Job Interview From the Dark Side, Pt. 1

 For some strange reason my life has been littered with more hard-luck job interviews than perhaps the average person. I once asked a job-networking group to share stories of job-interview disasters and got nothing that was anything like mine, and certainly not enough to fill a book the way so many of mine have gone. I don't know whether getting together a collection of them would be best presented as some kind of dark comedy routine, or as an educational lecture at a job-search seminar. My life in rock 'n' roll was what led me to the following job-search experience, one of many I can't forget no matter what:

In the late nineties I thought my combination of skills and abilities might transfer well to being a clerk or secretary in entertainment law. After all, I'd worked as a secretary, a clerk, a publicist, I'd been a partner in a talent agency, and I had life experience with the law, thanks to my mother's government job enforcing fair employment law, my collateral duty as a Federal Women's Program Coordinator, and my own sexual harassment lawsuit.

So I made an appointment with a downtown Los Angeles employment agency that specialized in the legal field. It was a plush high-rise glass-tower office that supposedly had a good reputation, not some here-today-gone-tomorrow storefront. When I walked into the office, two polite and attractive young women were behind the reception desk. They took my resume, I filled out some paperwork, and took a typing test. The two young women then took my paperwork into a back room.  

"She'd be good in entertainment law," I heard one say, but I couldn't hear any of the rest of whatever conversation they were having or who with.

After a few minutes an enormous and ill-groomed bleached-blonde woman came out of the back room.  Here in this supposedly plush prestige professional office, she was wearing a ragged frumpy dress that looked like she'd been out picking cotton in it somewhere. She was so overweight she had trouble getting into the chair opposite me.  

"So you're Hellbent for this?" was the first thing she said, and she said it with a sneer, like she was expecting either an argument or else for me to grovel.

I summoned my politeness and answered in a way I hoped would direct attention to my skills and abilities, "I think if you look at my skill set, I think you'll find I'm most suited for placement in an entertainment law firm, although I will consider any law firm."

"I used to work in rock 'n' roll," she retorted, her voice steadily rising and getting ruder, like she didn't consider me significant enough to make a good impression on.  "Those guys have egos the size of this whole city and you're going to get hurt!"  

By this time she was gesticulating wildly and pounding the table. 

Some people I've told this story to have said, "Did you tell her, "Lady, men have egos the size of this whole city, why don't you get used to it?"

I remained polite, trying to direct her to my experience, saying that I was used to working in rock 'n' roll, too, and I'd worked with guys before, and even guys in the military, and those guys have big egos, too. No matter what I said, she still sounded and acted like she wanted to fight, not interview, and certainly not provide any assistance with job placement.

I seem to recollect that I finally agreed to come back a day or two later with some more paperwork, although I don't remember what that paperwork was, because I think it was more of a polite excuse to end the interview than any actual step in the employment process.  

When I returned the next day with the paperwork, the fat rock chick, still in the same ragged cotton-picking dress, was screaming and swearing at somebody on the phone, right there in plain view and plain earshot, in a cubicle within the front office.  One of the nice young receptionists, maybe the one who suggested me for entertainment law, took whatever additional paperwork I brought in, and said someone would call me, but no one ever did.