The Trouble with Eunuchs

I was laid off while on vacation.

"That's terrible!" said my friends. However, I'd planned it that way: it was going to be a lot better to be on vacation in Colorado, than to be stuck in San Diego, watching the whole place circle the drain.

The first couple of months, I decided to take it easy. After all, the holidays were going to be on us any moment, and we were going to be gone again for much of that time, anyway. I decided that after the first of the year, I'd really try in earnest to find something, and in the meanwhile, cherry-pick the jobs that would be ideal for me.

What a joke.

By the time we got back from a couple of trips, almost everyone else was unemployed, also, and those who weren't, were getting a crook in their necks from looking over their shoulders at work. For some reason, there's no glut of jobs available for group facilitators with ample freelance journalism and bus-spy experience. Go figure.

So, I began applying for just about anything.

"Think they'll notice if I don't have any actual piloting experience?" I ask a friend who was loitering on Facebook in the middle of the day, like me. They agree that it can't hurt to try.

I actually got a call last week from an ad agency where I really wanted to work; where I thought creativity could really count. A real interview -- a rarity these days where almost every ad is accompanied by a plea not to contact in person or by phone.

"Don't say anything about eunuchs," said my boyfriend, reminding me of my last interview fiasco. Last fall, when the handwriting was still being written on the wall about my job, I thought I'd begin some early trolling for a new job. I snagged a face-to-face in a local computer college about a job in curriculum development.

I immediately liked the director; she was about my age, and had a casual style all-around. She was very interested in my journalism stuff, and we had a great rapport, since she spent the entire time talking about herself. The whole thing was going swimmingly, especially if you count the fact that an entire water bottle leaked into my purse and onto the interview table. Not a paper towel in sight, so I kept casually swiping at the pool of water and pretended that I was able to concentrate on her questions. I shook out a hopelessly soaked letter of reference and decided to stuff it back into my bag. She didn't seem to care or even notice that my eye was twitching while she escorted me through the labyrinth of halls. We passed a classroom that was full of computers.

"This is where we teach UNIX," She said as she waved her arm, very Vanna-like, into the open doorway.

"You didn't really just say eunuchs, did you?" my mouth said, completely independent of my brain.

"Oh! You know UNIX? Fantastic!" The rest of her sentence went unheard, because I was trying to think of a way out of this mess. There simply wasn't one I could muster in time.

"Uh, no ... nevermind. It was just a joke. A very bad joke."

Wait for it, wait for it, I thought.

Talk about stink eye. I couldn't get out of there fast enough for either of us. By the time I hurled myself into my car, I was laughing hysterically. I reached for my phone, but it was dead, drowned in the morass. Insult to injury.

So, anyway, I didn't get the job. Damned eunuch-hater!

This time, I was determined to behave myself. I promised Robert I would try to keep my mouth under control, but since it's almost been a week without hearing back from the new interview, I'm chock-full of second guesses. Did I speak too frankly? Was I a smart-ass? Did I show too much of myself? Probably.

In any case, the thing I came away with, is that the owner basically asked if I had written anything lately. What was I going to do, have him read my blogs about my dad's death? Or, the one that's titled, "Things You Can't Read", that's full of my dark thoughts about a dead-beat client? Hardly. Almost as toxic as eunuchs, I'd say.

So, if nothing else, I realized that it's going to be a "What have you done lately?" kind of world, and I'll have to sink or swim on the demands for a smart-assed writer/facilitator/bus-spy.

I'm going to need a raft; it's going to be a very interesting year.