How would you respond if someone asked you, “If you walk into a liquor store to count the unsold bottles, but the clerk is screaming at you to leave, what do you do?” during a job interview? At The Morning News, Giles Turnbull tried to answer the weirdest job interview questions. His answer to the question: “What in the name of God would I be doing counting unsold bottles in a liquor store? Are you trying to fuck with my mind?”
How Badly Do You Want this Job?
Kathleen Alcott on the Writing Life
At the Rumpus, Kathleen Alcott provides a poignant recollection of what she inherited as a writer from her father: “And is it worth it? Was it for my father, is it for me, for nearly every writer I’ve met, whose default answer is ‘Yes’?”
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“My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.”
“If [Langston] Hughes and Cullen were competitors, of sorts, for the prize of principal African American poet of their generation, Cullen may have had an early lead, and during the later 1920s and early 1930s they were often discussed in tandem.” At The Boston Review, Major Jackson takes a look at the career and legacy of Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen.
Empathy for the Devil?
Ruth Franklin of TNR probes the weaknesses of American novels about terrorism.
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Weekend Reading: David Foster Wallace Edition
Looking for something to read this weekend? Perhaps you should work your way through The Electric Typewriter’s round-up of 19 essays by David Foster Wallace.
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Kanye West, Featuring Eustace Tilley
Kanye‘s Twitter feed meets the New Yorker caption contest: brilliant.
Since a high proportion of (notably fiction) writers need to earn their bread in some way or another and be forced to put up with such idiocy, I would advise pretending you are a 1950’s era secret agent and the entire job interviewing/hiring/work-life environment is East Berlin:
a.) Beware intelligence and quirkiness in answering questions of this type. The fact you have to go through this process is a sign you are applying for a job in which such qualities are not valued. Do not abandon assumption without extensive verification situation is otherwise.
a.) Seek to blend in and subvert them from the inside for your own gain. Keep an eye out for excess staplers, note pads, and pencils. There is nothing like writing with note pads and pencils.
b.) Develop careful alliances with others of like mind (ideally from the shipping company downstairs). Ridicule entire system with abandon in neutral territory. Develop new ideas for subversion.
c.) Know the terrain and hostile forces. I could have accurately predicted one layoff in Feb 2008 by correctly assessing the passive-aggressive body language of the person who hired me the previous August. Another person gave away his obsessive compulsive micromanaging in the simple act of putting on and taking off his winter gloves several times during the interview. If you have an overwhelming, gut-deep urge to run out the door in a cold sweat during the interview, for God sakes, RUN!
d.) Get the ‘canned answers’ to these questions. Practice until you can recite them automatically and with a fanatical gleam in your eye. (Repeat 1000 times.. “The bottles WILL be counted! The bottles WILL be counted!)
Good luck. I will deny ever having briefed you on any of this. If caught, you are on your own.
Moe Murph
Battle-Hardened Administrative Dogsbody