Reasons I will turn you down, even if you offer me the job: Part II
Lesson #2: Olive Garden, Baker's Square, and Red Lobster are not good restaurants.
Many departments -- as I suggested in my last post -- go out of their way to show their candidates a pleasant time during their campus visits. Because interviewees are interested not merely in scoring a job but are also keen to see how faculty get on with one another, hospitality and good cheer are among the intangible factors that might tip a candidate's choice in favor of one school over another. There's a delicate balance to this, of course. Too much sociability can send out the wrong signals. For instance, a friend of mine once visited a medium-sized state school deep in the heart of Dixie, in a town made temporarily notorious for a schoolyard sniper incident some years ago; after a night of heavy drinking with several (potential) colleagues, my friend realized that his companions were drooling, face-down on the bar floor not because they were happy with their station in life, but because they did not have the courage to hang themselves in the garage and be done with it. He ultimately turned down the job offer, but at least he got shitfaced on someone else's nickel.
If only I had been so lucky. I recently interviewed with Quaint Liberal Arts College, located in a hastily-constructed exurb of a major materopolitan area, a tech town dominated by strip malls and corporate office parks, few of which were filled to capacity. After the interview itself -- about which I will have more thunderous complaints in future posts -- I was driven back to my hotel (by someone, thank Christ, other than Professor Ashtray [see post below]) and abandoned to my own devices by 4:00 p.m. As near as I could tell, that was the last I could expect to see of anyone remotely affiliated with the school; no dinner plans had been suggested, and I was too puzzled to ask my escort what the fuck was going on. I had never heard of a school that seemingly forgot to schedule dinner with a candidate, so I could only assume this was a conscious decision.
Having been lodged in an interstate off-ramp hotel, my dinner options were largely determined by the immiserating logic of 1990's bonanza capitalism, which decorated every office park with a pinwheel of shitty restaurants like Applebee’s and Olive Garden. These places are the culinary equivalents to Home Depot and Circuit City, the very restaurants I would visit if I had a box of shotgun shells and nothing left to lose. Aside from Carl's Jr. -- last seen pimping what I can only suspect was an inedible and dangerous "Six Dollar Mushroom and Portobello Burger" -- my options included Olive Garden, Baker's Square, and Red Lobster. Truth be told, I was quite drawn to the notion of eating an entire banana cream pie at Baker's Square; I also considered how wonderful it might be to eat a mound of sulfite-drenched shrimp and wait until my throat swelled, choking off my windpipe and bringing my job search to its inevitable conclusion. But few things in this world scream "I am a fat, fucking loser" quite like a solitary meal at Olive Garden, with its never-ending pasta bowl and unlimited conveyer belt of salad and breadsticks. So there I ate, gobbling pasta alfredo and reading the latest issue of Harper's, which contained an utterly inane article by Stanley Fish about "intelligent design" and the "intellectual left."
The experience was almost as depressing as I wanted it to be. On the way back to my hotel, I dropped into a nearby convenience store and bought a 40-oz. Miller Genuine Draft, which I consumed in a brown paper bag.
Many departments -- as I suggested in my last post -- go out of their way to show their candidates a pleasant time during their campus visits. Because interviewees are interested not merely in scoring a job but are also keen to see how faculty get on with one another, hospitality and good cheer are among the intangible factors that might tip a candidate's choice in favor of one school over another. There's a delicate balance to this, of course. Too much sociability can send out the wrong signals. For instance, a friend of mine once visited a medium-sized state school deep in the heart of Dixie, in a town made temporarily notorious for a schoolyard sniper incident some years ago; after a night of heavy drinking with several (potential) colleagues, my friend realized that his companions were drooling, face-down on the bar floor not because they were happy with their station in life, but because they did not have the courage to hang themselves in the garage and be done with it. He ultimately turned down the job offer, but at least he got shitfaced on someone else's nickel.
