downtown roadtrips

I loathe downtown interviews. And since all downtown parking garages charge by the half-hour, with the price increasing exponentially every 30 minutes, I’m well aware of how costly it is to go beyond the 30 minute mark. The last time I interviewed with a company that was located downtown, I tried hard to keep things speeding along at a respectable pace. My answers were clipped and straight to the point. If a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ question was posed, this is the answer that it received…no explanation forthcoming.

Yet, despite my best efforts, this interview ended up lasting 34 minutes, which included a sprint out of the elevator and down two blocks to the parking garage. My penalty for those lost four minutes was $16, eight dollars more than if I had walked out of the interview just a few minutes earlier.

Yesterday, I had another downtown interview. I felt reasonably sure that gentle persuasion to meet at a neutral location, like the Starbucks right across the street from my apartment, would not be agreed to. So, because I desperately need a job, I agreed.

My friend Gwen had taken Monday off, and with ample persuasion I was able to convince her to drive me downtown. “Think of it as a mini-road trip,” I told her.

“Yeah, a mini-road trip that will cut into my Young and the Restless time and eat up gallons of gasoline from my tank,” she countered.

“But,” I continued, “this isn’t just an investment in my future, but in yours as well. Think of it as a human stock market, and you’re purchasing shares of me. As I succeed, you’ll get dividends.”

“So you’re telling me that I invested in a dog,” she said. “Because, though I’m not great at math, a percentage of zero still means that I’m getting screwed.”

In the end, she agreed to give me a lift. As I made my way around her car, I noticed a dead wasp sitting on her dashboard. This is the same wasp that has adorned her dash for two years now.

“Gwen, aren’t you ever going to throw that thing out?” I asked.

“I leave it there as a sign to the other wasps. A sign that says they’ll meet the same fate if they dare fly inside my vehicle.”

Knowing her fear of all things bug-like, I plucked the wasp from the dash and tossed it into the parking lot. Gwen responded by repeatedly stomping on the insect for several seconds.

“It’s been dead for two years,” I told her. “Extra death induced activities really aren’t going to increase its deadness.”

“Better safe than sorry,” she said. “The last thing I need is some zombie wasp coming back to life and deciding that it’s going to seek revenge and maybe eat my brain.”

We pulled out of the lot and I started to give Gwen directions. “Oh, yeah…I know exactly where that building is. We’ll take a short cut down Second Avenue,” she said with the confidence of a city street driving veteran. And while some people possess an internal sense of direction that would rival the best GPS system, it turns out that Gwen does not. Her knowledge of navigating the downtown area more closely resemble a torn map, shabbily taped together, with a wad of bubble gum cementing the whole East side of the city.

With my interview quickly approaching, Gwen had us lost somewhere in the Warehouse district of town, heading down the wrong way of a one way street.

“Let me just ask this guy for directions,” she said as she rolled down the window.

The wafting scent of raw fish from the market place we were (illegally) parked in front of drifted in through her window as she was told that the building we were searching for was on the other side of town. She got directions and, after two missed turns and running a red light, she dropped me off at the correct place.

Exactly 15 minutes late for my interview.

Needless to say, I’m not expecting a job offer from them anytime soon.

She picked me up in front of the building five short minutes later. “You know, this was really fun,” she told me. “We’re going to have to do this more often.”

And with my current luck at finding a job, she just might get her wish. But next time I’ll suggest that we leave two hours earlier.