Another Meaningless Chapter

This SMS woke me up yesterday morning:


Pls check email for invite to 2nd interview – [cuntpany]


I checked my email, and as promised:


Whoreson at 8.59am.

Hi Cxxxxx,

You are invited to 2nd interview on Monday (9th March), 1.15pm
This is my only slot avail on Monday. Pls make time for it.

Pls confirm your attendance.

Regards, [whoreson]
[designation]
[cuntpany]


Whoreson can go to Hell before I turn up for his interview.

Whoreson is either being disrespectful or lacking in business writing skills. Probably both. In business correspondence, please do not use SMS lingo like ‘pls’, and short-forms like ‘avail.’ It makes you look bad. I wonder if Whoreson writes like this when addressing his CEO and his clients.

And why in the Hells am I being ‘invited’ to the second interview when I was dismissed within ONE MINUTE during the first? Obviously Whoreson has never heard of the saying ‘once bitten twice shy.’

I am still fuming over what happened during the first interview. I was told to report at 5.45pm but I was fifteen minutes earlier. Whoreson told me to wait until the stated time. Seeing there were two other candidates waiting and that I was too early, I agreed.

While waiting at the nearby bus-stop, I saw the two candidates leave the building at around 5.40pm. Five minutes later I arrived back at the cuntpany. The door to the interview room opened and seeing it was my time to go, I walked towards it, only to be barred by the cold and unsmiling Whoreson.

He told me to sit down at the sofa, which I compiled. A pretty lady took my slot and went in. Two other people shared the sofa with me, another attractive lady and a man. They were talking to each other and to pass the time I timed the length of the interview. The lady who was inside talked to Whoreson for fifteen minutes. After she left, the guy next to me went in and got five minutes, maybe less.

Miss Attractive took her turn and she spent quite a time with Whoreson. I heard them laughing over something and I saw Miss Attractive gave him her name card. When he opened the door – not before shaking her dainty hand of course – they were smiling at each other like lovers.

After Miss Attractive left I went in. I offered my hand but Whoreson didn’t bother to take it. Impatience evident on his face, he waved me to sit.

He asked me which position I was applying for. I said that I was applying for a marketing position. He looked a bit confused and asked me to specify. I replied that the job advertisement he put up didn’t specify the exact position. (Judging from the two lines that made up the job description it would not be erroneous to say the position involved marketing.) Whoreson wasn’t impressed with me. I could see that his expression remained as black, as if I just raped his mother and asked him to compensate me for the abuse I took. You could argue that it was my mistake (it wasn’t my fault in the first place) which displeased him. However, it doesn’t take perfect eyesight to see that Whoreson showed me the same expression even before the interview.

‘So you are going for corporate sales?’, Whoreson asked.

Left with no alternative, I nodded.

He scanned through my resume. ‘You have been working in supporting positions all this while. What makes you think you can do a front-line job?’

His question threw me off momentarily. I recovered and said being in a supporting role doesn’t mean I can’t do a front-line position. I went on to say that as a business graduate, I would be able to apply what I have learned.

In all fairness, I admit that my delivery wasn’t as articulate as I would have liked. Some professional interviewers and Toastmasters instructors may even frown at my answer. But my eyes were on the bastard’s face all the while and all I saw was derision, condescension, contempt, impatience and he nodded at every line of my speech as if I was born to amuse him.

‘You can go now. If you are shortlisted for the second interview we will call you.’ He hurriedly got up, opened the door and waved me out. I looked at him, asked him, ‘that fast?’ but Whoreson obviously felt I was too inferior to merit his replying. I offered him my hand and again he didn’t shake it.

I was so disgusted that I couldn’t stop cursing on my way back to the train station. One would expect a manager to at least show some basic courtesy. I don’t know what happened to him when he was young. I assume that his father was marketing his wife while his mother was too busy turning tricks. This sordid childhood he endured must have a detrimental impact on his character, which would explain why such an anal-retentive bastard like himself could climb the corporate ladder so readily. He must have learned from his harlot of a mother the best way to give head.

