Random Short Story: The Interview

"Are you ready to begin?"

"Yes, sir."

"Please don't call me sir. My name is Steven."

"Thanks, Steven. I'm ready to begin."

"Stevens.”

“Pardon?”

“Stevens not Steven."

"Sorry."

"No need to apologize. Ready?"

Dan nodded eagerly like a bobblehead doll on the dashboard of a pickup truck as he wondered if Stevens was spelled with a v or a ph. And if there was a ph, whether the name would be pronounced differently or whether it would still sound the same. What is the difference between a v and a ph? Ste-vens. Ste-phens. Dan tried pronouncing the name both ways in his head. He was failing to notice much difference.

Stevens (or Stephens) had yet to look in his direction, his head buried in the minutiae of his computer screen, all of Dan’s eager student in the first row bobbleheading going to little effect. He was interviewing for a copy editing position at the Organization of Medical Instrumentation National Examiners. It had been three months since his last interview, six months since his last job. Dan was nervous, excited, nauseous, a little bloated and irritable, all of the things one would expect an interviewee to be.

Dan steadied his wobbling head and decided to focus his overcaffeinated energy on his smile, trying to imitate the intense optimism of his successful venture capital receiving cousin who had recently purchased a vacation home in Santa Barbara. Dan didn’t want or need or expect a vacation home in Santa Barbara. He just wanted a job.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Stevens didn’t notice Dan’s smile. He was still furiously working on his computer. Dan kept the forced smile waiting for some sort, any sort of acknowledgment. It had been nearly two minutes. His face muscles were starting give out.

"I see you missed a gas payment last year."

"Excuse me." The smile vanished.

"A gas payment. You missed one in April. You should really get automatic withdrawal. It’s much easier than remembering to pay each month.”

"How do you...wait…. what...." Dan stopped himself from completing the confused thought. Stevens continued to stare at his computer, his fingers rapidly tapping on the mouse.

"Excuse me, sir."

"Stevens."

"Mr. Stevens.”

“No, no, not Mr. Stevens, just Stevens.”

“Sorry. Is that with a v or a ph?” Dan asked boldly.

No response. More frantic tapping on the mouse.

“May I ask what you are looking at?" Dan asked, even more boldly.

"It's your credit report. I apologize for how long it's taking. I have to look through three different agencies. They don't always have the same information. I wish they would just consolidate and save everybody time. It's so inefficient this way."

Dan cocked his head to one side and wondered what exactly was on his credit report. He had seen many ads that begged him to order it online so he could check it himself but Dan always assumed those ads were for scams that somehow destroyed your credit rating while you were checking it, so he had never bothered to order one.

"I see you had a car repossessed in 2016."

"I can explain that..."

Stevens hand shot up in something akin to a fascist military salute to cut Dan off.

"Please don't. I'm on the last one now. It'll only be another second."

Even though Stevens had stopped him, Dan began rehearsing the explanation for the car repossession in his head. He had a perfectly good answer. And he was going to provide that answer once Stevens’ attention focused on him.

"Okay, I'm done now." Stevens finally turned to Dan and looked him up and down. "Nice suit."

"Thank you." Dan wasn't sure if he had just been complimented or insulted. But he didn’t have time to parse the anthropological subtext of those two words. It was time for his carefully rehearsed explanation. "I can explain the car thing. I was recently out of college and I went to this used car dealership......."

"No explanations,” Stevens’ hand shot up for a second time cutting Dan off again. “It will only waste time. We need to move on. I’ll get your file.”

Stevens reached into his top left drawer as Dan bobbleheaded in agreement. Stevens was right. It was probably best to move on from this credit report business. The repossessed car was a long time ago and it wasn’t his fault. It really wasn’t. Honest. Dan was sure Stevens could see that on the credit reports. Certainly, the credit agencies have corrected the false information provided by a twice indicted once convicted used automobile seller. Besides, it was eight years ago, don’t things like that eventually fall off your credit report anyway.