If only I had been so lucky. I recently interviewed with Quaint Liberal Arts College, located in a hastily-constructed exurb of a major materopolitan area, a tech town dominated by strip malls and corporate office parks, few of which were filled to capacity. After the interview itself -- about which I will have more thunderous complaints in future posts -- I was driven back to my hotel (by someone, thank Christ, other than Professor Ashtray [see post below]) and abandoned to my own devices by 4:00 p.m. As near as I could tell, that was the last I could expect to see of anyone remotely affiliated with the school; no dinner plans had been suggested, and I was too puzzled to ask my escort what the fuck was going on. I had never heard of a school that seemingly forgot to schedule dinner with a candidate, so I could only assume this was a conscious decision.
Having been lodged in an interstate off-ramp hotel, my dinner options were largely determined by the immiserating logic of 1990's bonanza capitalism, which decorated every office park with a pinwheel of shitty restaurants like Applebee’s and Olive Garden. These places are the culinary equivalents to Home Depot and Circuit City, the very restaurants I would visit if I had a box of shotgun shells and nothing left to lose. Aside from Carl's Jr. -- last seen pimping what I can only suspect was an inedible and dangerous "Six Dollar Mushroom and Portobello Burger" -- my options included Olive Garden, Baker's Square, and Red Lobster. Truth be told, I was quite drawn to the notion of eating an entire banana cream pie at Baker's Square; I also considered how wonderful it might be to eat a mound of sulfite-drenched shrimp and wait until my throat swelled, choking off my windpipe and bringing my job search to its inevitable conclusion. But few things in this world scream "I am a fat, fucking loser" quite like a solitary meal at Olive Garden, with its never-ending pasta bowl and unlimited conveyer belt of salad and breadsticks. So there I ate, gobbling pasta alfredo and reading the latest issue of Harper's, which contained an utterly inane article by Stanley Fish about "intelligent design" and the "intellectual left."
The experience was almost as depressing as I wanted it to be. On the way back to my hotel, I dropped into a nearby convenience store and bought a 40-oz. Miller Genuine Draft, which I consumed in a brown paper bag.
posted by Bad Attitude | 11:41 AM
6 Comments:
You hooked me with the "melon-headed turtle fuckers" and made me a stalker with the 40oz. of MGD. I'll be back every other hour or so checking for the continuation of the story. More! More! More! said the Grad Student.
I wish I could be shocked by your story. Once, they forgot to pick me up for dinner and I had to look up the search committee's home number in the local phone book. Being a grad student, I was sheepish, rather than pissed. "Yes, hello. This is the candidate. Oh, I'm fine.... Was someone supposed to pick me up for dinner? Okay, gee thanks, I'll wait." To their credit, the entire crew was mortified--except the guy who forgot he was picking me up. He just asked about my ethnic background. Welsh, definitely Welsh.
Good Lord, they didn't take you to dinner?! However, you should be comforted by the fact that you did not have to spend the evening with those "melon-headed turtle-fuckers" pretending to exhibit Camaraderie and Good Manners for your benefit.
I'm still stalking you. In fact, I check here so often I had to put you in my blogroll. No pressure or anything, but as my dealer, could you hook me up with more job search story ASAP?
I am laughing so hard I can barely see straight!! I was on the job market this year and was taken to Applebee's by a search committee. That was one of many "deal-breakers" during this particular interview. Yikes!!
The nightmare of solo meals at Crapplebee's and the Compost Garden keeps me awake at night. But the other side of the story, of course, is the meal with Potential Colleagues you actually must endure. I interviewed once at the University of The Most Important City in Canada, where my dinner companion was the chair of the department. A most charming fascist he was, and between pretending to like him and the cheap whiskey he kept ordering me, and trying to figure out ways not to agree with the proposition that lesbian feminists were taking over the universe, it was a miracle I didn't commit self-murder that night. Good thing Canada has strict gun control laws.
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