THE IGNORED
Bentley Little
(An Undead Scan v1.0)
Thanks, as always, to my friends and family.
Special thanks to the employees of the City of Costa Mesa with whom I worked from 1987 to 1995: both the friendly intelligent competent professionals I liked, and the small-minded backbiting bureaucratic assholes I hated.
PART ONE
Ordinary Man
ONE
On the day I got the job, we celebrated.
I’d been out of school for nearly four months, and I’d almost given up hope of ever finding employment. I’d graduated from UC Brea in December with a BA in American Studies—not the world’s most practical major—and I’d been looking for a job ever since. I’d been told more than once by my professors and my advisor that American Studies was ideal for someone attempting to start a career, that the “interdisciplinary course work” would make me more desirable to prospective employers and more valuable in today’s job market than someone with more narrow, specialized knowledge.
That was bullshit.
I’m sure the professors at UC Brea didn’t intentionally try to sabotage my life. I’m sure they really did think that a degree in American Studies was as valuable to people in the outside world as it was to them. But the end result of my misdirected education was that no one wanted to hire me. On Donahue and Oprah, representatives from major corporations said in panel discussions that they were looking for well-rounded individuals, not just business majors but liberal arts majors. But the PR they fed to the public through the media and what really went on were two different things. Business majors were being hired right and left—and I was still working part-time at Sears, selling men’s clothing.
It was my own fault, really. I’d never known what I wanted to do with my life or how I wanted to earn my living. After finishing my General Ed requirements, I’d drifted into American Studies because the department’s courses that semester had sounded interesting and fit easily into my work schedule at Sears. I gave no thought whatsoever to my career, to my future, to what I wanted to do after I graduated. I had no goals, no plans; I just sort of took things as they came, and before I knew it, I was out.
Maybe some of that came across in my job interviews. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t been hired yet.
It certainly didn’t show up on my resume, which was professionally typeset and, if I do say so myself, damned impressive.
I’d seen the notice for this job opening at the Buena Park Public Library. There was a big binder that contained flyers and notices for all sorts of government agencies, public institutions, and private corporations, and I’d been checking it out each Monday, after notices for the coming week were added. The jobs listed at the library seemed to be of a higher quality than those in the want ads of the Register or the Los Angeles Times, and anything was better than the so-called Career Center at UC Brea.
This position, listed under the heading “Business and Corporations,” was for some sort of technical writer, and the requirements looked promisingly nonspecific. No previous experience was necessary, and the only hard-and-fast rule seemed to be that all applicants have a bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, English, or Liberal Arts.
American Studies was nearly Liberal Arts, so I wrote down the name of the company and the address, and after driving back to the apartment and leaving a note for Jane on the refrigerator, I drove out to Irvine.
The corporation was a huge faceless building in a block of huge faceless buildings. I walked through the massive lobby and, following the directions of a security guard at the front desk, to the elevator that led to the personnel department. There I was given a form, a clipboard, and a pen, and I sat down in a comfortably padded office chair to fill out my application. I had already decided in my own mind that I would not get this job, but I dutifully filled out the entire application and turned it in.
A week later, I received a notice in the mail informing me that I had been scheduled for an interview on the coming Wednesday at one-thirty.
I didn’t want to go, and I told Jane I didn’t want to go, but Wednesday morning found me calling in sick to Sears and ironing my one white shirt on a towel on the kitchen table.
I arrived for the interview a half hour early, and after filling out another form, I was given a printed description of the position and led by a personnel assistant down a hall to the conference room where interviews were being conducted. “There’s one applicant ahead of you,” the assistant told me, nodding toward a closed door. “Have a seat, and they’ll be with you shortly.”
I waited on a small plastic chair outside the door. I had been advised by the people at the Career Center to always plan ahead what I was going to say in a job interview, to think of all the questions that I might be asked and come up with a prepared answer for each, but hard as I tried, I could think of nothing that might be asked of me. I leaned back, close to the door, and listened carefully, trying to hear what was being asked of my rival inside the room so I could learn from his mistakes. But the door was soundproof and kept in all noise.
So much for planning my answers.
I looked around the hallway. It was nice. Wide, spacious, with lots of light. The tan carpet was clean, the white walls recently painted. A pleasant working environment. A young, well-dressed woman carrying a sheaf of papers in her hand emerged from a doorway down the hall, passing by me without a glance.
I was nervous, and I could feel sweat trickling in twin rivulets from under my arms down the sides of my body. Thank God I’d worn a suit with a jacket. I glanced down at the paper in my hand. The description of the job’s educational requirements was clear—I didn’t have to worry about that—but the actual responsibilities of the position were vague, couched in indecipherable bureaucratese, and I realized that I did not really know anything about the job for which I was applying.
The door opened, and a handsome, business-suited man several years my senior strode out. He had a professional demeanor, his hair was short and neatly trimmed, and he carried in his hand a leather portfolio. This was who I was competing against? I suddenly felt ill-prepared, shabby in my appearance and amateurish in my attitude, and I knew with unarguable certainty that I was not going to get the job.
