Not the job I interviewed for...
While I was living in Los Angeles, my employer was getting behind on paying me. At times, he was as many as four months behind. We only got paid, it seemed, when he found another "investor." I began to realize that "investors" were being sought to pay off previous investors in what appeared to be either a scheme or a futile attempt at survival. It was time to bail.
I began circulating my resume in Southern California. My goal was merely to stay in Southern California and to find a job closely related to my primary love within my field of computer science - Artificial Intelligence. I came across an ad for a company in San Diego and sent them my resume.
I received a telephone call from a woman that gushed over my resume and told me she really needed to interview me for a job in San Diego. To our mutual luck, she would be attending a "high school reunion" at a hotel next to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport). She asked if I would be willing to meet her there for an interview the day after the high school reunion. I accepted.
I arrived at the hotel, sat down in the lobby as instructed and a woman came up to me, introduced herself as Rachel (not her real name) and sat down next to me. She pulled out my resume and conducted a very short interview, smiling profusely throughout the event. After about 15 minutes she told me that she would love to have a second interview down in San Diego with me. She was getting ready to check out of the hotel and would need to go. She smiled and asked, "would you help me with my bags?"
On the way up to her room, she asked me whether I felt it "too forward" of her to invite me into her hotel room. She pointed out that "we are both adults." I thought this strange but I’ve met many strange people in my field and this was not yet an Earth-shattering example of lunacy. I entered the room to help her with her bags. She sat down on the bed and smiled. I grabbed her bags, picked them up and headed towards the door. In a rush she followed me, looking a little disturbed and escorted me to her car where I loaded the bags into her trunk, told her I looked forward to the interview in San Diego and left.
I didn’t hear from her for a few days so I called and asked about the interview. She told me she was happy to hear from me and offered a day to meet. Once again I agreed and drove down to San Diego for the interview. At the company they didn’t really interview me very much. They showed me some of their software, told me what they did and showed me around the offices. One of the male workers in an area where some workers were clustered looked at me and said, "watch out, Rachel is one wild woman."
Rachel invited me to lunch at a cafeteria in the same business park. She tried to sell me on moving to San Diego. I already had a good impression of San Diego, so that was never a problem.
I returned to Los Angeles to find a message on my machine. Rachel had decided that I was perfect for a client of theirs in Santa Barbara (North of Los Angeles). I had never been to Santa Barbara, but the client was a University and I decided to give it a shot. She arranged for an interview with her client in Santa Barbara, made hotel reservations for me and told me to meet her there at a specific date and time.
I drove up to Santa Barbara. It was a bit of a ride but nothing heroic. Upon finding the hotel, I went into the lobby and asked for my room, telling them I had a reservation. The reservation clerk had some trouble finding the reservation, but then eyed a note on his desk. He placed the note in front of me and asked if I were Steve. I affirmed while looking down at the note. The note was from Rachel and it told the clerk to put me in the room next to Rachel’s. I thought we would have the interview that night, but I later discovered it was not until the next day. Rachel already had plans for that evening. I was those plans.
Rachel took me out to dinner to "discuss the client" and go over the client’s requirements. We went to a Mexican restaurant and Rachel impressed me with her fluent Spanish. While eating she looked at me and asked, "so, what is your favorite sexual position?"
I had been trying to ignore her previous innuendos, figuring that I could manage her. I just wanted a job. I was really taken aback by this question.
I told her that my wife might not wish to have our sex life divulged, as it was our personal business. She looked at me and asked me why I had not told her I was married. I told her, "well, because I’m looking for a job, not a date."
She seemed to shrug off the news that I was married and we continued with the meal and with drinks. She continued to flirt and I continued to turn her down. The next morning, when we went to the interview, she was not in a very good mood. We met with "the client" who seemed to have little idea about why the heck we were there. His project was under-funded and he could not meet my demands for salary nor benefits. I explained to him that I had a wife and that we would both need health-care. He looked at Rachel and said, "Rachel, the guy’s married."
That was the last time I saw Rachel.
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Copyright © 2004 - 2008, Stephen DeVoy. All rights reserved. No permission to reproduce is granted without explicit permission, in writing, of the author.
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