second interview entirely based upon clothing. I was assigned to Jim, who introduced himself as a veteran marketer with this company. "Let's go," he said, gesturing towards his car. Go? Where the hell are we going? Jim, obviously a master of his craft, read the bafflement on my face, and said that we had some work to do with the Radisson Hotel out on the west side of Minneapolis. I relaxed a bit. A high-level meeting already, and they hadn't even hired me! I could see the dollars rolling in. As we drove, Jim talked about nothing of note, and I cheerfully tried to act as engaged as possible. He started to ask questions about my background, and said I'd be "perfect" for this job. I, for the first time, asked blithely what the work was, exactly. Apparently, this was the moment Jim had been waiting for. We were on a busy road, but Jim unhesitatingly pulled the car over and parked. He looked at me, very seriously. "I'm glad you asked, Jim. I work as a liaison between companies and clients. I help to make sure that the product they want to sell finds the best possible buyer. If you come aboard, you'll be working with some high-profile companies, like the Radisson, in order to assure that they have the best possible relationship with their clients." I was impressed by his seriousness, but felt as though he was dodging the question. Still, I didn't press it. He eased back into traffic, and we continued to drive. As we turned off of the main street and into a residential neighborhood far west of the city, it came to me in a flash: Door-to-door sales. Jim parked the car and handed me a flyer. "Here's what we are looking to move. This is critical to the Radisson's continued economic success in this region." I looked down, and realized that I was to spend the next nine hours trying to get people to give us twenty bucks so that they could have a glamorous discount meal at the Radisson restaurant. We started to walk from house to house, and I had to listen to Jim's same spiel and jokes over and over and over again. As the day began to heat up, I became more and more frustrated. Here I was trapped with this buffoon, wasting a day at an "interview" when I already knew there was NO CHANCE IN HELL that I was going to take this job. I could have taken the bus home, but I didn't know the route or even where the bus station was. I didn't have enough money for a cab. I was stuck. Minnesota has relatively mild summers, but it was August, and I felt like I was traipsing around Death Valley in a dark suit. We walked and walked, and knocked and knocked, and tried to sell. Or, rather, Jim tried to sell while I watched. When it got to be lunchtime, and we'd sold one meal, Jim generously offered to pay for a hamburger at Wendy's. It had become clear some time in the morning that Jim was a garden-variety jackass. He was a dim bulb. By midafternoon, I was so sick of his yammering that I felt I had to spice it up. He had been peppering me with questions. At one point he inquired as to my involvement in sports. In an attempt to amuse myself, I told him that I'd been a professional basketball player. I'm about 5'11", marginally athletic and not a bad player. But trust me when I say that it would take roughly one second to deduce that I do not have what it takes to be a professional basketball player. Jim, however, seemed impressed, and asked what happened. Reaching for an answer, I explained that "I got cut because I wasn't strong enough." "Ah," Jim intoned, shaking his head sympathetically. "Tough break." Another notable incident occurred when Jim sought to play trivia games between houses. He asked, literally out of the blue, if I knew who wrote the original version of "Blinded By the Light." I did--Bruce Springsteen. Then he asked who put out the album "Born to Run." I eyed him suspiciously, and said it was Springsteen, again. He then proceeded to ask me four more musical trivia questions, all with the same answer--Bruce Springsteen. I felt like I was on VH1's Music Jeopardy, and that Jeff Probst was grilling me in a category titled "The Boss." There was no explanation for this outburst from my "interviewer". It ended, inexplicably, as quickly as it had started. As the day grew to a close, and I had nearly ruined my suit from sweating so much, I asked Jim about the pay for his job. Again, I had no interest in the work at all, though Jim seemingly had not detected this from my grunts, eye-rolling, extended silences, and lagging. I asked purely out of idle curiosity. "I'm glad you asked," he said, obviously prepared for this. "In this line of work, you get out of it what you put into it. We reward a man who works hard, and is successful. Would you believe it's possible to make over a thousand dollars a week? I've done it." Once Tony Robbins was done with his spiel, I said, "So....is it all commission? And what's the percentage?" Jim smiled. "Oh, yeah. It's all commission. That's the beauty of it." I failed to see how this was beautiful in any way. "You get one-third of the money you make each day." It didn't take an abacus to add up Jim's profits for the day. We sold two meals. Two--out of perhaps 80 or 90 houses. That brought Jim's profits up to a tidy $14.66. Not bad for nine hours of walking for miles in stifling heat in an uncomfortable suit having doors slammed in your face and repeating the same words to upwards of 75 different people and having preposterously idiotic conversations with a guy who hated your guts for most of the day. "Slow day today," Jim told me as we drove back to the office. He invited me to come up and finish the interview, and to talk about when I could start on my own. I declined and got into my car as fast as I could. Unlike Jim, I didn't have $14.66 to reward me for my day's work. But, then again, I didn't have to look forward to another week trying to convince the elderly that they should eat at the Radisson. 10:28:00 PM    Let's hear it. []