AN EPIDEMIC OF TREES
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| Some Kind Of Bliss AN EPIDEMIC OF TREES |
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Sunday, September 29, 2002 Digging out
Okay, fair enough, I suppose. I was tempted to call Bob's "rules" something like "commandments," but that's just being an asshole about it. Still curious about how he knew an obscure blogger was writing about him. I have a guess, but I think I see how Bob knew I was writing about him first. Item Three: The Nintendo Incident. As you may know, on Friday I had my 3 p.m. face-to-face interview and editing test at Nintendo's headquarters in Redmond. What follows is a brief rundown of what happened starting Friday about 2 p.m. (Seattle time). 1:50 p.m.: Shut down my workstation (open-air cubicle) at went downstairs to the underground parking garage where the car was. Tucked in the car was my interview outfit. My plan was simple: Run down, snag my clothes, cling up the first-floor men's room, change, run back down, toss work clothes in back and drive to Nintendo. So, I run down and get my outfit and pulling up, just behind a few cars away is my boss and some co-workers who went to lunch. Damn, they don't know I'm interviewing. I freeze with my outfit, hearing them come closer in the gray, cavernous parking lot. If I stay put, they'll see me. If I bolt, my outfit will flow like a green flag, giving me away. Luckily, they are several cars away and behind a pillar. I crouch down and quietly enter the stairs entrance. I run up and enter the men's room, sliding into the handicapped stall and I strip down and put on my interview outfit. I'm relieved I can slip on my pants after the good luck pizza my wife and I ordered last night (We had a pizza before my phone interview, which went well, so we just had to have another pizza for the face-to-face interview/editing test). All day I've been pushing myself into a balanced state about the editing test. I don't have the greatest confidence in myself when it comes to those yardsticks, although I was a copy editor for a while at the second-largest newspaper in the Pacific Northwest. I focus way too hard and become indecisive. I can see how the comma could go here or there or not be used at all. I worry and hem and haw. I slow down and I doubt myself. And mistakes sprout. I panic. I know I did well on the phone interview, and I know could handle the face-to-face with my eyes closed. It's the impartial and objective part of the test, the one that can be pointed to and be used as the device to keep me on or sink me. It's the weapon of choice that shows I know what I'm doing or I'm a deluded poseur. Oh damnit, I want to be the one this time. I want to be that outstanding candidate, that golden boy who makes HR people call the other applicants and say, "Sorry, but while you skills and interview were good, we decided to continue this part of the job search without you." The fatal words of job seekers everywhere, a horrible script that shuts you out of the running with no hope of protest or appeal. I don't want that. I'm so close. It's Nintendo, for christsakes. I want this one. All the times in the past when I was this close. The new media jobs at two Seattle newspapers, the writer for Apple, all of them...I take it back, they meant nothing. Oh, I could so do this copy editing gig at Nintendo. I beg to whatever controls employment fate, shift the paperwork on to the next plateau. It's that third interview, that time when you know your way to the office now. You are comfortable in the strange surroundings. It's a sign a lot of applicants have been removed from the running. The third interview...when you are introduced to your potential co-workers and it's in your reach. Let me have the third interview, the one with the hiring manager. Let the editing test go well. Let there be a grade on a curve. Let the HR woman I talked to recommend me highly, giving me glowing reviews. And let me cope if I don't get it. Please don't let me wither in the shitty, boring job I already have. I can't stay. I need to get out. God, don't let me snap back into that office chair at work. Don't deny me the escape velocity. All these thoughts and more slip through my mind as I put on my clothes. I recall sitting on a toilet an hour ago, vibrating with worry until I opened my mouth and let out a silent scream, shaking with frustration and pushing all the fear out of my body with one cathartic shake. Then, I'm calm. I can hear my heart churning blood through my body and instantly I'm not in a Seattle toilet stall. I'm in the hands of