Three Terrible Interviews

I.

At an interview for a university press job, I was facing the editor in chief and two other staffers across a conference table. While my hiring was no slam dunk by any means, we’d developed an easy rapport talking about what the press was doing, my history as a student at the school and one of its magazines, and the EIC’s travails as a transplant into the American South from London. Near the end of the session, I got sidetracked into telling a shaggy-dog media story that would have killed had I not forgotten that the setup for the punchline depended on one person’s thick British accent. I was so engrossed in my own raconteurism that I actually delivered the penultimate line as something like “… but if only he wasn’t so very …” trailing off as I realized my lethal error, and the EIC dryly completed the thought: “… English?” The remaining minutes of the interview lasted a thousand years of me writhing in agony under her justifiably pitiless gaze, while her colleagues visibly attempted to teleport from their chairs. Later a friend of mine confessed she had gotten the job herself and was very worried I’d be upset and jealous, but I assured her I had done just fine on the self-sabotage front without any help from her certainly more appropriate qualifications.

II. 

I was invited in to discuss revitalizing Rolling Stone’s website by an operations executive I’d never met but had heard of as a solid guy. We had a good phone conversation, so the second round seemed promising. At the interview, I met with this executive as well as Gus Wenner, Rolling Stone owner (at the time) Jann Wenner’s son. Gus was very, very young, and his father was busy promoting his potential ascendancy in the family business. While the exec and I discussed high-level strategic stuff in a jolly way, Gus radiated boredom, staring out the window or at his lap and saying nothing. He did everything but sigh dramatically in classic Sullen Teen mode. (note: he was indeed young but not a teenager at this point, probably.) After our discussion wound down, the exec turned to Gus and inquired if had anything to add, and Gus asked tonelessly what music I liked. I rattled off a few acts, noting my taste was definitely going to be older than his, and he stared through me with no reaction. At the end of the talk, I shook hands with the exec who walked me to the door, while Gus got up and walked in the opposite direction with a perfunctory nod. The next week it was announced that Gus was taking over the role I had supposedly interviewed for, as clearly the interview process was simply a pretense to thinly veil the nepotism already in progress. I didn’t mind that really but felt like Gus could have sold it a little more, at least.

III.

After starting a new job, the CEO told me that another well-known editor had also interviewed for my position, and this editor was now coming in for a meeting. Puzzled, I asked what the meeting was for, and after some digging the CEO finally admitted that this meeting had been scheduled before I was hired, and yet after I was hired, no one had told the other editor that the position had been filled, and would I mind breaking the news to him? I don’t avoid confrontation and actually have a perverse relish for awkward social interactions, but this was a little much even for me. I declined in no uncertain terms to deliver this update, so the other editor arrived and was informed of the situation by the CEO—and then was asked if he would mind giving me some advice on how to move the editorial group forward? So I sat with him and talked awhile on this subject, and the fact that he tolerantly remained and actually gave it serious consideration and willingly shared his insight, despite the bizarre and unprofessional micro-humiliation of the moment, serves to me as an example of dignified self-control I still aspire to, unsuccessfully.