An ivory white file folder was now sitting between Dan and Stevens on Stevens’ neatly organized maple syrup-hued desk. Dan could see his last name written on a little tab on the top of the folder, which bulged pregnantly in the middle from something besides the usual sheets of paper that are supposed to be kept in such OfficeMax or Staples bought file folders. Action Verbs. ‘Remember action verbs,’ Dan told himself, reviewing the key points of his resume in his head, bullet point by concisely written yet informative (and slightly grammatically tortured) bullet point.   

But Stevens didn’t open the folder. And Stevens didn’t ask Dan any of the expected questions. Instead, he returned to the soft poltergeist glow of his computer screen and started violently clicking on his mouse again, apparently opening a new set of programs.

“Are you doing another credit check?” Dan said, while still repeating the phrase action verbs in his head.

"No. Your internet history."

"My internet history?" Dan’s action verbs disappeared.

"It won't take long. Only a couple minutes. Just like the credit check."

"How do you have my..."

Stevens' hand returned to the air to silence Dan. Dan moved his body forward, bending like an eel trying to maneuver through a stretch of coral on the sea floor as he tried to peer at Stevens’ computer screen without actually looking like he was peering at Stevens' computer screen.

Stevens noticed. "Hey, you can't do that. This information is confidential." Stevens shifted the screen, shielding it with his body.

"But it's my information.”

"And it's confidential. We pay a lot of money to get it. Not just anybody can look at it."

I’m not just anybody, Dan thought, slumping in his chair, his faux venture capital gleam now dulled.

Dan tried not to think of his browsing history. Who amongst us would like to be forced to think on our browsing history? At best, it would be a list of such triviality and inanity it would make one question why they even bother existing. However, as in most areas of his life, Dan’s browsing history wasn’t at best, it may not have been at worst (or illegal), but it definitely settled somewhere around solidly humiliating.

He was on the internet a lot. In fact, it had become his only true hobby in his 6 months of unemployment. Maybe the sheer volume would make the search unmanageable. Maybe the number of links would hide the more embarrassing pages. There’s no way Stevens could look at everything Dan had recently visited in only a couple of minutes.

Stevens let out a snigger. "You like that, do you?"

"Like what?"

"My God. You really like that." Stevens sniggered again.

"No, I don't. I mean, probably not."

Stevens wasn't listening, too interested in his reading. "I'm in the juicy stuff now."

"The juicy stuff?" Dan shrank further in his chair. "It was probably a virus or something.” Excuses needed to be offered. “That can happen. You visit one site and then they take control of your computer and it goes to all of these other sites. Sites that I would never go to. Your computer becomes a zombie. It comes from Russia or something."

“Zombies come from Russia?” Stevens wasn’t listening. He had more interesting information to pay attention to.

“No, it’s a computer virus,” Dan continued to argue a point of debate he wasn’t going to win.

Stevens let out a loud snort, still not listening to Dan. "I go to that one myself."

Dan looked down at the floor hoping to avoid eye contact even though there was no chance of that because Stevens wasn't looking at him, too enraptured by the salacious biographical sketch being created by the once confidential information on his computer screen.

"It's been a while since I've had a girlfriend, you know how it is." Dan feebly offered, ending the futile defense of his online actions.

Stevens’ hand shot up for a fourth time. "Please keep quiet. I’m trying to conduct an interview."

Dan’s eyes stayed on the beige carpet. There was a dark circular stain next to his right foot. He moved his size 10 shoe over it, trying to cover the stain. Then he moved his left foot over it as well, his feet pressing tight against each other, making the blemish completely invisible. Minutes passed as Dan stared at his shoes. There were some scuff marks on the top and side of the right shoe that belied a lack of care (or perhaps prolonged unemployment). Maybe he should have gone to one of those shoeshine people they have at airports and in old movies.

‘Are there still shoeshine people? How much do they charge?’ Dan wondered, lost in a world of shoe cleaning and 50’s films. ‘I’ll just shine them myself this weekend,’ he decided, ‘does Target sell shoe polish?’