“Mr. Jones?”
I looked up as my name was called.
An older Asian woman was holding the door open. “Would you step in, please?”
I stood, nodded, and followed her into the conference room. She motioned toward three men seated at a long table in the front of the room, and promptly sat down on a chair next to the door.
I walked forward. The men looked forbidding. All three were wearing nearly identical gray suits, and none of them were smiling. The one on the right was the oldest, a heavyset gray-haired man with a severely lined face and thick black-framed glasses, but it was the youngest man, in the center, who appeared to be in charge of the proceedings. He had a pen in his hand, and on the table before him was a stack of applications identical to the one I had submitted. The short man on the left seemed to take no notice of my entrance and was staring disinterestedly out the window of the room.
The middle man stood, smiled, and offered me his hand, which I shook. “Bob?” he said.
I nodded.
“Glad to meet you, I’m Tom Rogers.” He motioned for me to sit in the lone chair in front of the table and sat down himself.
I felt a little better. Despite the formality of his attire, Rogers had about him a distinctly informal air, a casually relaxed way of speaking and moving that immediately put me at ease. He was also not that much older than me, and I figured that might be a point in my favor.
Rogers glanced down for a moment at my application and
nodded to himself. He smiled up at me. “You certainly look good here. Oh, I almost forgot, this is Joe Kearns from Personnel.” He nodded toward the small man staring out the window. “And this is Ted Banks, head of Documentation Standards.” The older man nodded brusquely.
Rogers picked up another sheet of paper. Through its translucent back, I could see lines of type. Questions, I assumed.
“Have you written any computer documentation before?” Rogers asked.
I shook my head. “No.” I thought it was best to be blunt and to the point. Maybe I’d get extra credit for honesty.
“Are you familiar with SQL and D-Base?”
The questions went on from there, not straying far from those technical lines. I knew right away that I would not get the job—I had never even heard most of the computer terms that were being bandied about—but I stuck it out to the end, bravely trying to play up my broad educational background and strong writing skills. Rogers stood, shook my hand, smiled, and said they’d let me know. The other two men, who had remained silent throughout the interview, said nothing. I thanked them for their time, made an effort to nod to each, and left.
My car died on the way home.
It was a bad end to a bad day, and I can’t say that I was surprised. It seemed somehow appropriate. So many things had gone so wrong for so long that what would have once sent me into paroxysms of panic now did not even phase me. I just felt tired. I got out of the car and, with the door open and one hand on the steering wheel, pushed it to the side of the street, out of traffic. The car was a piece of crap, had been a piece of crap since the day I’d bought it from a now defunct used-car lot, and part of me was tempted to leave it where it was and walk off. But, as always, what I wanted to do and what I actually did were two different things.
I locked the car and walked across the store to a 7-Eleven to call AAA.
It wouldn’t have been so bad, I suppose, if I hadn’t been so far away from home, but my car had died in Tustin, a good twenty miles from Brea, and the belligerent Neanderthal who was sent out by AAA to tow my car said that he was authorized to bring my car to any mechanic within a five-mile radius but that anything beyond that would cost me $2.50 a mile.
I didn’t have any money, but I had even less patience, and I told him to take my car to the Sears in Brea. I’d charge the tow, charge the auto work, and hitch a ride home from someone.
I got home at the same time as Jane. I gave her a thumbnail sketch of my day, let her know I wasn’t in the mood to talk, and spent the rest of the evening lying on the couch silently watching TV.
They called late Friday afternoon.
Jane answered the phone, then called me over. “It’s the job!” she whispered.
I took the receiver from her. “Hello?”
“Bob? This is Joe Kearns from Automated Interface. I have some good news for you.”
“I got the job?”
“You got the job.”
I remembered Tom Rogers, but I didn’t know which of my nonspeaking interviewers was Joe Kearns. It didn’t matter, though. I’d gotten the job.
“Can you come in Monday?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I’ll see you then, then. Come on up to Personnel and we’ll get the formalities straightened out.”
“What time?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“Should I wear a suit?”
“White shirt and tie will be fine.”
I felt like dancing, like jumping, like screaming into the phone. But I just said, “Thank you, Mr. Kearns.”
“We’ll see you Monday.”
Jane was staring at me expectantly. I hung up the phone, looked at her, and grinned. “I got it,” I said.
We celebrated by going to McDonald’s. It had been a long time since we’d gone out at all, and even a trip like this seemed a luxury. I pulled into the parking lot and looked over at Jane. I made my voice sound as British and snobbish as I could, given my complete lack of any dramatic talent: “The drive-thru, madam?”
She caught on and looked at me with a superior and slightly disapproving tilt of her head. “Certainly not,” she sniffed. “We will dine indoors, in the dining room, like civilized human beings.”
We both laughed.
