Account Executive

Some serious attire-related anxiety precedes this interview. My enviable wardrobe is still located in Brooklyn, while my person is decidedly in Los Angeles, making options pretty scant, shoes being the most damning deficiency. I go to Ross, hoping to dress for less. I buy the single pair of even remotely appropriate dress shoes in my size. I have long feet. I will not admit to having large feet. They bear an unsettling resemblance to super-sized strips of uncooked bacon: long, thin and nearly translucent in the sun. The shoes themselves remind me of the sort of stock footwear 8-10 y/o girls wear to Methodist Sunday School. But given my pecuniary restraints, they'll have to do. I briefly consider a few irregular skirt suits, which line the Misses Section racks with the ominous, yet still somehow impotent authority only business professional clothing can exude. I decide against accruing more credit card debt to purchase an irregular rayon ensemble. Mentally, I'm opting for an understated cowl neck teal dress my loving mother sent me recently, bearing the sweet but vague card, “Happy Fall!”

The day of the interview I shower meticulously, as though the interrogation won't be strictly intellectual. Everything looks to be in order, only the dress is shorter than I remembered. I feel a bit more like a partially defrocked sexualized Druid than a burgeoning account executive. I attempt to add leggings and then black cigarette pants underneath -- the results wholly unsatisfying and altogether too older-second-cousin-at-Thanksgivingy for my liking. I even go so far as to pose for a few self-timer photo shots in the doorway, to get a less corporeally confined perspective on the whole loose jersey floating well above the knee dilemma. Non-plussed and confirmed in my suspicions of sexy cultishness, I decide a drastic change in aesthetic strategy is in order. I pull out some trusted (though woefully faded) designer trousers and a men's button up western shirt with the sort of collar that demands popping. Then the cherry of the new vision: a navy micro-pinstriped men's suit jacket. In 45 or so deliberative seconds I've gone completely androgenous. I add a pendant to the suits lapel, just in case they forget I'm a lady, and to be double plus sure, the whole thing is bottomed off with black-patten and buckle little girl shoes. I'm not exactly what you would call satisfied with the ensemble, but at least I'm no longer imagining the first thing they say to me as, “Nice gams toots!”.

On the bus an attractive suited man with striking hazel eyes very politely asks if he can sit next to me, even though there are plenty of empties lining the 720 Rapid Metro. This is a good sign. I feel understated and sensible, but clearly still in possession of indispensable mate-alluring feminine flair, an essential for any woman who wants to penetrate a boys club and not the other way around.

I get there early. My cheap shoes are already cutting the bejeezus out of my heels. I take them off and stroll around the block barefooted, trying to sync my erratic heart-beat up with the soft padded rhythm of my feet hitting the cement. It occurs to me that in New York I'd never walk around barefoot, no matter how fancy the neighborhood, but for some reason in Mid-Wilshire the threat of broken glass and bodily fluids seems less imminent. After a leisurely turn around the block I'm only 15 minutes early so I decide to go on up and brave the reception area for a while if necessary.

The office is unsettlingly empty. A single distant voice can be heard having a low-tone pretty clearly personal conversation in the farthest reaches, but I don't call out or even consider it. I do a meditative turn around the waiting area, which is generic, lined with yellow ochre micro-suede couches. Two perfect fans of Picture magazine radiate from the glass coffee table. I take a seat, concentrating hard on my heartbeat. So far, no signs of life, outside of the distant deeply engaged voice.

A vaguely European looking older man enters, glances dismissively in my direction and barely grunts in response to my tenuous 'Hello'. He goes in to an office, unlocking the door first. A flash of dread crosses my mind as I consider the probability he'll be the interviewer. So far, the portents are as they say, auspiciously bad.

The sound of high heels approaching on industrial carpet. The kind of heels that hunt down baby seals by smell alone. A young woman enters, wearing tailored business shorts (a trend I hate), a short sleeve white blouse and a very feminine black silk vest. She's definitely like, textbook hot. The shark sticks terminates near the reception desk and she starts emitting these chirping sounds I assume are salutations. I can hear the Euro man shuffling out from behind his desk, like an aged but avid specimen responding to what may be the last mating call he'll ever get.

“Hi. I'm here to check on your equipment?” She cheeps (and as far as I can tell, without irony).

(Prefaced by stereotypical disgusting French male laugh) “And who are you my lovely lady? And what is zis about checking my equipment?”

He practically runs over to her, his perfectly starched pot belly jouncing along. He takes her arm in his and and leads her back to his office without really waiting for a response.

Okay, so she's clearly here in some professional capacity to check on 'ze equipment', but he's fawning all the same, asking if she models and where. She giggles and says some stuff like she used to model, but its 1 in a million, BCBG, some other unintelligible chirps.

