Do the Mario!

Today started out like any other day—I woke up. Today is going to be fairly busy. I have a job interview for a proofreading position for some company I’ve never heard of. So I have to find a Target Shop and buy a striped polo shirt to compliment my brown corduroy long pants—the perfect attire for a business casual interview, and I have to shower. If I accomplish even one of these, it will be more than I have done the past few days.

I threw on some clothes and left my room. Passing the bathroom, I heard Gweat’s on the other side, singing/yelling. I could smell the blunt he was rolling halfway down the hallway. California medical marijuana is potent stuff.

At Target, I had to ask one of the workers which polo shirt to buy because I was worried I would pick the wrong color of brown that went with my brown pants and brown shoes. It’s a good thing I did, because she told me the one I picked out wouldn’t work.

Newly clothed, I returned to the hostel. With the bathroom now open, I took my trademark forty-five minute shower, dried off, and waited for the interview.

The office building I was to be interviewed at was in Santa Monica, less than ten miles away, so I left forty minutes early, and arrived with ten minutes to spare.

The office was on the top floor of a building with many other companies inside it. As I walked past one office, I saw a table with about a dozen Emmys lined up. I wonder what company that was?

The office I was to be interviewed in wasn’t nearly as nice as that one. That’s not to say it was run down or dilapidated—it was just that it was a new company that had yet to move in. The office decor was still images with quotes from movies like Office Space and Anchorman. The receptionist had me sit down on a posh couch to wait for the person that was to be interviewing me. While I sat, I watched a muted flat screen TV that looped the different shows this company had a hand in. One was, “Lil’ Bush,” a web series turned Comedy Central show. Another one was a Flash based animated show starring Iggy Pop. Probably my favorite was a show called, “Meet the Cruises.” The cast, as you can imagine, was Tom Cruise, indentured servant Katie Holmes, L. Ron Hubbard reincarnate Suri, and some woman called Oprah. Yeah, I could work here.

Eventually, my interviewer, Paul, came to greet me. We walked to his office, because they were waxing the moving sidewalks and the Segways were in the shop for repairs. Going past the rows of desks and the people behind them, I realized I was overdressed in my collared brown polo shirt. Even dressed down, the employees looked like their clothes cost more than mine. Not only must they work in Santa Monica, they must shop there also.

We sat down in Paul’s office, and right away I had trouble concentrating. He had Super Mario Bros. wall decals. There was Mario, a Goomba, and a Piranha Plant coming out of a warp pipe. Awesome. Then I spotted some framed Street Fighter II drawings. This guy speaks my language. Maybe when the interview is over we can talk about guard cancels or the underappreciated parry system.

Paul looked over my resume and informed me I wasn’t qualified for this job at all. Wait, what? I majored in English. The one thing outside of working at a bookstore that I can do is proofread. As it turns out, this job was a little more involved than that. What the job description on Craigslist didn’t tell me was that the majority of the work would be in web design, as opposed to “a background in web design recommended,” but Paul wanted me to try and give it a shot anyway, in part because he really liked my sample writing I gave him and requested I do another. We scheduled for me to come back the next day to see if I had what it takes to handle the job. I already know I don’t, but what the hell? They already wasted my time having me come in for a job I’m not going to be able to do. I might as well waste their time training me for a job I’m not going to get. Who knows, maybe all my inadequacies with computers and as a human being will dissipate overnight? Maybe I’ll wake up and discover I didn’t really waste four years of my life in college and instead took that time to learn a viable skill. I won’t.