The Breaker Upper

Last week I went on a job interview. While I love my little, bohemian retail gig with its assortment of the coolest women ever, there have never been enough hours and since the Christmas season ended even less so. I get a sweet discount and want to keep working there, but I need something else to add to it as being inside this house and my head all day and night is making me a little loco. I have been job hunting since last summer and sending off resumes, but since I got the Covid bounce last June, there are a whole lot of other people doing the same thing. The competition is fierce and I rarely hear back from anything I’ve applied for. Last week, though, the employment storks flew overhead and dropped a listing in my lap for an office position at a medical spa. I checked out their website (Skin resurfacing!! Botox!! Fillers!! What does all this stuff even do?? I don’t know but I think I need it!!!) and I was like, yep, that will work for my current needs.

I sent my resume, and a mighty fine cover letter if I do say so myself, and they contacted me two days later for a phone interview which I aced because I’ve sort of made a career of interviewing for jobs. The following day I was asked via email to interview in person for the position, and even though it was the coldest, rainiest day ever, I was glowing from the inside out in anticipation of all those employee discounted anti-aging procedures. Not really. I slept crappy the night before and wanted to stay home drinking coffee and look outside the window and say, “Thank God I don’t have anywhere to go today,” instead of dressing like Sinbad the Sailor in a Nor’easter to go sell my skill set.

But I sucked it up and put the directions in my phone even though I sort of knew where it was because of my crack navigation skills, and then it turned out it wasn’t where I thought it was. It wasn’t even close to there and Google Maps had me in and out of a residential area and turned around and then I was headed west and I didn’t want a job WAY OUT THERE so I was kind of annoyed because there was no indication in the phone interview that I would have to drive that far for discounted Botox. Finally I made it, stressed and ten minutes late which is a stellar start to an interview. I waited all of thirty seconds because they run a way tighter ship than my lost, underemployed self, when in came the doctor and owner of the center and yadda, yadda, yadda.

During the yadda, he told me he loved women, LOVED THEM. I mean who else can bring life into the world, amiright? But women, once they get to a certain age, tend to dry up and need help to feel better about themselves and give them back the youth of their twenty year old self. I looked down at my chapped hands that scream in agony as they get slathered in hand sanitizer a dozen times a day and nodded in agreement, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the dry place he was talking about.

He asked about my experience and I gave him the Cliff notes version and he said, “That’s interesting,” with the same enthusiasm as me when someone tells me the details of their mother’s recipe for meatloaf. He told me that women come in for all kinds of treatments and quite often they don’t want anyone to know, not even their husbands, and what he’s learned from years of doing this is that women are deceitful. I sat up straighter. Did he just tell me that women are deceitful? Did he really just say that to me? Does he know that I’m a women or is he one of those people who don’t see gender? And then he said it again.

Moving right along, he also said it was important that the newest employee fit in because they were like family. He had, in fact, just treated the staff and their significant others to a little getaway in Mexico and that’s when my face gave up the goods. You go on vacation together? No no no. In the history of my working life I have never, and I MEAN NEVER, wanted to vacation with coworkers. Not even if it’s free. A vacation is for the sole purpose of getting away from everyone in the Department of Misfit Toys, not hanging out at a pool and having to suck everything in for five days. Besides that, a few months ago when I was in a hot tub I discovered that my bathing suit top gets big air pockets inside that sound like a gas explosion as they search for an exit point. Over wine and starlight and serious conversations about life, random bubbles would climb up my top and launch themselves out and I kept saying, You guys, it’s my suit!!!” and they said “Did you know it farted when you bought it?”

Dr. Doctor talked about his patients and how they range from their 30s all the way up to, heck, 60ish, and I said, “Oh 60s, hmmmm, interesting,” in my meatloaf voice. What about somebody, say, 65? Does that dried up fossil actually come in and think she can look better? I mean, what are you supposed to do with her? Sheesh, at that point she needs a miracle worker, amiright? Things were winding down and I was asked if I had any questions or anything to add. I had A LOT to add but I gave him a smile and said, “Well, this sounds like a very, very special place and I really appreciate the time you have taken to talk to me,” then went back out into the Nor’easter wiser than when I walked in.

The next day I woke up and thought, “Oh my gawd, what am I going to do if they actually offer me this job? What the heck….” which now seems comical to think they’d want somebody my age front and center in their business. Here’s the before before and then she got some treatments from us and now she looks like a regular before which was the best we could do considering what we had to work with, because pssssst, she’s in her 60s.. I sent a thank-you-so-much email and said it didn’t seem like the right fit for me and I sure hoped they found the perfect match. Two hours later I got an email from them saying that though they loved meeting me and learning more about me they were going to go in another direction.

Excuse me???

I read it three times. I checked to make sure my earlier email had been sent. I had chalked the whole thing up to a learning experience in the land of injectables, and now they were trying to reject my rejection with their own rejection?

I wrote all kinds of responses to them in my head, every one being adamant about who rejected who first, including a screenshot of my email with the time clearly indicated. I had therapy later that day and told my therapist the whole story which she found very entertaining until the end and said, “Wait, they sent you a not interested email after you sent them a not interested email?” “Exactly.” I said. “They can’t do that,” she said, “you were the breaker-upper.”

If Mark were here he would say that kind of job isn’t like me at all and he would be right, but I don’t have him as a guardrail in my life to careen against. I did imagine him saying, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner,” with his faux outrage and I’d giggle, he’d say it was their loss, and life would go on.

Life does go on, a lot harder and far less bright, but there are many things that have remained the same. Just like when Mark was here, I am still managing to get in my own way and failing to pay attention to what I know and what he told me a hundred times, “Just write, Kath, that’s what you’re supposed to do with your life. Write and somehow it will work out.”