The Infamous Interview Story

This story ought to start with a disclaimer: everything in the proceeding text of this story is absolutely true. I am one of many multitudes of recent college graduates who walked proudly off the stage degree in hand—and directly into a shroud of unemployment. This is the story of the first time I thought that shroud was lifted and the disastrous consequences that followed.

About a month into my job search, I found a listing on a very reputable job search website for a “Junior Account Executive” position with a “Sports and Entertainment Marketing Firm.” The position had no experience required, offered training and opportunities for advancement. Now while this to-good-to-be-true listing might set off some red flags for more salted job search veterans, for me, a dreamy-eyed college kid recently gestated from the loins of academia, this sounded perfect. I applied and was contacted within a couple of days to come in for a first-round interview.

Day 1: The First Round

Looking back, I think I was abnormally nervous for this first interview. Maybe it was the possibility of actually being employed or maybe it was the idea of seeing the inside of a real-life office, but on the drive out I found myself resisting the urge to pull over and throw up more than once. The only thing that really kept my body from doing this was an equal fear of throwing up on my suit, thus disqualifying myself from the interview process entirely.

In any case, I made it to the interview early and vomit-free, just like every college business professor told you to. I was actually so early that I was able to sit in my car for a while and do some research. This is perhaps the most sickening part of the story for me; you’ll understand why soon. I worked hard for this interview. I had done research and knew the company handled an NBA team in the city, and spent my spare time memorizing the roster and recent news about the team, in case it should come up during the interview.

With just the right amount of time to spare, not ten minutes early and a little less than five, I walked into the office of my possible future employer. There are moments when a space hits so many of the right notes that the whole thing comes off totally wrong. The walls were all painted a dark red with black leather couches and a glass coffee table furnishing the waiting area, an overly modern IKEA secretary’s desk--complete with an overly modern secretary--finished out the room nicely. The surround sound speakers pummeled Jack Johnson at a decibel level above which Jack Johnson should never be heard. The whole thing looked like Abercrombie and Fitch had gone to college and immediately after finishing had opened a marketing firm together.

I introduced myself to the secretary whose name was Georgia and began chatting her up. Another college business professor rule of thumb: make friends with the secretary. Georgia and I talked about the south, and with a drawl so pronounced that I knew she couldn’t be from the city, she gave me the cliff notes version of her professional life. She was so flattered when I mentioned she didn’t sound like she was from the city that I thought she might just hire me on the spot.

After I filled out all the necessary paperwork, I finally met Daniel my interviewer. There are a few things that will immediately make you feel comfortable in an interview, one is a person with a good sense of humor, the other is a very genuinely nice person, and while Daniel didn’t have these right off the bat, he did have perhaps the most important quality for setting another man at ease—he was shorter than me. Daniel and I didn’t talk long, he asked a few basic questions and seemed impressed with my answers, but the whole time I was going through the interview I could not get out of my head how much this guy resembled Richard from LOST. He was a shorter version to be sure, but it turns out he had all the guile.

The only question that is noteworthy from that first interview was when he asked me if I had any experience managing people. I replied that I had managed many teenage lifeguards, and that I wasn’t sure there was a harder group to manage than that, he laughed and replied, “Yeah, I know what you mean man, when I worked at Hollister…” I’m sure Daniel kept talking after that, but I didn’t hear any of it because the fact that he managed a Hollister clothing store sent me down another track entirely. I noted his gelled and rock hard faux-hawk, his light colored, tailored suit, the bold tie, and the thumb ring. Oh yes, this guy was a Hollister manager, and not one of those that just did it to get by--he really, really enjoyed it. I found this profoundly funny, and while I still wanted the job, it set me at ease enough to begin thinking, “Yeah I could do this for a while; I’ll just quietly make fun of everyone that works here.” Oh, but this was not my fate dear readers, Daniel would have the last laugh on me, and he knew it the whole time.

At the end of our little conversation, Daniel asked me back for a second round interview the next day where I would “shadow” another “account executive” while meeting with “clients” and going about a normal day of “business.” Pay attention to these quotes because these were all the words and terms he used to describe things in my interview, and they are the same words that led directly to my downfall.

Day 2: It hits the fan.