Pulled out of his shoegazing lull by incredibly loud silence, Dan noticed the clicking had stopped. He could sense Stevens was looking at him but he made sure to keep his eyes focused on the floor, embarrassed by Stevens’ inevitable judgment.

“Most of this is normal. I'll have to run a few of these by the board, though.”

“The board?” Dan looked up.

"No worries. It should be fine. And if it’s not, it’s not. It’s all part of the process."

“Do you really have to mention my internet history to the board?”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m sure it will be fine.”

Stevens’ reassurances did not comfort Dan, who shimmied uncomfortably in his chair, trying to compose himself for the rest of the interview, for the beginning of the interview as far as Dan was concerned. Action verbs, Dan repeated to himself. Action verbs. Surprisingly, Dan began to breathe easier as he looked forward to the comfortable rhythms of the typical near-Socratic dialogue of an interview session. Usually, this part of an interview would terrify him, but after the credit and internet searches, a normal conversation with a human being seemed almost pleasing.

Stevens opened the folder. It contained several printouts that looked like they had been printed from a dot matrix printer. Those printouts didn’t interest Dan. The Coca-Cola red mini-Coke can sized object on top of those printouts interested him a great deal. It looked like a tiny stapler. How does someone misplace a stapler in an interviewee’s file folder?

"Now were ready for the blood."

"The blood?"

"Don't worry, HR trained us on this last month, it won't hurt. It's only the finger. I’m not going to tap a vein or anything." Stevens laughed. Dan did not.

Dan stared hard at the little red stapler that apparently wasn’t a stapler. “Are you sure this is allowed?"

"Of course. Everybody does it. It's just a little prick. Put your hand on the desk."

“I don’t know….” Dan said as his right hand betrayed him by slowly, almost involuntarily, moving towards the desk, his right index finger out.

His finger neatly docked into the loading bay of the tiny stapler. Dan winced in expectation.

"I'll count to three."

Dan nodded. Then swallowed, still wincing, shoulders trying to meet chin as he waited for the sting of the needle.

"One."

“SONOFABITCH!!”

"Got it.” Stevens pulled the stapler away.

“You said you’d count to three.”

“It's better if you don't know it's coming."

Dan looked at the red dot in the middle of his right index finger that almost matched the red of the stapler as a droplet of blood expanded outward until it entirely covered his fingerprint. Doing what every little kid instinctively knows to do, Dan quickly brought that finger to his mouth and started to suck on it as Stevens continued with the business end of the interview by pulling a small vial containing a tiny amount of Dan’s blood from the back of the stapler and putting it on top of the dot matrix printouts in the file folder before closing said file folder and returning it to his top left drawer.

Stevens began to look around the surface of his desk like he had lost something. "Crap, I'm out of Band-Aids. I'll tell Brad to bring one in for you." Dan was still sucking his finger like a toddler.

Stevens pressed a button on his phone. "Brad. Can you bring in a Band-Aid? And the stool bag, too."

Dan pulled the pricked finger from his mouth. "What's a stool bag?"

Before Stevens could answer, Brad was in the office and handed Dan a clear Band-Aid with a microscopic image of a squat yellow cartoon character from a recently released yet underperforming kiddy film that a studio was hoping to turn into a franchise but now might have to make other plans for. Dan was certain the box of Band-Aids had been purchased on clearance after the disappointing first weekend’s grosses were announced. A matching banana yellow box the size of a fishing tackle box was handed to Stevens in the continuation of the same Band-Aid giving motion before Brad then turned and left completing the loop with such swift efficiency that Dan had no choice but to question Brad’s humanity.

Dan made sure the little yellow fire hydrant-like figure was face up as he wrapped the Band-Aid around his wound, before looking at Stevens and pointing to the yellow box with his newly bandaged finger.

"Is that for this interview?"

Stevens laughed. “You're not done yet."