It didn’t escape my notice that Whoreson spent a lot of time with his female interviewees. The ladies got fifteen and twenty minutes; the other guys got five minutes each and I one minute. I don’t think gender preference is stipulated in the job description. I think Whoreson is the kind of cheap bastard who doesn’t even want to pay $50 for a cheap whore in Geylang. If the bastard wanted a cheaper whore I could show him around the lorongs where $10 whores are available. Desker Road is also a good place for a cheapskate. After he has had his ten dollars’ worth of pleasure we can even go for some curry in the nearby Little India. Or maybe he doesn’t patronize such places because he doesn’t want to meet his mother and sister (if he had one) hawking their silicon-enhanced wares and peddling their abused flesh for a dollar to foreign laborers.

There are men who fantasize about having sex in the office, with nurses, secretaries and air hostesses, who relish being in a superior or subordinate role in role-playing, and it would come as no surprise if Whoreson belonged in this category. Maybe he hasn’t had a date in his entire life, having been snubbed by every female of every species which he tried so adamantly to accost and seduce. It must masturbate his ego to have a pretty woman talk and smile with him, even though she has an ulterior motive. Humans rely on fantasies and delusions to keep ourselves sane, and even a sub-species like Whoreson is no exception to the rule.

Still, one does not shit where one eats. Whoreson has never understood this principle and while his brain resides in his ‘little head’ as a result of his deprived childhood and evolutionary misfiring, he would never recognize it.

So why am I called to go for the second interview? The answers are obvious and none too flattering. One, the majority of the interviewees were still employed, meaning that they would see his job as a part-time assignment and therefore unable to commit much time and energy. Two, after eliminating the people who are deemed non-committed, he is still left with a pool of candidates. The second round is yet another elimination process and the third will be the confirmation. Third, he probably sees me as unsophisticated and therefore moldable and exploitable.

Another reason is that his other candidates have all REJECTED him. He needs people desperately and I’m one of the few who is left. It doesn’t matter to Whoreson how many people he calls to his interview. He doesn’t even bother to read the resumes. He gets paid handsomely for amusing himself with squirming and ingratiating candidates. He doesn’t need to break a sweat for doing a cushy job but the interviewees would have to spend time and energy getting to his obscure office. In other words, Whoreson doesn’t care.

Having dismissed me with such finality, it is inexplicable that he would give me a second chance. The way he conducted his interview is shameful. It makes me wonder what kind of company he works for, a marketing company or a social escort agency. Judging from the fact that the ladies were very well ‘interviewed’, it would not be amiss to claim the latter.

One can argue that I should just go for his fucking interview because I need a job. What differentiates us from dogs is pride and self-respect. Dogs have neither; they eat shit and shit where they like. There are certain jobs like social escorts and high class whores - the two are often used synonymously – that pay very well, but would you want your wife and daughters to go into the profession?

I have grave doubts about Whoreson’s sincerity. I dare say it would yet being another wasted trip, a trip which yields the same insufferable process and inevitable conclusion. Why should I waste my time going there to be insulted, especially when the motherfucker is just fucking around like what his prostitute mother does every night, even when she has her monthly courses? I don’t mind taking the trouble of going for interviews, tiring and despairing these may turn out to be, but the other party MUST at least be SINCERE.

I remember an interview I had with a jewellery technician. The job involved repairing minor damages to expensive jewellery. The guy who interviewed me described himself as uneducated. He got into the line because he had no other alternative. He spoke to me in a very matter-of-fact fashion and said there was no need for me to follow his footsteps because I have a bright future. The guy said he would employ me – I had passed his eyesight tests – but I should think it over. We talked for a while and he narrated to me that how he had fifty-year olds who went for the interview and he had to turn them away because they couldn’t see as well. But he at least bothered to ‘entertain’ (this is my language) them.

Now, the difference between this uneducated technician and the well-educated Whoreson is apparent. Both are managers, but unlike Whoreson, the technician understands what is decency and basic respect. For all his education, Whoreson doesn’t know the difference between the corporate pricks he sucks and his own when addressing people. Is it so damn demeaning for one of his station to practise basic courtesy, even to people he rejects?

