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the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2005.06.23

Tonight we got together with a bunch of friends and family for my girlfriend's 33rd. I heard two stories that I thought I'd pass on. One was about a job interview, as told by Kevin:

I went in to interview with [large international telco]. There was a problem with transit, and I was about five minutes late.

When I arrived, the hiring manager was waiting for me, pointed at his watch, and started hollering about my being 'really late'.

He then marched me into the meeting room, where I met with another employee. The manager left me with the other employee, who conducted the interview. Over the course of the interview, his two pagers went off at least ten times. When the pager went off one too many times, he looked at the pager, sighed, and said, "I don't know why anyone would want to work here!"

The other story was from Chako, a hairdresser:

A woman came in with her boyfriend last month, to get her hair done. She was heading to New York to be a model, and wanted a really nice haircut with colouring.

I had two other clients in progress, so one of the other girls washed this woman's hair. When the other clients were waiting for their colourings to set, I started to cut this woman's hair. And I found a bug.

Startled, I thought it must be some insect that blew into her hair on the street. But then when I went to the back of her head, I found a lot more. She had lice!

The woman and her boyfriend were aghast, and tried to think of how this could happen. Then the boyfriend said, "Maybe it was while we were in jail!"

Listening to Chako's story, I had a hard time picturing how a couple would have wound up in prison at the same time, and how they thought there was going to be some modelling future for a woman with lice. Bizarre!

rand()m quote

It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row