Stevens opened the box and pulled out a white plastic bag. It was roughly the same shape and volume as the medium-sized clear plastic bags that grocery stores give out for 10 cents. This was because it was in fact one of the medium-sized bags that grocery stores give out for 10 cents. There was a green M on the side of the bag, the trademark for the third largest grocery store chain in the metro area. Stevens handed the bag to Dan.

"Now for the stool sample."

"You don't expect me to....."

"We took a blood sample. We need a stool sample too. It's basic science. One isn’t any good without the other."

“I’m not sure that’s true….”

“Whenever you’re ready, please go ahead. I’ll be waiting.”

"With this bag?"

"Why not?"

Dan could think of many answers to that question. "It doesn't seem very hygienic."

Stevens smiled then proudly took out a 50 ml-sized bottle of hand sanitizer from the yellow box and set it on the edge of his desk.

"We do the stool sample for every interview. We’re prepared."

Dan stared at the plastic bag testing its strength with his fingers.

"I do have an eleven o'clock, so if you don't mind we can't afford to doddle."

"Doddle?"

"Waste time. I'm sure you're in a hurry as well, so if we can get a move on."

"Honestly, I hadn't planned for this. I haven't eaten anything yet today. I usually don't eat when I'm nervous."

Stevens threw up his hands. "It's a vital part of the interview, if you can't complete it, then I'm afraid..."

"No...No...No. It's fine. I can. I mean it's something I do every day, right? Or at least almost every day."

"That's the type of can do attitude we like to see."

"If you could just tell me where the restroom's are..."

Stevens shook his head.

"You don't know where the restrooms are?"

"If I let you go to the restroom, how would I know the sample is yours?"

Dan had momentary visions of fishing someone else's turd out of an adjacent stall.

"You could go in to the restroom with me and listen from the next stall."

"First of all, we don't have bathroom stalls here..."

"You could listen from outside the door..."

"Secondly, this office is perfectly fine for the interview process. We have the bag. We have the hand sanitizer. Like I said, we do this dozens of times a day, if you can't..."

"No, it's fine,” now it was Dan’s turn to cut Stevens off. A look of grim determination came over his face. He could do this. He was going to do this. What was the big deal anyway? They were both men. Stevens says everybody does it. It’s all perfectly normal.

Dan stood up from his chair and unbuckled his belt. Stevens was relaxing in his chair, no longer focused on his computer. Dan began to have second thoughts. "You're not going to watch, are you?”

"No. Of course not. I'll turn around. I'll be working while you go about your business, pay me no attention."

Stevens picked up the phone and swiveled in his chair showing his back to Dan.

"Brad, can you get Davis on the phone."

Dan looked at the bag again, trying to make sure the plastic would hold. Then he took off his belt in a somewhat numbed state, still hoping to please Stevens like a pliant retriever that had been bred through many generations to try to please its master no matter how displeasing the assigned task. The belt was off and just as he was about to pull down the pants of his Madison two-button 1818 gray pin-striped Brooks Brothers suit, Stevens turned back to Dan and put his hand over the phone receiver. "In the corner is probably best."

"The corner?"

Stevens returned to his phone call and Dan looked to the two back corners of the office. In the right corner there was a coffee table with several issues of Forbes pornographically splayed on top. In the left corner was a giant geranium that looked like a sad old man.

Dan thought hard. On the one hand, the coffee table would allow him to set the plastic bag down on a surface of approximately toilet seat height. However, if he missed there would be a mess and accidentally shitting on Stevens’ issues of Forbes may cost him the job. On the other hand, the geranium would at least give a pretense of a kind of privacy. Dan could pretend he was in the middle of a forest on a camping trip and he had no choice but to use a plastic bag for relief. So the geranium was the winner, or loser, as the case may be.

