I’ve been fired on very few occasions, sometimes my fault, sometimes it was good ole fashioned office bitchery and politics. One of those times when I was unemployed back in my early 20s, no money socked away, no place to “move back to” if I didn’t come up with rent money and with limited resources at my disposal, I did what everyone was doing back in the day. I took to Craigslist.
I had already removed my piercings and colored my hair a respectable shade of auburn to trick someone into thinking I was a professional business lady. Pfft. I paid up my rent with some insurance checks that were issued in my name but meant to be given to a Doctor for services rendered. Sorry, but having a roof over my head was my one and only priority.
I applied to job after job on my giant slower-than-grandma desk top computer and received very little interest in return. One of the positions I had applied to by email responded via Gmail chat. I remember feeling really excited about this opportunity as it sounded like such a grown-up job to have. It was a posting to be a local attorneys secretary/personal assistant. I pictured myself in one of those lady business suits with an inappropriately high hem line, carrying a flip phone and toting a briefcase. Perfect!
The gentleman’s pm to me said his name was Andrew Richards, he was a local environmental lawyer who was in the midst of a divorce. His wife had previously been handling all the calls, finances and personal errands so he was looking for a work wife of sorts. Yes! So much yes! We exchanged a few professional sounding messages before agreeing to meet at a local Starbucks for the interview. I’d never had an interview that wasn’t conducted in an office setting before, so I was a little leery about the particulars. He explained to me that he had an office in Clifton Park and in Albany so meeting in the middle/Latham would just be easier for him to do. Seemed like a legit reason, so I decided I wasn’t going to let my anxiety get in the way.
Fast forward a few days to the interview. Andrew was an average looking older gentleman with a nice build, adorned in business casual dress. He wore wire framed glasses and carried a posh looking briefcase. While I’m rehashing this in my mind I’m realizing that I apparently had a skewed view of which adults were deserving of my trust. Honestly, anyone in the world who carried a briefcase, in MY mind, had clearly made something of themselves and deserved the utmost of respect. I have no clue why I felt that way, but it’s not true at all. Note to self, the only thing owning a briefcase says about someone is that they went to the briefcase store. Ha.
So, Mr. Richards and I took our coffees to a small wire table on the patio where we wouldn’t be bothered by café conversational noise. It was a sunny day with a cool breeze and I was feeling really positive about my chances. We discussed various aspects of the position even touching on his divorce here and there, although I tried to steer the conversation away when it was brought up. Towards the end of his line of questioning he brought up his office dress code, which I took to meaning there was a solid chance I was going to land this job!
Andrew explained to me that it would only be him and myself in the office if I worked there, so the dress would be very casual. He said everything I was wearing would be more than appropriate, even glancing under the table at my strappy sandles, and flashing me a smile. He went on to say he would have no objections if I wanted to go even more casual and rock some flip-flops around the office.
I felt like there was some weirdness in that moment, but I could see his super lawyery briefcase staring back at me from the table and reminded myself of the bills stacking up at home. I politely smiled back, thanked Andrew for his time and said I was looking forward to hearing back from him. We shook hands and parted ways.
I drove home with the nervous excitement of a young desperate girl who was now seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.
Later that night I was exchanging PMs with my sister retelling the story of my fancy coffee shop interview when I saw Mr Richards log on. I watched his green dot intently while mentally debating whether it would be ok to send a pm thanking him once more for taking the time to meet with me. I ultimately decided against it as it was pretty late. He messaged me before I had the chance to log off. It was relatively generic, just a “he enjoyed meeting me’ kind of thing. It would have been rude to ignore him as he could clearly see I was also online, so I wrote back in kind. Mere moments later he replied with how he had narrowed the applicants down to two young women, myself and one other, and he felt badly that he could only afford to hire one. I innocently inquired if there was something I could tell him that might help in his decision. He replied apologetically for talking to me this late at night, but he was slightly intoxicated.
