Lucky Underpants / February 12 2008
I was talking to a friend of mine this morning who had just returned from a job interview. She was worried that she hadn’t made a good impression on her prospective employers. ‘I just clammed up,’ she told me in despair.
I am exactly the opposite. I seldom attend such interviews, but when I do, I tend to jabber on incessantly like Heather Mills-McCartney, annoying myself with my acute logorrhoea. I can’t help it; it must be nerves. ‘There you go again . . .’ I think to myself as I begin spouting complete balderdash, disappearing down oblique and frustrating cul-de-sacs that I can’t find my way out of. (Generally, at that point, I either stop abruptly with something like: ‘. . . and that’s why I always thought the Earth was shaped like a big condom . . . erm . . . ha ha ha ha ha!’ Or I fizzle out mid-sentence, realising that I have been speaking for ten minutes and people are looking out of the window at passing shoppers or a lonely dog.)
I remember I once thought I was going to vomit into a handy waste paper basket, I was so nervous; and on another occasion, I walked into an empty broom cupboard when I tried to leave the interview room. Up until that point, I thought I had acquitted myself rather well. But as I didn’t get the job, I presume that, ultimately, my navigational skills let me down. (I had applied to be the logistics manager for an international shipping company based in Felixstowe.)
My friend told me she always wears her lucky pants. I am not that superstitious - though I probably wouldn’t walk under a ladder or step on too many cracks in the pavement on my way to the interview. ‘The worst part was at the end when they asked me if I had any questions for them,’ she told me.
I can sympathise with her; that is the ingredient of the whole process that I most dread, too.
‘Well, Napoleon, that about concludes our interview this morning. It only leaves me to ask whether you have any questions for us.’ That was the manager of the branch of Barclays Bank in Mansfield when I was nineteen and was applying for a part-time job there to help me save up for a Gibson Les Paul I had my beady eye on. My mind went blank.
Improvising, I tried a touch of levity: ‘Yes. What’s your favourite colour?’
‘Pink,’ came the earnest reply.
Filed under Heather Mills-McCartney / Humour / Life / Paul McCartney
Comments
4 comments on “Lucky Underpants”
Nelson Galaxy / February 13th, 2008 at 12:30 am
That’s funny 
At my first ever interview, at the Mean Fiddler, I became trapped in the gents toilet in the bar downstairs when the lock came off in my hand. I didn’t get the job.
Napoleon Fantastic / February 13th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Did anything else come off in your hand while you were in the gents toilets, I wonder?
Jo Beaufoix / February 16th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Bleurghhh, Napoleon, what are you implying? Nelson was just an innocent wee thing then.
Napoleon Fantastic / February 16th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Jo,
Ignore him - that’s Nelson. Whenever he is confronted with a potentially fundamental, life-changing situation, something comes off in his hand. Sign of youth.
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