first day at the job || closed: self-para
Andrew Richardson, or Andy to anyone who knew him, was the manager of Tech Parts, the computer repair store on the corner of 3rd and 4th. (Right next to Vinny’s Pizza.) His dream was to work for IBM, but from cosmic twist in fate, he ended up working at a repair store for minimum wage. He wasn’t particularly politically-attuned and he spent most of his time playing Dungeon and Dragons with his friends and constructing complex scenarios of meeting Pamela Anderson. (The settings would change but the one constant was Pamela would become so enamored with his tech knowledge that she would leave Tommy Lee for him.) He couldn’t find many rewarding moments in his day-to-day life, so maybe that’s why he brought the worst attitude imaginable to work.
Andy was also in charge of on-boarding and interviewing. His boss, the owner of Tech Parts, rarely if not never showed up to the store, so Andy was essentially the heart and soul of the store. The turn-over rate of employees was high. First and foremost because it was usually high school or college aged students looking for an easy part-time job - hint: it was not an easy part-time job if you weren’t technologically-versed, which for 1998 was a large majority of the population - who either quit when the job got too hard or when something better came along. (Andy was waiting for his something better to come along, but he doubted if it would ever come.)
Second, it was not a particularly fun job. You sat in a small room that his boss spent way too much on in rent, with bad A/C, and customers who either had no idea how to work a computer or such a high level of frustration that they were willing to yell at you for anything. (And sometimes, the customers were a fun mix of both.) So maybe that was why Andy hated his job. It wasn’t a problem with him but the situation he was in. It’s hard to love something that’s built to break you down.
Andy found that the best way to handle this frustration was to have fun with his co-workers. Play little pranks, in a way. His favorite, and so far most thrilling, mind-game was this: when interviewing a potential new employee, he would hand them a rubix cube that was unsolvable. (He had taken off some of the stickers and put them in other spots so there was really no way to solve it without cheating.) It would help in a few ways. First, it was a fun form of entertainment to give someone a task that they would inevitably fail. A benign type of schedenfreud as a treat. Second, it got to the heart of whether someone would make a good employee or not.
Someone too smart and sure of themself would break - they’d get frustrated and shut down - a characteristic that wouldn’t lend itself well to the day-to-day problems of someone who’s supposed to fix tech, a job that could easily wear on your temper. Someone too determined would keep going forever to try to solve it and never know when to give up. Someone too lazy would give up before they even began. Another characteristic that would make for a bad employee. The ideal candidate would try for a three to seven minutes and then ask for help.
This method, although not full-proof, was a good way for Andy to find a co-worker who succeed at the store. (If not, at least find a co-worker wouldn’t be unbearably obnoxious to work with.) Yet, there are always outliers. Ferris was one of them.
“So,” Andy said, looking at Ferris resumé. “You went to New York Institute of Technology.”
Ferris was tapping his foot, looking all around the room. They were in the backroom of the store, where Andy kept all the computer parts and items-in-repair.
“New York Institute of Technology.”
“Yeah, but I dropped out.”
Andy put the paper down and said. “You listed two of your professors as references.”
“I aced their classes. They loved me.” Ferris was staring at a computer behind Andy’s head. “Is that yours?”
“What? It’s a customer’s. I’m working on it.” Andy turned around. He turned back around. “If you aced their classes, why did you drop out?”
Ferris shrugged. “It wasn’t what I wanted to do.”
“And what you wanted to do was work at a computer repair store?”
Ferris raised an eyebrow, “Is that one of the interview questions?”
“No, I guess not,” Andy said, looking at the resume. “Do you have any experience fixing computers?”
“Yeah, I built six computers.”
Andy narrowed his eyes. “You built six computers?”
“Yeah. Six desktop computers. Three laptops. I’m working on one right now that’s just a screen but I’m running into some issues.”
“How is it just a screen?”
“Like,” Ferris moved his hands around as if it was right in front of him and invisible. “It’s just a screen, but you can touch the screen and move stuff around on it. I’m having trouble finding glass that works for it though. I tried just using a desktop screen as a base but it didn’t end well. Too bulky. Didn’t work well in beta. So I took it apart and used some of the wires. But it got expensive. That’s why I’m here.”
“Uh huh,” Andy said, skeptically. Does this guy know he can come up with more believable lies? Just put community college. I’m not gonna check.
"That’s actually how I found this place. I’ve been going through your trash for a while now. You know, you guys throw a lot of good stuff away.”
Deadpan, “We do, do we.” I throw away stuff that doesn’t work. And dumpster diving? Is he serious?
"Yeah.” Ferris peered around his head. “Are we done with the interview? Can I look at your computer.”
“I mean, I guess,” Andy set putting the paper down. Shit, I told Mickey we’d get a new employee by Monday and this was the last person I interviewed. Ferris got up and went towards the computer. “What? Sit down don’t touch that.”
“You can’t just touch a customer’s laptop if you don’t work here.”
“But I just interviewed.”
“You didn’t get the job.”
“What?” True shock. True confusion. And Andy truly felt uncomfortable. He usually didn’t have to break it to potential candidates in person. He would just call them up and tell them. Or better yet, leave a voice mail. (He purposely called at inopportune hours to avoid problems just like this one.)
“I mean,” Andy said. “There’s still another part of the interview. I forgot another portion. Sit back down.”
“Oh,” Ferris said, sitting back in his seat.
Now Andy felt bad. A strange sense of guilt he usually didn’t get set over him. It was one thing to give the rubix cube challenge to someone when there was still a chance they would get the job. It was another thing to do it when he already knew they wouldn’t. This was just sadistic, setting someone up to crash and burn.
“It’s,” Andy walked up to the desk and grabbed a rubix cube from the drawer behind them. “It’s just a small test for problem-solving abilities. Don’t over think it.”
If Andy could, he would just tell him why it wouldn’t work right there and then, but the idea of admitting to a person - especially a job candidate - that this was something he regularly did was too embarrassing to fathom. (He was crining just thinking about it.) He held it in his hands, afraid to hand it over.
“Just. Just try your best to solve it.” He said, handing it over.
He handed it to Ferris. Ferris rotated it around in his hands, as if he had never seen a rubix cube before. He started rotating the pieces as Andy said, “It’s okay if you don’t get it-”
Andy stopped speaking as he saw Ferris taking it apart. Pulling it apart in mechanical motions. It was something he never saw before. (He had seen people try to break it out of frustration, but nothing quite like this.) Ferris took it apart and within seconds, put it back together. It was perfect. Ferris handed it back to Andy.
Andy stared at him speechless.
“How did you do that so quickly?”
“You know just,” Ferris moved his hands around again, like he was miming something Andy couldn’t see, “put it how you see it in your head.” Ferris pointed to the computer behind Andy. “Can I see that now?”
“Uh, yeah,” Andy said, still sitting there, speechless.
Ferris walked behind Andy, and he could no longer see him. Huh? How did he know to- Andy heard the sounds of things coming apart and going back together. He turned around and saw Ferris taking the computer apart.
“Do you have Phillip’s head?”
“What? Yeah- but you can’t be-”
Ferris scanned around the table, and took a piece of metal scrap as a wrench, too impatient to wait. He started grabbing stuff from his pockets that looked like those little pegs from Lite Brite games and putting it on top of the computer’s hard-drive. In a matter of minutes, Ferris finished. It was like something that Andy had never seen before. The laptop was put back together -- but this time better than before.
“How is the keyboard lighting up?”
“Because of the thing,” he said, with weird hand motions.
“Um, okay, alright. Okay.” Huh?
“Uh, yeah,” Andry said. “You'll start tomorrow.”