After I narrated my ordeal to my classmate who is in finance, she shrugged knowingly. She told me that anal-retentive interviewers are a dime a dozen. Even if the bastard employs me, there is no point in working under him, she said. A person who cannot treat people right the first time cannot be expected to treat people right the second. It’s no big loss. She seemed to identify with the view that women, especially the pretty ones enjoy a huge advantage in the corporate world. (I don’t know how true this is. If anyone reading this works in the business industry, please enlighten me.)

I am having serious thoughts about pursuing my business degree. Perhaps my taking up a business course is reactionary and retaliatory in nature. I remember acutely my disgust during my poly days when I saw the easy lives business students led compared to the shit engineering students found ourselves in. While we were struggling in vain to get the damn machine to work, all the BA people had to do was to set up stalls selling Valentine and Chinese New Year’s gift items and that was their final-year project.

Moreover, my hatred for engineering stems partly from dissatisfaction and jealousy. I was so ridiculously bad at engineering that even my lab assistant advised me to quit. Despite my best efforts I was barely passing my subjects (If I got an E, it was a massive cause for celebration.) I looked at my friends in Business and how they complained about their assignments and it enraged me. (I looked through one – Business Law – and I was stuck by how easy the questions were, even through I wasn’t a business student.) It was a case of the moon being brighter on the other side, albeit with some justification. Why endure three and a half years of incomprehensible maths and science when I could easily write my way out of Management, Human Resources, Organizational Behavior and Business Law – these are very simple at polytechnic level.

My juvenile petty hatreds aside, working life was unfortunately no different from school. Every day I sweat for slave wages, my existence revolved around a lousy machine which should have been scraped long ago but somehow by the most tragic turn of fate I had to maintain. I have had hydraulics and industrial grease splashed into my eyes, nearly lost one when I lightly brushed my cornea against a vent – a fraction of an inch the wrong way and I would have been blinded. The grime I got on my person could not easily be washed off. Even after half an hour of showering the smell still persisted. I constantly wondered why I was doing this, whom I was doing it for. I looked at people in Shenton Way, the people in smart suits and who got all the opportunities to travel and all I got was an enforced stay in this cuntry that I hate and having no opportunities to improve myself. It ate at me like a cancer. Every day I dwelled on it and every day I suffered. I was determined to get into Business, which I perceived would afford me the opportunities I crave.

I am increasingly critical of the business course I am enduring. The workload is inhumane and students have little chance of exploring the subject and the way the course is structured forces students to sacrifice intellectual curiosity for tips and ready answers. (40% is a good result ladies and gentlemen, 40% to pass the course, 40% to get that piece of paper.) To compound the situation, some of the assignments are so poorly written that it would be a travesty to say that they are university papers.

I know I have been whining ad nauseam and it would not be unreasonable to dismiss my claims as indicative of a ‘loser’ mentality. However, when my fellow course mates, some of whom are in their first season – echo the same sentiments, something is obviously wrong. Like the engineering course I miraculously passed in poly, the degree I would get would be one that I secured without knowing anything about the requisite material.

Quite a few of my course mates have expressed their disillusionment by voting with their feet. I am inclined to do the same. After my encounter with Whoreson, I am beginning to wonder if I should be in business. After all, I don’t backstab people. I don’t like to exploit people. I don’t like to put on a mask and give head to get ahead. There are many aspects of business that I hate. I hate people. I hate ‘relations management.’ I hate the sanctimonious and hypocritical corporate values and overuse of the word integrity and paying lip service to ethics. I hate them all. The only enticing thing I could possibly find in the corporate world is the possibility of making use of people whom I hate. Use them like I was used. It gives me great motivation. I am still desperate for the fat paycheck and foreign assignments of course, but I now start to wonder which is truly my primary incentive. Payback or monetary.

As for Whoreson I hope he dies a slow and painful death. If I saw him helpless and bleeding to death on the road – the corpse I saw on Valentine’s Day comes to mind – I would go over and gloat. I will spit in his face. My ridicule would be the last thing he sees before he expires. I will give his carcass a good kick before I leave. I don’t know why I hate Whoreson so much. Maybe it’s because he exemplifies what is truly wrong with this world, what is anathema to me, an assault on my sensibilities and a desecration of the few values I still possess.

When that day comes, I will regret there is no Hell for Whoreson to go to.