They walk back across my view, presumably to scope out ze equipment. He's now touching the small of her back. He starts asking her all sorts of unnerving little inane personal questions, eventually leading her back to his Corner office and offering her a seat. Ever so often his cell phone rings. He answers at least 3 different calls, his response is scarily formulaic:

"Allo?"
"..."
"Just cut ze bullshit and tell me what you want".
"..."
"Call me back when you are ready to cut ze bullshit."

I hear her voice from the office. “Well, its not my dream job, but I'm a working type girl,” (Again, no irony), “I just love working.”

“My dear, ze ting is, someone as beayuuutiful as yourself should be able to use zis beauty, it is a rare gift...”

(Followed by more unintelligible fawning and chirps of pleasure).

“No really, you, and I hope you will forgive me for saying zis, but you have a lovely butt.”

(Embarrassed but clearly edified chirping).

So now I'm trying not to listen, intentionally depriving myself of what is basically comedic gold  because I've noticed a distinct correlation between my attention to their exchange and the profusion of sweat accumulating on my nose.

Male footsteps on industrial carpet. A well-dressed, middle-aged man enters, his crisp striped shirt unbuttoned one too many. He greets me warmly, we exchange palm sweat. I'm shown to the conference room, which as luck would have it, abuts the Frenchman's office with wide open, double glass doors. Buttoned-Down Greg immediately goes to close them, mildly muffling the still full-scale fawn-n-chirp-a-thon underway within. Monsieur gets up from his desk, his whole body visible as he pops his head through the ajar glass door.

“I prefer zis one.” He smirks, looking at me even more disdainfully and pointing to the I guess, like empirically hotter chick.

My face must have momentarily betrayed me before I could artfully apply my most forced, acerbic smile, instantly selected from a whole reservoir of twisted acerbic smiles I keep on hand. Gregory and his buttons look mortified, watching me. My butt feels bad about itself, while my head is outraged and indignant. It keeps smiling like a slighted idiot, the head that is. The butt is definitely frowning, in its own buttish way. In mocking recognition of his colossal rudeness to me and all my physical constituents, Monsieur Jacques Ass then offers a light apology,

“I only joke,” then (as if he needed to up the grossness ante any more), winks at the preferred damsel, who is not ever there to interview for the job I'm clearly qualified for.

At this moment, I feel pretty painfully angry with myself for so much attire-related anxiety, what with the legs and the suits and the little girl shoes, into which I can literally feel the blood from my heels pooling -- all in some futile effort to ensure respect in a male-dominated potential workplace, all the while forgetting they wouldn't respect me now matter how I dressed. They might flatter me if I'd gone the leggy route, or in this case, humiliate me for modest plainness. But I'm mad at myself because once again, I've been soul-crushingly naive about relations with the opposite sex.

Now, I'm imaging the Monsieur reading this. I can see his pock-marked little face scrunching up in to a disgusting nasal laugh. I imagine him saying, "She wouldn't have written zis if the Monsieur had fawned all over her instead of ze goddess. She is just ze poor jealous woman". Then I imagine the hot chick sucking his dick, greying pubes spilling out around her perfectly formed mouth, her eyes inexpressibly sad as she regrets looking up over his well-nourished torso. I imagine her feeling just as uncomfortable as I do, but in some socially ingrained way, also hollowly victorious. 

The moment distends awkwardly. Greg and his buttons jump ship, go to the bathroom, do a line, call mom, Leave the Room, whatever. I'm left there to serenely gaze in to the Monsieur's office, which I'm facing, trying to look unflappable and classy.

Greg returns after an unpleasant period of time ,still unbuttoned, but with another higher-up in tow.

They are looking for a self-starter, a jack of all trades sales/admin team member. They keep using the term, “point person,” which makes me visualize myself standing in the middle of this Roman coliseum while 10,000 men point and laugh at me.

I keep it admirably together, talk about myself with alternating gravity and levity. I sell my personality, (especially since we've already established I'm not much in the looks department). At some point I'm pretty sure I actually say I have a “semblance of expertise,” without irony.

The second man looks to have full body eczema and a rodent-like face covered in freckles. There's almost no indentation between his nose and his bulging blue eyes. When he looks at me I feel like we've met before, at maybe like, a family reunion.

The thing wraps up nice and neat. My horn has been full hilt tooted. As I'm walked out by Greg and his Buttons, he apologizes for the Monsieur's behavior sheepishly, offering the lame excuse, “He's French”.

There are a myriad of terribly witty, bone-cutting  I-Should-Have-Saids that I wish I could put here without lying to you and myself. 

Instead I stiffly respond, just a little too loudly, “My sense of humor is not altogether undeveloped,” which judging by the look on his face, was not the right thing to say.