I show up the next day early again, walk in to the baccalaureate Abercrombie and Fitch to find a group of three other perky, young professionals waiting on the couches. I assume correctly that they’re all here for the same shadowing process, however, they’re all quiet (apparently they missed the talking-up the secretary tip). I begin chatting lightly with Georgia, who is by miraculous coincidence from the city of Atlanta. I joke with her, “Did people ever call you Atlanta and think they were funny?” She laughs and says no. I smile and relate several elementary school horror stories surrounding the name Pierce, of which there are many.

The young professionals and I are taken into a room one by one to meet the “account executive” we’ll be “shadowing” that day. I am the last one to go in, and Daniel tells me “Alright Pierce, saved the best for last and I mean that. This is Chris, one of our top account executives, and you’ll be out working his territory with him today.” Chris and I shake hands and exchange greetings. “At the end of the day,” Daniel continues, “if Chris gives you his recommendation, and you are excited about the position, I want to give you a place on our team.” I smile and agree, and Chris and I walk out, saying goodbye to Georgia as we leave.

In the elevator, Chris tells me he graduated from Rhodes, and I start to become even more positive about this job, “Great, he went to Rhodes, this is a reputable place with reputable people.” I could not have been more wrong.

Another guy actually rode with us to what I assumed was our first meeting, Larry. Larry was sarcastic, in his late 20’s and a little overweight. As we drove, Chris said, “Well, the territory we’re going to work today is down by Graceland, have you ever been there?” I replied that I had and continued chatting it up with the two guys, but my mind fixed on the word territory. I realized Daniel had said it too, and I wondered what it really meant, but I think at this point, driving in Chris’s beat-up old Subaru to Graceland, I started to be afraid of what kind of answers Chris might give me. As I kept talking with them, I discovered that we were actually going to drop Larry off somewhere (At the time, I assumed another meeting that must have been close to ours) and that Chris and I would be doing the rest of the day solo. As we drove around looking for the place to drop Larry off, Larry says, “This is all kind of a ‘deadwalk,’ man, this is no good.” It did not quite strike me then that place we were dropping off Larry wasn’t exactly definite, but instead depended on how many businesses it was close to.

In fact, none of this really became clear until Chris and I parked his 1985 Subaru in the empty parking lot of a Sears and walked in. Now I know it may seem like I should have realized something was wrong at this point, but I didn’t. As we walked in, Chris spotted a cashier and began walking towards her. I was sure he was going to ask her directions to the manager’s office, since clearly this was going to be our first meeting. However, Chris did not ask directions to the manager’s office. What he said instead was, “Hey there, do you think you’d have time to make it to a movie between now and November 30^th?” The look on the old lady’s face and the look on mine must have been about the same—utter disbelief. Chris kept talking while pulling out a sheet with coupons printed on it: 4 free movies, 8 buy one get one free tickets, two free drinks, and two free popcorns. Now I know this deal sounds incredible. But, believe it or not, the old lady Chris had just accosted was not interested in his movie deal. However, she informed us that we could walk around and see if anyone else was interested. This was, of course, the last thing I wanted to do, but as the faculty of speech had not returned to me yet, I was forced to plod along behind Chris, who began explaining to me what had gone wrong with his first pitch: “Sorry about that man, normally the strategy in a department store is a little bit different. We’re supposed to start in the back left corner of the department store and work our way out, that way when they call security on us, we can keep making sales as we go out, if they don’t follow us.”

My mind kicked into gear as Chris went through this explanation, and I made a few observations:

1. There’s a “strategy” to this. He does this often.

2. “Department stores are a little different.” I’m going to have to do this same thing in other public places today.

3. He said, “WHEN they call security,” not “IF.” What we’re doing is illegal in most of the places we’re doing it.

4. “If they don’t follow us.” This guy has been fully escorted out of most likely several businesses.

5. I AM STUCK DOOR TO DOOR SOLICITING FOR AN ENTIRE DAY IN A SUIT AND TIE IN JULY IN WHITE HAVEN, TN.

Well, what could I do but blindly follow? We walked across the parking lot to Sears Auto Center where Chris attempted to sell to a mechanic while he was still UNDERNEATH a car. From there, we walked to a church down the road, and when we couldn’t find any one there (as it was a Friday), we barged straight into the church office where Chris attempted to make a sale to the groundskeeper. Not only are we violating the sanctity of a church, and the privacy of these people’s workspace, Chris is trying to make a sale to a church janitor in the middle of one of the most impoverished areas of Memphis.

