HUMOR | INTERVIEWING AFTER AGE 50
Job Interviews — Just Another Fancy Way to Say Idiot Encounter
Stand up and refuse to be interviewed by another fetus
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Survival skills required
We’re in unprecedented times, so having a healthy sense of humor and an extra helping of self-control comes in handy. It also behooves us to have — and remember to use! — a good filter.
Thankfully, I’m all set in that department. My mother taught me to be polite and always display good manners.
Had she not, I’d be out there in the wild, showing up for interviews, unskilled in handling myself in today’s recruiting ‘space.’ By the way, I demand to know who coined that term. I don’t know about you, but I have never worked in ‘space.’ I digress.
Thanks to Mom, I’ve always been able to graciously nod my head and smile politely through gritted teeth while being interrogated by a condescending little fetus — for a job I was doing when the little darling was still a zygote undergoing cell division!
Think outside the box, she said
Ah yes, and haven’t we all encountered precious Little Darling who couldn’t find the box — let alone think outside one!
Let me give you an example. The veritable brain trust interviewing you condescendingly points out how YOU left a box blank on the archaic paper application you were asked to fill out after you arrived.
Duh! Going over the interviewer’s head was that you already spent — okay, wasted — an hour providing the same information online via their applicant tracking system, aka ‘The Black Hole.’
The interviewer says, “Um, yeah, an address and phone number are missing here.”
“Where?” you ask, leaning forward and snatching the form to take a look.
You want to shout something rude, but you don’t. Instead, you take a deep breath, muster a forced smile, bat your baby blues, and say nothing. Your inside voice is screaming. You’re a mature professional, so you successfully fight the urge to stand up, tower over them, and bark like a drill sergeant.
‘Really?! You want my HIGH SCHOOL principal's name and phone number when I’ve been in the workplace for decades?! Darlin’, as a parent, I have to ask, did someone drop you on your head as an infant?!”
Notice, I said that’s what you feel like saying — but you don’t, now do you? No, you control yourself and maintain your dignity.
Clear arrest record
I’ve had some close calls, but thanks to Mama’s raising, I’ve always had the presence of mind to restrain such visceral impulses. I’m proud to say that despite overwhelming temptation on more than one occasion, I have never jerked a Little Darling across the desk to slap the stupid out of them for making such moronic comments.
Maybe it’s time to retire. I’m too tired to go back to school. I have no desire to fritter away my valuable time to obtain another useless certification to make myself more attractive to the toddler recruiters of LinkedIn.
In the case of doctors, the handwriting — or the scribbling is on the wall.
No, I guess it’s time to do The Big Quit alongside the many great doctors tired of bureaucrats telling them what to do. The path forward is relatively simple.
As my buddy Steppenwolf says — and yes, I know him — ‘It’s time to move over.”
Yesterday’s glory won’t help us today
You want to retire? Get out of the way
I ain’t got much time.
The young ones close behind
I can’t wait in line
Songwriters — Gabriel Mekler /John Kay
More Over lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
