Benvenuto

I am at a loss. Dramatic title aside, I’m not being dramatic. Today was a scornful snowball of wrong turn after wrong choice after wrong statement in efforts to secure a job. Invited to interview for a proofreading job at one of the biggest institutions in news media was exciting. Blowing it almost killed me however. I feel the day was a 3-D version of my life without the 3-D glasses — slightly left and of a different colour (whatever colour failure is), not quite getting the whole picture.

I woke up with promise. I had several resumes set aside in a crisp laminate duo-tang with my contact number and interview time, and destination address written on a yellow post-it stuck to the front. In a blue folder I had some of my portfolio work neatly stapled and labeled accordingly. My hair was good. I actually put my eyeliner on straight. I was wearing my favorite black pencil skirt.

Appearance was in place, but I was nervous, which, when I am going for a job in my trained field I am never usually nervous for. Nevertheless, it shone through. I arrived to the interview an uncool ten minutes late after an evil Lakeshore transportation system ran 5 minutes late. To add to that stress, I went into building 46 instead of building 40 where I was supposed to go. In building 46, I ended up in the Youth Offenders Government Counseling office, and didn’t realize I I was in the wrong place until I was in the midst of asking for my interviewer “Cynthia” through a glass partition that separated myself from a confused elderly female in a purple frock and pink lipstick (”Cynthia who?, are you Cynthia?”).

After finding the right office, and apologizing for my lateness by declaring the train ten instead of the actual five minutes behind, Cynthia, a young and slick-looking black female in a sharp brown suit, hands me a clipboard with my proofreading test and I sit down.

The test was composed of three parts: A free-reign grammar and spell check on an article from the Canadian News Wire, a comparative task making one document look exactly like the other, and a word jumble. The word jumble is where true disaster fell. The object of the jumble was to take one word and continue switching and swapping letters prompted by instructions that would end in a different word. I first began the jumble (idiotically) by taking the root word “CNWgroupltd” and following each instruction according to the word. Once I realized it was a building task, my face got hot and the only option I had left to reclaim my dignity was to cross out what I had done, show my mistakes, and plough on to the finish. The final word was “CNassociate” and I have no idea if that is even correct because what CN could possibly stand for (other than Canadian News) escapes me.

After marking and marring, my face reddening and my Degree deodorant on red alert, Cynthia sits back down at the boardroom table and begins the interview. Our exchange is pleasant until the following question: “What are your weaknesses?”

In an interview aiming at a job in proofreading, the wrong answer would be “spelling and grammar.” Nevertheless, that IS my greatest weakness as a writer, not as a citizen, and so that was the answer that sprung to the back of my head. Let me first distinguish between being a writer and a citizen. As a trained writer, my spelling and grammar does not have cosmic powers, but I do have a strong hold on the language, and as attention to detail goes, I’m more of a big picture kind of gal ( I claimed I was detail oriented anyhow). As a citizen, I am above par as this comes from my training. And so, my below par rating of my grammatical flare only results as a comparison to others in my field.

And so back to the question. What was my answer? Honestly at this point my skin was boiling. I realized my confidence in the test paired with my lateness, and Cynthia’s stern look, the only brightness in this situation was coming from the reflection of my lime-green shirt off of the boardroom table. Tension was high, so I came up with the following response: “well, I’m from Burlington.”

The office was located in Toronto, so I thought I would be funny and make a crack about the commute. What are people supposed to say to that question anyhow? It is a question purposely put there by employers to make poor, nervous, lime- green wearing souls trip-up. Does anyone ever answer, “nothing” to a question like that? Not having that sort of confidence, I decided to make light of the situation. Cynthia did laugh, but it was more of a “I can’t believe she just said that” breaking eye contact by looking downwards at the table kind of laugh, rather than a straight in your face “ha! I liked that one.” The only thing worse I could have said at that moment was, “Sorry I was late, I was just next door at the youth offenders counseling office.”

Tragedy really. After that we shook hands. Talked a little more about my resume (that part went normally at least) and then Cynthia and I parted ways. She said that she was looking for people at the end of the month, and she would follow-up then. Pushing the down button on the elevator out of the office was a relief, and the final stage in the falling of the hour. How in so little time did I fall so far? I doubt Cynthia will call, but if she does, I suggest the only thing you learn from my experience is that lime-green may work in all situations.

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