Since tomorrow is my last day at Global Payments, I wanted to relay an interesting occurrence that happened on a lunch interview for the company I will be working for.  With all the interviews I’ve had (and have given), none have been based around a lunch or dinner.  The third round interview for my new job was to be a lunch-based one.  We ate at an on-site restaurant/bar which is part of a huge concierge complex where there is a fitness center/racquetball courts/basketball court/weight rooms/anything you can think of.  My seat was on the glass facing the indoor basketball court.

While waiting for the food, a small yellow jacket landed on the window directly next to me and proceeded to distract all four of us at the table.  Eventually, the lead guy looked at me and said “Go ahead. Kill it.”  I wasn’t sure if this was a test or not but I took the lemon slice that I had previously removed from my ice water and firmly applied it to the unsuspecting insect on the window.  I could see his “antlers” wiggle while the citric acid slowly burned him alive.  I let up and he was still wiggling so I applied the lemon wedge to his writhing soon-to-be-corpse again until there was no movement.

The lead guy then made an imaginary checklist motion and said “Killed a bee.  Check.”  It got a good laugh from the crowd at the table.  There was no way any of us could concentrate, especially me, while the bee was there so we really had no choice, although I would not have killed it unless they told me.  I commented to them as we were leaving the table that I had never murdered anything at an interview before.  My only other thought at the time was “What if one of them is a Georgia Tech grad and thought I was subliminally telling them that the Yellow Jackets suck?”  Believe me, in College Football Land down here, a hypothesis like that is not an extreme thought.

Anyway, they hired me so I guess I passed their test.  I will say this about food-based interviews.  In addition to consciously trying not to talk with my mouth full of food, my stomach was in knots as it is in most interviews (even though I generally do well), so eating a lot was not an option.  I must have appeared to have a skinny chick’s appetite, as I barely touched my fries and could barely swallow the blackened chicken wrap.

I had one potential miscue that could have cost me in this interview but I managed to edit myself.  After my violent murder of a bee by citric acid bath, I decided to relay to them my Mosquito In The Pizza Story.  About 10 seconds into the story I realize that the payoff to this story ends with the lunch lady telling me “Shit Happens”.  Of course, you can’t say “shit” in an interview so I was wracking my brain to figure out a suitable equivalent.  I wound up using the words “…she said ‘Youknowwhat happens.’”  They got the point, I didn’t swear, and they seemed to like the story so that was a crisis averted.