Dan marched over to the sad old man, plastic bag in hand, belt unbuckled. Dan wished he could jump behind the geranium for privacy, but it sat too snugly in the corner of the office. He also had another decision to make. Should he face the geranium or Stevens’ desk? Although, he would have liked to face the geranium to keep up the pretense of a camping trip, Dan thought that pointing his ass at Stevens would be quite rude, so he turned around and faced the desk and pulled down his pants, holding the plastic bag with both hands beneath him.

Luckily, Dan felt movement in his bowels. This may seem like something one would take for granted, but Dan had a shy bladder. He never enjoyed using urinals and found it quite difficult to take a good piss if there was someone standing next to him and completely impossible if he actually happened to know the person. He also greatly appreciated the concept of the bathroom fan. The fan not only masked the inevitable sounds one made in the bathroom, but it also relaxed Dan, it gave him something to focus on as he went about his business. If only he had a fan to focus on now instead of Stevens’ voice talking about production reports with this Davis person.

Dan let out a loud blast of air. Deeply embarrassed and wishing extra hard for that fan, he cringed a little. But Stevens didn’t notice, still talking on the phone. He must be used to this, thought Dan, which helped to eliminate some of the awkwardness. At least it did until a second louder blast of air and Stevens peered over his shoulder.

“Can you keep it down, please, I’m on the phone.”

“Sorry.”

Dan forced himself to concentrate, blocking out all of the distractions: Stevens talking on the phone, the geranium tickling the air behind him, Brad, the secretary, right outside the door probably doing whatever it is androids do in their spare time. Maybe this was a key part of the interview. Stevens was testing his abilities of concentration, seeing if he could focus even in the most extreme of situations.

Finally, Dan felt relief. The bag became heavier and unpleasant smells filtered through the office. “Victory,” Dan thought as he sniffed the air, “if I can do this I can do anything. I’m definitely getting this job.” A loud snap broke his concentration. Dan looked up and saw a latex glove on Stevens’ left hand. Stevens was in the process of putting another latex glove on his right hand.

“God, I hope he isn’t going to do a prostrate check.” Dan worried as he finished his business with the plastic bag.

“I’m done now.” Dan said wondering if Stevens was going to offer him some toilet paper or toilet paper substitute for his soiled bottom or if he should use one of the geranium’s limbs instead.

“I know. I heard. Bring it over.”

Dan hesitated, then feeling he had no choice in the matter, pulled up his pants and buckled his belt and holding the plastic bag away from his body brought it over to Stevens. Stevens took the bag with his gloved hands and placed it in the yellow box, then closed the box and put it in the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk.

“I’ll make sure it gets processed right away.”

Dan wondered how long “right away” really was as Stevens removed his latex gloves and threw them into the garbage bin, then poured some of the hand sanitizer onto his hands and offered the bottle to Dan.

“Are you ready to answer some questions?” Stevens asked as he rubbed the hand sanitizer into his skin.

“Yes,” Dan answered trying to bring a gleam, any sort of positive optimistic non-violated gleam back to his beleaguered face. It took a few seconds for his brain to reboot but finally, much to his relief, the bullet points from that morning’s recitation of his CV in front of the mirror came back to him and Dan started in directly with his pitch like most of the online interviewing tips said to do. “Let me tell you why I think I’m the perfect person for M.I.N.E.….”

The fascist salute returned. Dan was staring at Stevens’ palm again.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sure you have specific questions you want me to answer.”

“No. Not really.”

Stevens bent down, going for his lower lefthand drawer this time, and returned with a large overcast gray box that landed with a thud on Stevens’ desk.

“That doesn’t sound like a little stapler.”

Stevens just smiled as he opened the box and pulled out a contraption that looked like a caulking gun with a little tv monitor attached to the back. Dan’s jaw dropped when he saw Stevens pull a needle approximately the size of an elephant’s foot out of the box and attach it to the caulking gun.

“Isn’t technology great?” Stevens said, still smiling.

“What…. What is that for?”

“Oh, you haven’t seen one of these before, have you. It’s a Transitron 9000. They come in different colors. I don’t know why we got this one in boring gray.”(The gun was the same color as the box it came from.)

