Precipice

For future reference, it might be a good idea to never tell anyone when you have a job interview, because afterwards you’ll have to tell the same damn story thirty times. That’s when the blog actually becomes a convenience.

I had an interview yesterday with a recruiting agency—a job I never actually even applied for—for the position of assistant recruiter. I talked to the boss for 45 minutes. Ultimately, he told me to get back to him about my decision. It wasn’t so much an interview as it was a sales pitch.

All day I was on the fence, nearly sick to my stomach with the pros and cons… and cons… and cons.

First of all, I should explain basically what it is. It’s recruiting/sales. Basically, you are sniffing out commissions all over the world by trying to convince someone they need an employee you are looking at. It’s selling people to people. It’s bitch work for 45-55 hours a week for the first year before you are promoted where you can actually make more than crap. That’s a pro and a con, because theoretically—hypothetically—you could be making “six figures” after that. Yeah. If they don’t replace you any time in that first year. That’s just a hook. It sounds like every one of those affiliate-marketing ploys I find late at night on the Internet, when even online craps sounds like a lucrative venture.

Now I’m just being cynical. Okay, so everyone has to give their dues. Duh. And financial security is a definite pro—the only pro. This “rare opportunity” could change one’s life. So could herpes.

Let me get to a more significant con. The way he described the office was like the Sith. Not the reformed, “true” Sith Way under the revolutionary Darth Bane, but the old-school Sith Wars era or the Golden Age of the Sith. That is to say that it's more than the master-apprentice pairing; there are several Dark Lords, each with numerous minions competing for top apprentice status. Treachery, deceit, false camaraderie, betrayal, hatred… essentially, everyone wants to be the best and whoever’s at the bottom of the sales totem pole would probably be let go. The boss said that he gets them to channel their energies in a constructive direction—to the sale! yay!—but without him doing that, they would rip each other’s throats out. Sounds like my kind of work environment?

False Sith posers. Denying themselves the true path. There’s no room for a whole school of darksiders calling themselves “Darth.” They don’t even understand the true nature of the dark side, much less the sacrifice it demands. I will destroy them all.

Wait, what happened?

Sorry about that…

So. This would amount to me working my ass off and doing little else with myself (for a year?!) before making enough money to spend on more than just gas and groceries. And then, I will have sold my entire soul over to the job. Ah, a lifestyle of loneliness and paranoia… mmmmmmm…

I really don’t know how to explain this without sounding lazy, incompetent, and fearful. Irony: those who constantly tell me I’m not cut out for this kind of thing (yes, family and friends tell me what my interests and abilities are) seem to be shoving me in the direction of the one girl at the bar I don’t want to talk to.

I guess I really am cornered, after all. What else do I have? What other leads? Is it a lead when you know you don’t want it and probably don’t even have enough drive to do it for more than a week? When I said a few days ago that I was standing at a precipice, I wasn’t kidding.

Regardless of the way things appear at this one frozen moment in time, it doesn’t seem like THE solution. A choice, certainly. You always have a choice. Anything is possible, and if I really wanted to, I’m sure I could succeed in it… but then I’d be a different person, having abandoned literally everything about my life that I love. Necessity borne of desperation is one thing; not recognizing yourself in the mirror is another. I guess you don’t understand what I’m talking about… you had to be there.

I give up. I can’t explain it without sounding lazy, inept, afraid, and overly cynical, but everyone keeps asking, and apparently I owe everyone a damn good reason because “At least it’s something to do while you still look for work.”

Dean is going to talk to me tonight. I will have to call the boss back Monday with my decision. I hate quantum physics. Every time you flip a coin, you create three new universes: one in which you get “heads,” one in which you get “tails,” and one in which you never flip the coin at all because you’d rather meditate on the decision a bit longer and not leave it up to chance. So what’s the point? Pick a reality and move through it on the tapestry of space-time-probability.

Maybe I’ll call him and tell him “I’m in.” I’ll go in for an additional interview, and the room will be black-and-white, a stark contrast to the color of the rest of the film. He’ll be sitting behind his desk, asking me about how difficult it was for me in the first interview. Then he’ll say, “They say the second one is—”

Then I’ll shoot him in the head and reply, “Yes. Considerably.”

Or maybe I’ll move to Brazil and work at a soda factory until I find a cure.


References:
Darth Bane: Path of Destruction (Del Ray, 2006)
Casino Royale (Sony Pictures, 2006)
The Incredible Hulk (Marvel Pictures, 2008)