Authors note: this is republished from an Oct 30, 1997 post in my LiveJournal, but it’s such a weird story, I felt it was worth sharing here.
Okay okay… so my updates have been getting a little erratic in terms of when I actually *write* them. I usually try to keep them on a regular schedule, but my *life* is a little erratic right now, so please just bear with me!
Now you all know by now that I generally try to share some of the more comical (if somewhat embarrassing) moments of my life with you in these updates… This will be another one of those….
I had an interview yesterday with a company called NCR. Now, NCR is a multi-bazillion dollar company who makes computers and cash registers and other electronic doodads. So fine… I dig my best blue pinstripe suit out of the bowels of the boxes I am living out of, and panic when I realize that I can’t find my pantyhose! Luckily for me, I remembered that I had a pair of thigh high stockings in a box nearby, so I yanked them out and put them on.
One of my headhunters, Christine, picked me up at about 3 (a half an hour early), I dashed out the door, snagging my right thigh high stocking on the doorframe as I left, and we drove the 40 minutes it took to get there. (This place was in Guam, I swear it!) Let it be stated for the record that she is one of the coolest people, (let alone headhunters) I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with…. (Perhaps part of our bonding was due to the fact that very similar circumstances caused both of us to be here in Atlanta… *L*) Let me also preface this story by explaining that I hurt my foot a few days ago, so I have been limping a little bit lately…. (Don’t worry.. that will make sense later..) And here’s where our story begins….
I was unclear even enroute to the interview as to *what* exactly the position was for, but what little I knew sounded if not right *up* my alley, then at least in the general vicinity of my alley. So we get to Guam about 30 minutes early, and we wait for the first of my interviewers. The first guy I had to interview with meanders up to us, bitching about the fact that we were early. No problem. I took a deep breath and said to myself “I am good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darnit, people *like* me….”
As Christine and I stood up to greet the grouchy bastard, she *somehow* managed to step on her sunglasses, and the right ear thingie broke off. We should have taken that as a sign.
It was a NIGHTMARE. Everything that could have gone wrong did…. it was just awful…
It wasn’t bad enough that less than 3 minutes into my interview, I *knew* that this was not working but also *they* had no idea what they really needed. They didn’t need a web designer, they needed a Java, C++ and Visual Basic Programmer.. (That may mean nothing to some of you, but suffice it to say, it’s VERY different from what I do.) It got to the point with the first guy that it was actually causing me physical pain to endure this complete waste of time interview. But it gets so much worse.
I, having the skills to *pretend* to be a well mannered and professional lady, had kept my legs crossed through the first interview. Now, somehow the action of crossing and recrossing my legs managed to work my left thigh high a little too far down my leg. When I stand up to *limp* down the hallway to get to my next interviewer, the left stocking called it quits. It flapped around my knee about 2 inches below my hemline with the rubber “no slip” grip lines at the top exposed for the world to see like some hideous aberration of a knee high. Now, as many of you know, there is *NO* physical way of pulling on of these stockings back up with *ANY* sort of tact…
So now picture this in your head… I am dressed to the nines in a $400 suit carrying a briefcase, *limping* down the hall with the head of marketing, with a run the size of Cleveland on one leg, and a kamikaze stocking on the other, flapping away to the rythym of my high heeled shoes on marble tiles. Trying to salvage what little dignity I had left, I asked to go to the ladies room to fix this, only to have the same thing happen two more times.
When I *finally* got out of the building, I burst out into gales of laughter to the point that Christine was wondering what the hell was wrong with me… Once I had actually caught my breath enough to tell her what happened, we almost got into a car accident because she was laughing so hard. So, with that, she put on her broken sunglasses, I sat there with my stockings of Satan, she lit a cigarette, and we drove home, looking like the true “movers and shakers” that we were..
