Confidence of Steel

I got to the interview this morning about 10 or 15 minutes early, so I had to wait around in the cafe a bit for the manager. While I was waiting, one of my fellow stooges from the Chapters interview a few weeks back showed up. I remembered her because of the four of us, it was clear that her bullshit was the most fluent. I also remembered that she said during the interview that she used to work at the Second Cup, and talked at length about how much she adored working there. It was truly sickening; nobody who isn't mentally ill likes the service industry that much. Anyway, so she said something to one of the guys behind the counter, and he told her to have a seat. She turned and saw me, and I looked her in the face and gave her The Nod of Recognition. She looked at me, but just walked on and didn't acknowledge me in any way. I have seriously never seen anyone look more terrified in my life, it was really quite something. Presumably she was there for an interview, too? "Why would they schedule two at the same time?", I wondered. Then it hit me: it's time for Group Interview, part 2. I decided that if that's what was happening, I was going to walk out. I don't want this (or any) job badly enough to go through that again. Fuck. That.

Eventually the manager appeared. One of her staff pointed to me and said "She was here first", and she looked at me and mouthed the words "just a second", and went over to talk to bullshit girl. Evidently, she was just there to drop off a resume. Ha.

So annnnywaaay, the interview went well, I think. Another really relaxed, non-personality test type of interview, not unlike the ill-fated Starbucks interview from last week. Sadly this manager wasn't nearly as hot as the other one, but she seemed pretty nice just the same. She mostly just told me about the job in terms of shifts and what not and asked, "Would that be a problem for you?" a lot. The only thing I was kind of concerned about was working alone at night, even though the cafe is only open until 10:00pm. I just told her that after I'd been there for a while and had a sense of the customers, I would probably feel better about it. She also said that there's a great deal of "coffee training" involved. I'm having these nightmarish visions of sitting alone in a small room and being forced to watch corporate propaganda films. It wouldn't be the first time.

When I got hired at L.A. Express/Suzy Shier, they gave me this employee handbook that included tons of information about the history of the company and then afterwards made me write a test about it. They also made me watch a video about how to spot shoplifters and made me write a test based on that too. I always meant to compile a zine based on propaganda from various corporations, as it seems most of them try very hard to indoctrinate the new staff.