Like a Trained Circus Monkey: The Art of Everyday Grovelling
The process of interviewing for jobs should be pretty easy, but for some reason, it makes me feel dirty, soiled, as if I am selling out, putting on a phony face, not being true to myself - lying, in other words.
My Mamma always told me not to lie, and I usually don't, but in an interview (or a date), you have to lie, you have to give the best face you got, clean yourself up, put on a perma smile and start your song and dance.
It's something we all have to do, but I suppose what bugs me is the artificality of it all. True, we have to be "artificial" every day of our life, when we go to work, to the store, we supress a thousand impulses insdie us that would allow our animal natures to exhibit themselves: farting loudly, not shooting the person who just cut us off on the freeway, dealing with an obnoxious idiotic coworker who is full of himself, picking your nose with relish and abandon, grabbing a pretty woman's booty, and so on. These are things you just can't do.
But the job interview is more than artifical - it's down right theatrical, a real drama, a stage where you are brought into the arena to be looked at, inspected, judged. You enter this field of judgement with the deck stacked against you, you need them, and they have what you want and all it takes is one person to not like the way your mouth moves to the side when you talk, to be displeased with the size and shape of your eyebrows, or just doesn't like the tone of you voice, and you are gone, finished, not to be called back again. And you are out on the street, forced to start the process all over again.
I guess what really bugs me is the imbalanced power relationship you enter into when you walk in to the interviewing room: you are inferior, in need, and they can decide to give it to you or not - a job, a means of survival, security. What's perhaps the worst is the level of person who usually interviews you - the recruiter or HR person - is usually on par with a Swiftian Yahoo, some boneheaded yokel who has the power to give you a thumbs up or thumbs down, and you have no choice but to force the smile, the laugh, and fake interest, agree with what they say, and grovel.
The process of interviewing for jobs should be pretty easy, but for some reason, it makes me feel dirty, soiled, as if I am selling out, putting on a phony face, not being true to myself - lying, in other words.
My Mamma always told me not to lie, and I usually don't, but in an interview (or a date), you have to lie, you have to give the best face you got, clean yourself up, put on a perma smile and start your song and dance.
It's something we all have to do, but I suppose what bugs me is the artificality of it all. True, we have to be "artificial" every day of our life, when we go to work, to the store, we supress a thousand impulses insdie us that would allow our animal natures to exhibit themselves: farting loudly, not shooting the person who just cut us off on the freeway, dealing with an obnoxious idiotic coworker who is full of himself, picking your nose with relish and abandon, grabbing a pretty woman's booty, and so on. These are things you just can't do.
But the job interview is more than artifical - it's down right theatrical, a real drama, a stage where you are brought into the arena to be looked at, inspected, judged. You enter this field of judgement with the deck stacked against you, you need them, and they have what you want and all it takes is one person to not like the way your mouth moves to the side when you talk, to be displeased with the size and shape of your eyebrows, or just doesn't like the tone of you voice, and you are gone, finished, not to be called back again. And you are out on the street, forced to start the process all over again.
I guess what really bugs me is the imbalanced power relationship you enter into when you walk in to the interviewing room: you are inferior, in need, and they can decide to give it to you or not - a job, a means of survival, security. What's perhaps the worst is the level of person who usually interviews you - the recruiter or HR person - is usually on par with a Swiftian Yahoo, some boneheaded yokel who has the power to give you a thumbs up or thumbs down, and you have no choice but to force the smile, the laugh, and fake interest, agree with what they say, and grovel.
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