I leaned back in my chair feeling unsure as how to proceed, without waiting for an answer, he hit me with a barrage of PMs, saying that I had really nice feet, and he would love to have me work for him, but he wanted to know if I would feel comfortable wearing flip-flops or, dare I say, just walking around in bare feet. I pushed the keyboard away and stared blank faced at the screen with my bill pile visible thru the reflection in the monitor. I wondered if foot slut fell under the same employment category as, say, a prostitute. If it was in the same wheel house, I was curious what something like that would even pay.
I mean, a girls gotta eat, so would a little foot hooking really be the end of the world? I tried to pull back the visions of me in my power suit, flip phone in hand, super businessy briefcase, only this time I was walking around barefoot while Andrew sat quietly in the corner office steaming up his glasses with labored breathing, fap fap fapping away. I felt a lump of bile in my throat as I pondered if full health insurance would be offered, or if he would only pay for my podiatry needs. I could hear the pings as Andrews filthy foot related messages started to pile up on me. Too tired to make any big life decisions, I reached under the desk and turned the main power to the computer off and shuffled to bed.
When I woke up the next day, I had received an email of interest asking me to come in for an interview, in an office, one I’d heard of, with witnesses and shoes. I immediately called the number they had left me and set a meeting for that afternoon. Still a bit shaken from my creepy encounter of the foot loving kind, I showed up to my interview in my Sundays best, and focused on the task at hand. It was a now or never moment, I needed to land this job or ready myself for the hard knock life of foot sluttery. I still look back on this interview with a sense of pride as I wasn’t feeling my best but still managed to nail it on every level. So much win. I smiled, answered all questions enthusiastically without oozing desperation and ultimately landed the job on the spot and negotiated a higher pay than what was initially discussed.
My head was in the clouds as I drove home. It was like a giant weight had been lifted from my chest and I could breath again.
I turned the radio on hoping for some snappy 90s dance tunes for a celebratory car disco, but instead landed on a local talk station. The topic was “worst job interviews”, so I thought it would be relatable and good for a laugh. The first two stories were silly, I snickered a bit, not necessarily “the worst” in my opinion but entertaining nonetheless. Next up was a girl named Jessica.
She had responded to an ad on Craigslist, answering phones and assisting a lawyer with his daily errands. She had met up with the man at a neutral non office location, and went on to say she had gotten some pretty weird vibes off this guy in person. When she got home from the interview, she conducted an internet investigation (which was allot harder pre-facebook days). It turned out that the name he had given her wasn’t registered as being a practising lawyer anywhere, and the office address he had given to her didn’t exist. Feeling angry that someone may have prayed on her during a low time in her life, she sent a message to the interviewer siting what she had found and that he had better have an explanation or she would report him to the authorities. (To which I’m thinking, how? Didn’t you just say his name and address didn’t exist…but I digress.) When she sent him the message, she received a response back addressing zero of her concerns, instead explaining that she was definitely a top runner for the job, and then went on to discuss her future dress code. Flip flops anyone?.
vomits on dashboard She told the listeners that the name she had been given was ANDREW RICHARDS, he was not a lawyer, that is not his real name, and he was clearly just using Craigslist to lure desperate unemployed women into meeting up so that he could ogle them in person. Also, he tried to get as many perverted, foot related PMs as possible in before being called out on his BS.
I’m an idiot. I swear before this experience I would have climbed into the back of your windowless van if you were toting an engraved leather briefcase. How could I not when you’re so clearly a Doctor, Lawyer or perhaps the President. So if you were alive in the late 90s-early 2000s and you had the means to obtain a briefcase, and you never tricked me into your van for some weird sex stuff, that’s your bad. Would have been so easy for you. So so easy.
Thanks for being smarter than me Jessica.
Fun fact; I generally change people’s names to protect the innocent, but Andrew Richards already fucking lied about his name so changing it was entirely unnecessary.
Pretty polar 