“What does it do?”

“It helps with the interview.”

Stevens was walking towards Dan, gun in hand, the point of the elephant foot-sized needle growing in diameter.

“How exactly?”

“It lets me read your thoughts. I just stick it through your neck and into your brain stem and I can see everything.”

“I'm not sure I want you to know everything I’m thinking.”

“I’m sorry, if you want to work for this organization that’s not an option.”

Stevens could see anachronistic doubt on Dan’s face. “It won't hurt. Honest. Okay, it might hurt a little bit, but it's much better than the old way where you lie about your past and I lie about our company. This is much better and more efficient. Just tilt your head to the left a little and I’ll fire this baby up.”

“Did HR train you on this, too?”

“No. The sales rep did. He was very informative.”

“Well it can’t be any worse than shitting into a plastic bag,” Dan thought as he closed his eyes waiting for Stevens to plunge the needle into his neck.

The needle pricked the skin and surprisingly didn’t hurt any more than the prick of Dan’s finger earlier in the interview. Action verbs. Dan thought to himself. Focus on the action verbs and the good parts of his resume, make Stevens see how good of a worker he really was.

Unfortunately for Dan, that is not how the Transitron 9000 works. It doesn’t focus on present thoughts, but instead let Stevens rewind and fast-forward through the last 10 years of Dan’s life at will. The whirring sound a dentist’s drill makes filled the office as Stevens scrolled through Dan’s memories looking for whatever it is corporations or, in this case, small donor-funded non-profits look for when they make hiring decisions, for close to 200 seconds.

“I can’t believe you’re having those thoughts about your sister. That’s really sick.”

“I…I don't have a sister.” Dan stuttered, not sure if Stevens was joking with him as the whirring continued, even seeming to increase in intensity.

“Only a minute more. I got most of what I need.” Stevens reassured him.

Dan took a cue from the not so musical sounds of the Transitron 9000 and willed himself through the process as if he were at the dentist. ‘Think of the dentist,’ Dan told himself, bullet points and action verbs completely wiped from his mind. ‘Just keep your eyes closed and get through it. It’s no different than getting through a visit to the dentist, no matter what he sees on that thing.’

Finally, the pop of a plunger being removed from a smooth clear surface could be heard and the needle was out of Dan’s brain stem (and neck). “All done. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Stevens asked rhetorically, sounding exactly like a dentist.

Stevens walked back to his desk while removing the giant needle, which now had some kind of pink moisture on its tip. Dan wondered if it had been cleaned after the last time it was used before it had been plunged into his neck. Stevens then slid a little chip from the TV monitor and placed it in his top left drawer where the earlier blood sample was still resting. Dan felt the right side of his neck, there was a puncture wound the size of a small pimple, next to a small pimple.

“We want to get someone started in this position as soon as possible.” Stevens closed the Transitron box. “It was very nice meeting you.” Dan checked his hand to see if there was any blood from his neck. Amazingly there wasn’t.

Stevens walked over to Dan with his hand outstretched. Dan stood up from his chair in the same polite yet involuntary way he had offered up his finger to the stapler earlier. They shook hands. Stevens escorted Dan to the door, still in time for his 11 o’clock appointment. They said goodbye to each other in the formally awkward way that is demanded at the end of most interview sessions. Dan walked through the not very busy lobby of M.I.N.E. paying no attention to Brad as he oiled his left elbow joint with a tin can, walking through the revolving doors outside to 23^rd Street where he was greeted with a bitterly cold late winter wind. A second colder gust of wind hit him as he turned to make the 2 block walk to the Metro Station. But Dan didn’t feel the wind as cold on his skin. He was happy he had left his coat back in his apartment on this day because he found the bracing winter air to be invigorating like jumping into an ice-cold lake after taking a long sauna. He felt like rolling up his sleeves, baring his arms to the elements.

“That went pretty well,” Dan thought as he strutted down the street. “I think I got this one.”