Lying in an Interview

Everyone lies in interviews.  If you accuse them after the fact, people say "Oh no, I didn't lie, I just exaggerated."  Whatever, you lied.  It's fine.  Everyone lies.  I lied to get this job.  In my interview, they asked if I had ever worked with some obscure computer system and I said fuck yeah and I was hired.

I experienced some mild panic over the lies I had told, but then I did what any sane person would do and Googled everything.  When I came to work I had at least some knowledge of what I was saying I was an expert in.  And I have never been found out, effectively transforming my lies into truths.

Now you on the other hand.  I remember your interview.  You were so calm, so self-assured, but just nervous enough that I didn't think you were an asshole.  You told me how much you liked problem-solving, how great you were with numbers, how just totally fucking smart you were.  You were a breath of fresh air and didn't look like you were about to cry, which is more than I can say for the girl who interviewed before you.

At this point you've worked here long enough for me to realize that your interview was either a once in a lifetime fluke, or you are a sociopath with different personalities.  And I've been moving towards accepting that.  I'm working through it, it's a process.  However, when I hear you say, just outside my office door, in casual conversation with an intern, how much you hate problem-solving (who the fuck SAYS that), how horrible you are with numbers, and how, overall, you consider yourself pretty dumb - well, this is a new level.  You are a whole fucking new level.

Assistant Appreciation Day

The company has an Assistant Appreciation Day, which I usually find….you know, fine.  It's fine.  If everyone wants to have a party because a group of people do their fucking jobs, that's fine with me. 

It only mildly irritates me that I am expected to actually attend Assistant Appreciation Day.  I mean, do I make all of you assholes come to Management Appreciation Day?  No, of course not.  It's a trick question too, because we don't even have one.  The most appreciation I get is pretending I don't know you all hate me.

But I'll go to Assistant Appreciation Day.  I'll show up and clap for you poor schmucks and smile over my whiskey.  Maybe there are hardships of the assistant job that I don't fully understand, maybe fucking up someone's coffee order every day takes an emotional toll, I don't know.

However, when my boss comes downstairs and tells me that not only do I need to attend Assistant Appreciation Day, I need to leave the office at 3pm to be there on time – all because of you, because you are my personal assistant and it would apparently mean something to you if I was there for the entirety of the festivities – well, that is where I draw the line.

Up until then you had helped me in absolutely no way and been a personal pain in my ass.  The one item in your favor was that you had not actually negatively impacted my life.  You'd been a moot point, a zero, a burden to the company, but mostly a wash for me.  It was like I had never had an assistant at all.  But now the very person who was hired to make my life easier, the very person who was hired to ASSIST me has instead started to IMPEDE me.  Do you see the total illogical nature of this?

Because of your day in which I dutifully showed my appreciation by drinking Johnny Walker Blue, I was forced to come into the office over the weekend.  This is something I have done many times before, but never with so much resentment. 

Cost/benefit analysis of you:

Benefit: None
Cost: My time on the weekend, the $200 tie on which a woman from accounting spilled her Cosmopolitan.

The Good Mood

Yesterday I went home feeling that we'd had a good day.  You seemed to understand the words that came out of my mouth, something  I had long ago stopped taking for granted.  You seemed to be listening, sort of.  You seemed to almost learn. 

It meant something to me.  It meant maybe you could stick around.  It meant maybe I wouldn't have to fire you, an unfairly intricate process which involves recording every time you fuck something up - a task which frankly, can get exhausting. 

But then I realized that I had come into the office with uncharacteristic good cheer that morning.  After my generous and inexplicable purchase of coffee and doughnuts for the team, I had exhibited patience, forbearance - maybe even kindness - as you told me precisely what you didn't understand about your job.  As I explained the finer points of Excel for an hour or so, I spoke with the attitude of a teacher speaking to his most treasured pupil.  You sat there wide-eyed, eating doughnut after doughnut as I held your hand through each step of the way.

In retrospect, you didn't learn any faster, or actually help me, or really do much of anything besides eat the free doughnuts.  I was the one with the great attitude, I was the one laughing off the fact that you had been faxing papers to clients upside down for a month.  So our great morning together was only a result of the fact that I woke up still drunk.  It seems the only way this relationship can work is if I am constantly drinking whiskey to the point of vomiting each night - unfortunately a pipe dream.

Assistants Are Hired To Do the Things I Hate

"Man, I really hate doing the quarterly reports," you sighed.  I looked at you in utter shock.  Not because of the sentiment - everyone hates doing quarterly reports - but because you thought I would care.

What did you want me to do?   Tell you that I would do the quarterly reports?  To not trouble yourself with such things?  That you should try to, oh I don't know, run the fucking company while I personally deal with the billing discrepancies?

I wish I had more quarterly reports to give you.  I wish I could make you do quarterly reports every day, all day.  I wish I could explain to you how many fucking quarterly reports I've made in my lifetime and how completely done I am with them and anything that even says "quarterly" in its title.  But instead I just nodded in a disinterested fashion, knowing that we will never get along.

"Thanks," I said, nonsensically.

The Stress of the Job

Today my colleague asked me, quite casually, how you were faring.  I said fine.  What was I supposed to say?  That I've been working, on average, two extra hours a day since you started?  So I said fine. 

But then the woman clucked at me, like I had said something awful.  "What?" I asked.  "Can't you see when someone is stressed?" she said rhetorically.  I frowned at her.  Stressed?

I decided to clear things up.

"Are you stressed?" I barked in the general direction of the cubicle farm.  You poked your head around the flimsy wall which interrupts my view of the office floor, but said nothing, damningly.  "You really don't have to be stressed," I said, and you smiled at me like I had said something nice before disappearing back into your 6x6" box.  I frowned, realizing that I should have been more clear.

What I meant was: Your work here does not merit being stressed.  Were you to disappear on your next lunch break, we would all survive.  I'm sure the receptionist would worry a bit, perhaps even send an email or two - maybe even call the cops, she's always overreacting.  But the company would go on as before and we'd replace you in a week.  That seems pretty low stress to me.

"See?  He's stressed," said my colleague, like this was somehow all my fault.

I really need you to start looking more serene.

My Assistant Cannot Copy Correctly

I handed you a binder full of documents this morning and asked you to copy them.  I was really quite excited when you responded by asking where a staple remover could be found.  It showed some initiative, some foresight.  There were multiple documents in the binder that contained staples and you had noticed that.  You had deduced, or perhaps learned first hand, that documents cannot be copied with staples in them.  Not well, anyway.  I was momentarily delighted with you and your precocious nature. 

Sadly, when you returned the documents to me, I knew I had misjudged you once again.  They came back to me unstapled, out of the binder, and in slight disarray.  I looked at them, then at you in disgust.  "Thanks," I said.  I considered making you staple them again.  After all, how else will you learn that documents should be returned to their natural state after manhandling them?

But I didn't think I could handle any more disappointment.  I flipped my tie over my shoulder and started to staple.

I had it done perfectly in fifteen minutes.