As I continued to follow Chris through the blazing heat like a high-fashion Jehovah’s Witness on crack, we received a call from Larry. You remember Larry, right? The guy I thought we were dropping off at a meeting close to ours? Well, it turns out Larry was trying to sell to tellers at a bank down the road, when the bank was held up. And by held up, I don’t mean things were moving slowly. I mean that the bank was robbed at gunpoint, and by the time Larry was able to get a call out, we could here several police sirens in the background of the call. Just think, if only Larry had gotten to the robber first, he might have walked away with just a movie ticket package rather than a bag full of money.

At this point, I would like to refer you to the beginning of this post, which clearly states that none of this has been fabricated.

After Chris had calmed Larry down over the phone, we decided to have lunch (Not making a sale for half a day and having to talk your partner down from post-traumatic stress really works up an appetite). As we ate at Lenny’s Sub Shop, Chris explained to me “The System,” which he had mentioned to me throughout the morning when I asked him questions like, “So why did you get into this?” “Why do you keep doing it?” and “How do you keep going when you don’t make a sale?” “The System,” as you’ve probably guessed, was a pyramid scheme carefully laid out in six horizontal blocks on a sheet of paper that Chris handed to me. All one would have to do to see the pyramid is stack the blocks into a 3-2-1 formation. The pyramid started with “Field Representatives” went up to “Senior Leader” (i.e. Chris) and then at the very top was “manager” (i.e. Daniel).

After finishing lunch and telling Chris that the system was “interesting,” we walked out to sell some more. Now I know some of are you still wondering how I didn’t just walk to the nearest bus stop, or tell him that this was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen and just walk off, but something strange happened as I walked around with Chris. Maybe it was the heat, but I started thinking, “I at least have to get the offer,” “I can’t be turned down by a door to door sales company.”

So I stayed and plodded right along behind my own personal door to door Obi-Wan. It turns out after we left Lenny’s, we didn’t have too far to go. In fact, all we did was walk to the end of the strip center that Lenny’s was in and work the whole strip center, including Lenny’s. That’s right. We walked back into the place we had just eaten 15 minutes before and tried to make a sale to the guy who cut our lunchmeat. Needless to say, it didn’t go over well.

Most of the rest of the day was spent taking rejections, but Chris did manage to make a few sales, and I even chimed in on a few pitches, feeling bad for all the rejection Chris was taking. One shining rejection, though, was at Loretta’s Beauty Port. Chris almost had a sale made to a woman who was in the process of getting a weave, but just as the woman began to pull out her wallet, she saw which movie theater the coupons were for (the most run-down theater in town), and said to Chris, “ Awh Nah, I don’ go ’der, dey don’ got dem fat polish saw-sages.” And that’s as good a reason as any I’ve heard not to by a movie package not being sold door to door.

Epilogue: R. Kelly

On returning to the office, Chris did in fact give me his recommendation for the job, and the offer alone was enough to put the cherry on top of my most awkward professional experience ever.

Before I was brought in to talk to Daniel, I was asked to fill out a questionnaire, and the last part was a line where I was supposed to write a question for Daniel to answer. So, still intrigued as to how reputable people got involved in something like this, I wrote, “How did you get involved in this?” When I walked in Daniel answered the question before he did anything else: “Well, I used to live in Nashville where I was working on an R&B recording contract.” Stop. This is a 5’6 white guy, who looks like he missed out on being one of the Backstreet Boys because he didn’t make the height cut, an R&B recording contract? Yeah, maybe if Mariah Carey wanted to put a leprechaun in one of her music videos. But it gets better. Daniel continued, “Yeah, I was supposed to have a deal with R. Kelly, but then he went and peed on a girl.” No comment, please refer to the first line of this post.

After recovering from Daniel’s answer, I turned down the job, said goodbye to Georgia and walked out--still unemployed, but grateful.