my masseuse friend Rachel. I feel her hands on my skin and I am safe here. My mind goes silent and I tell myself that the answers to the interview and the test are in me already. I know how to edit at this point, or I don't. I can't cram for this test. If I believe I know it, the answers will come. Rachel moves her hands over my neck and runs them through my hair. My only job is to inhale and exhale. I finished getting dressed. I remember what my wife e-mailed me a few minutes ago. Smile, be concise, be confident. Grammar note: The period always goes into quote marks. I exhale. I adjust my belt and tie. I tie my shoes and check my shirt. A perfect billow above the belt. Tie is fashionably long. Hair is in place. Spare mouthwash is in the car. I have spare pens and a copy of my resume and contact numbers for the application. I've thought of everything. I'm Secret Agent Man. I'm cool like a December morning. I'm unstoppable. I slip on my Agent Smith sunglasses and head down to the parking garage. I take a breath and throw open the garage access door. It's next to the elevator foyer, so anyone could be there, coming or going or waiting. And any of them could see me. In my shirt and tie. I jump out of the doorway and the book critic is coming in. Luckily, he's lost in his own little world as I slip around the corner, hopefully unseen. I run back to the car. After slipping the work clothes in the back, I check my cell phone. Its clock says it took me eight minutes to dress. I jump in the car and get out of the lot. I have 61 minutes to leave town and get to Redmond, about 17 miles away. I jitter for a moment, second-guessing about putting my shoes in the back seat. I worry about the comma again. I'm at a red light. I'm running out of time. 58 minutes. I stop and breathe. In the infinity of changing traffic lights, I am in Rachel's hands. She is working on my shoulder blades. I tell her about when I broke my collarbone as a child. I am at peace. The light turns green. I head up Broad Street, aimed squarely at Interstate 5, and then to State Route 520, or "The Evergreen Floating Bridge." The sun is out and I find Korn's "Freak on a Leash" on the radio. I adjust my sunglasses. Oh yeah. I know kung fu. Nintendo is less than 10 miles away. I pluck the driving instructions e-mailed to me by another HR person at Nintendo and look for the exit. I notice on the corporate canyon walls which rise over each side of 520 that Nintendo is on one side of the freeway and Microsoft is on the other, as if the road was separating the two companies now locked in a video game war. I exit, and it's a couple of lefts and I'm in a Nintendo visitor lot 30 minutes early. Near me in the lot, this one refreshing above ground, is a PT Cruiser made to look like a Pokemon character, one of the newer ones. I think. Some kind of ice bird. I sit with the radio on, but I can't really hear the words coming out of the speakers. A Microsoft Dining Services van passes in front of me on the arterial road beyond the grassy knoll that separates the passing lot from the road. A few minutes later, another does. I wonder if it's the same van. An almond-headed brown squirrel with a growing gray winter coat bounds in front of the car, blissfully not caring that some stupid biped is trying not to self destruct before an interview. It digs into the earth to find some root or nut, occasionally coming up with a faceful of dirt. I watch it and decompress. Rachel is not with me, but neither are the doubts. My mind is neutral, open, devoid of assumptions. I'm told this is the state that Buddhists strive for. I'm beyond fear and grammar rules now. I am getting out of the car. My only job in life is to breathe. Next, is locking the car door. Then, finding the entrance. 2:58 p.m.: I walk around the gleaming white office building, stacked like a set of teeth, a bottom and top half punctuated by the black gaps of windows. I find the right entrance and approach the receptionist. It's smack up front, no mistaking where you are to be when you first enter as a guest. I remove my sunglasses to the Japanese receptionist. I'm told that only the Yakuza wear sunglasses in Japan. I smile and get her attention. I'm aware my breath is curdling a bit. I do not panic. Find water fountain after receptionist. She looks up at me, unaware of my vibration in a toilet stall, unaware of the squirrel, of my dormant doubts or this hijacked Zen state. "Welcome to Nintendo," she says, smiling. "Can I help you?" It is 3 p.m. Part Two soon posted by skobJohn | 8:20 PM | |
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