As we walked into McDonald’s, I felt good. The air outside was cool, but inside, the restaurant was warm and cozy and smelled deliciously of french fries. We decided to splurge—cholesterol be damned—and we each ordered Big Macs, large fries, large Cokes, and apple pies. We sat on plastic seats in a four-person booth next to a life-sized statue of Ronald McDonald. There was a family in one of the adjoining booths—a mom and dad taking their uniformed young son for a post-Pop Warner treat—and watching them eat over Jane’s shoulder made me feel comfortably relaxed.
Jane picked up her Coke and held it out to me, over the middle of the table, motioning for me to do the same. I did, and she tapped her wax paper cup against mine.
She grinned. “Cheers,” she said.
TWO
Automated Interface, Inc.
The name of the corporation said nothing and said everything. It was the same sort of nondescriptive doublespeak adopted as a moniker by thousands of other modern businesses, and it indicated to me that the company I was going to work for produced products of no real importance, of no real value, and that although the firm no doubt made a lot of money, it would probably make no difference to the world if it dropped off the face of the planet tomorrow.
It was exactly the sort of place I never thought I’d work, and it depressed me to realize that this was the only place that would have me.
Truth be told, I had never really thought about what sort of job I would eventually hold. I had never planned that far ahead. But I realized now that I was not the sort of person I’d thought I was—or wanted to be. I’d always seen myself as intellectual, imaginative, creative. Artistic, I suppose, although I’d never done anything even remotely artistic in my life. But now that I looked at it, my perception of myself seemed to be based more upon my empathy with literary and cinematic characters than on any qualities I actually possessed.
I pulled into the parking lot, passing an entire row of reserved spaces before finally squeezing my extra-wide Buick into an extra-narrow space between a red Triumph and a white Volvo. I got out of the car, straightened my tie, and for the first time examined the building where I’d be working. It had seemed faceless to me before and still did now. The facade was cement and glass, modern-looking, though not modern enough to grant it a distinctive identity. Despite it’s utter lack of character, something about it appealed to me. I thought it looked friendly, almost welcoming, and for the first time since waking up that morning, I felt a small hope flare within me. Maybe this job wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Other cars were pulling into the parking lot, power-tied men and power-suited women getting out of their expensively trendy cars and, briefcases swinging, walking briskly into the building.
I followed the flow.
During my initial interview, I had taken notice of only the personnel office and the conference room in which the interview had been conducted. Now I looked carefully around the building’s lobby. Here the impression of sterile newness fostered by the building’s exterior faded somewhat. I could see a worn path on the burgundy carpet, a layer of dust on the plastic palms and ficuses that flanked the door. Even the high rounded desk in front of the security guard exhibited chips and scuffs on its wood finish.
The other men and women walking through the lobby strode purposefully past the guard, nodding at him on their way to the elevator. I wasn’t sure if I should do the same or if I had to check in, so I walked up to the desk.
“Excuse me,” I said.
The guard looked at me and through me, not seeming to notice my presence. He nodded to an overweight man with thick horn-rimmed glasses. “Jerry.”
“Excuse me,” I said again, louder this time.
The guard’s eyes focused on my face. �
�Yes?”
“I’m a new employee. I just got hired, and I’m not sure where I should—”
He motioned toward the elevator with his head. “Take the elevator to Personnel. Third floor.”
It was exactly what he had told me last time, when I’d come for the interview, and I was about to say something to that effect, jokingly, but he had already dismissed me in his mind, again looking past me to the other employees entering the lobby.
I thanked him, though he wasn’t listening, and walked back to the elevator.
Two women were already waiting for the elevator, one in her early thirties, one in her mid-forties. They were discussing the younger one’s lack of sexual interest in her husband. “It’s not that I don’t love him,” the woman said. “But I just don’t seem to be able to come with him anymore. I pretend I do—I don’t want to hurt his feelings and give him some kind of confidence problem—but I just don’t feel it. I usually wait until he’s asleep and then do it myself.”
“These things go in cycles,” the older woman told her. “Your interest’ll be back. Don’t worry.”
“What am I supposed to do until then? Have an affair?”
“Just close your eyes and pretend he’s someone else.” The woman paused. “Someone bigger.”
They both laughed.
I was standing right next to the younger woman, but I was close to both of them, and I could not believe that two strangers were talking like this in front of me. I felt embarrassed, and I kept my eyes on the descending lighted numbers above the elevator door.
A few seconds later, the door opened and the three of us walked in. The younger woman pushed the button for the fifth floor; I pushed the button for the third.
The older woman started talking about her husband’s impotence.
I was grateful when the elevator door opened on the third floor, and I quickly stepped out.
There were five people behind the counter in Personnel: two middle-aged men seated at computer terminals; an elderly woman standing in front of a desk, taking a sack lunch out of her purse; another elderly woman sitting at another desk, and a pretty brunette girl about my age standing next to the counter itself.
The Ignored Page 1
