Relationships: Qualified for the Job?

At some point, we’ve all bullshitted our way through a job interview. Not lied, but maybe spun something into a little more positive experience or described, with philosophical remove, a disappointment from which we learned a valuable lesson.By reciprocal charm, you and the HR manager wow each other. You have gotten in the door, and, almost by mutual disbelief, you get to stay. You dance through an orientation in which everyone is smiling and the bosses are chummy and the expectations are reasonable. And the lighting in the bathroom is almost flattering.

So, you’re in the dream. The ideal company, if you must work in a company.Eventually the reality reveals itself. Everyone is smiling because they’re either idiots or they secretly know your days were numbered as soon as signed up for the 401k. The bosses are chummy, all right, until you try to give them messages from irate customers or try to schedule meetings on days they have blocked out for “personal time.” Then, when you give up trying to meet them to a halfway point they won’t even honor, they suddenly find time to make meetings, return calls and double-check your work until they find the one loophole that gives them an excuse to issue a "warning."You aren’t completely taken by surprise, but you still don’t expect it when the chummy boss, the one for whom you took a birthday flowers donation and put in more of your money (telling no one, of course) than the others in order to get a more unique vase, calls you into his office. With his boss there to make sure he dots the i and crosses the t, he regales you with warnings you never received for dropped items you had tried to juggle for longer than you should have without corroborating paperwork.

The turning in of badges, the collecting of personal effects, the quiet walk with a beefy security guy are actions soon forgotten in the blur of the day.

What you will always remember, though, is washing your hands in the restroom that morning and trying to avoid your face in the mirror. It had become unbearable, even for the seconds it took to touch up your lipstick, to pretend you didn’t see the proof of your jaundiced hopes.